Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill

It is pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey), who, to my satisfaction, demolished the Conservatives' amendment, as well as the amendment to their amendment that they had to rush out because the original was so incompetently drafted. When the hon. Member for Mid-Sussex (Mr. Soames) asked for a definition of "competences", he put his finger precisely on the problem, but he then very sensibly disappeared for dinner because no answer was available. Some right hon. and hon. Gentlemen have said, "Let the courts decide"; others have said, "Let a plebiscite be the way forward." I am here to defend Parliament, which is where I part company from the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton, with his demand for a "one big bang" referendum that would decide things once and for all, but no other referendums. He is rather like somebody who wants to lose his virginity, but only once. On the notion that there is a final referendum that will decide this matter once and for all, I have to part company with my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz)—my distinguished predecessor as Minister for Europe. I ask the House to have confidence in its abilities instead of surrendering to the populist passions of plebiscites. We tried that in 1975; it settled nothing. The hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) is absolutely right: far from settling the European question, it opened a Pandora's box out of which, to paraphrase Ernie Bevin, many Trojan horses jumped. That left the Labour party in considerable disarray for nearly a generation until common sense prevailed. When we talk about the European Union, of what are we speaking? It is a confederation of 27 member states. It takes, collectively, 1 per cent. of Europe's gross national income—the other 99 per cent. is raised, spent, distributed, taxed and allocated according to the 27 national sovereign states of Europe. Of that 1 per cent., roughly 85 per cent. comes back in the form of agricultural, structural and regional payments to the national Governments. If we did not have a common agricultural policy, we would need a BAF, a British agricultural policy; a FAF, a French agricultural policy; and a PAF, a Polish agricultural policy. I am not going to list all 27.