European Union Bill

I will speak on these amendments only briefly because much has been said already that I need not repeat. I took the trouble to spend some time in the Library going through the Order Paper and amendments, and I wrote against each of them, ““KH against””—those are my initials, so it meant that I was personally against all of them—which seems to be in line with the Government's position. I hope therefore that my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Mr David) will advise Labour Members either to abstain or to support the Government's position. The amendments have clearly been moved by people who are trying to undermine and wreck the Bill by making it toothless. It is not a strong Bill but, with the amendments, it would be feeble indeed. To restrict referendums to these three areas only would leave enormous scope for those who want constitution creep to succeed. I do not want it to succeed; I want the Government at least to consider a referendum for any significant change to any EU constitution. As to joining the euro, I think that the Labour Front Bench has become more Eurosceptic. There is no prospect of us supporting joining the euro, and one can see that very few Labour Members are willing to come along and take a strongly pro-euro position, as was perhaps the case under the previous Government and ones before that. I am pleased about that because I have been critical about joining the euro for many years. The euro is in very serious trouble. As of today, we are talking about Italy—not just Ireland, Portugal and Greece—as being a significant problem. I also understand that the French proposal to roll forward the Greek debt and not to take too strong action has been rejected––I suspect by Germany. The euro faces serious problems, and I suspect that before long the euro may unravel and that several national currencies may be re-established to allow countries to adjust to their economic needs and choose their own interest rates and parities with other currencies, including with what remains of the euro.