European Union Bill

I want to speak briefly in support of new clauses 3, 4 and 5. They get to the meat of the discussion we should have been having with the Government before they introduced this silly Bill. It is silly because it is never likely to be used, as there are so many ways that a Government Minister of any political complexion who wishes to continue with the European project can get measures through Parliament, such as by saying that they are insignificant or that it is not necessary to have an Act of Parliament. Therefore, I do not think that the Bill's measures will be used a great deal. It is based on the premise that the Government want to put in place the measures they introduce, and presumably a Government of any complexion will know that they need a majority in the House in order to introduce any measure that they might decide is significant enough to be dealt with by a referendum or an Act of Parliament. In reality, therefore, the Bill is a bit of a public relations exercise. But the new clauses are not. They would address the things that are wrong at the moment with the process of dealing with the emergency brake. It should be in place and it should be used properly in a way that gives a Government a chance to speak on behalf of their Parliament and their people in the Council in a fundamental way. New clauses 3 and 4 are very attractive, because would give teeth and meat—a bit of beef—to a Bill that lacks that completely. The Bill is a list of things which might be on the mind of the body politic and perhaps the anti-European press, but it does not have any substance. The new clauses have substance, as they lay out clearly how the brake should be used. There is absolutely no doubt that new clause 5 is necessary. It deals with a tax and we should have had a similar clause, somewhere along the line, on the giving away of our social security rights. It is clear that people who come to this country to work see social security as an extra payment that does not come out of the pocket of their employer. When someone leaves their family back in Poland, where they still have their house, to come to this country to work, they get all the benefits required under our social security legislation—tax credits, child tax credits and so on—which they often send back home. They also often end up with a council house, because they then bring their family to this country and live in overcrowded conditions, and they leave their house back there being paid for by the British taxpayer. All those things might have been examined seriously if we had had a provision such as new clause 5 to deal with how social security would transfer. Clearly the own resources arrangement is a tax and will be about creating a European tax as a substitute for VAT. I have been at conferences and seminars called by the Commission in other countries to press that point heavily, and thank goodness Treasury officials were there to argue hard against such an arrangement. We might say that it was one of the three red lines, because we said that tax was a red line that would not be crossed. However, the own resources debate will clearly be pressed again and again by the Commission, which will try to convince us that the proposed arrangement is not a breach of one of those red lines. New clause 5 would put up a nice barrier that we would have to cross purposefully and decisively if we wanted to move away from that red line. I commend the hon. Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris) for his tenacity, even at this late stage, in tabling well thought-out new clauses. I do not think that they come from a Eurosceptic, anti-European view; they would just be common sense and make good legislation.