First, I wish to express my appreciation to my hon. Friends who have tabled these useful amendments.
I have great difficulty with the Government’s position. They tell us that they are in a process of evaluating the EU’s competencies, functions and so on. I guess the process is rather bogged down in the sands at the moment, but no doubt it can be lubricated with yet more money. To many people in this country, the EU has become just a money trap that has built itself on transfer payments made to other nations. It is as simple as that. Those who queue up for that money have expectations of yet more money, acting as the glue that binds together this quasi-state.
I have lived through all the statements from hon. Friends on the Front Benches. “No essential loss of sovereignty” was one of the great clarion calls of an earlier phase of this debate, but this measure is now being brought forward as a little squeak, without any opposition from the Government Front Bench. It is extraordinary; here we are going through a European monetary crisis, solvency questions and all the rest, but it is so automatically the case that the British Government will go in and support almost every initiative focused on
or brought forward from the European Union. The country cries out, “Why? Why are we transferring money when we need money? Why are we supporting these endeavours?”
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I have a book at home that is rather threadbare now. It is called “Palgrave’s Golden Treasury”. There is a poem in it called “Dane-Geld” and—you might remember this, Mr Robertson—
“once you have paid him the Dane-Geld
You never get rid of the Dane.”
Of course, this is not about Danes but about a principle in life. If we say “no,” it ceases; if we open our arms and say, “Well, it is a cheap price today,” they come back for more. Over 35 years in Parliament, they have done nothing but come back for more. I have heard Front-Benchers issuing praise and saying, “But these are important things, aren’t they?” Yes. Buried in the agreement there is something that the entire House would accede to—the horror that was the holocaust. Therefore the House, in its generosity, mindful of all the other pressures on the British taxpayer and the people of this country, would accede to that. However, consider all the things that this arrangement is used for. It is not about the holocaust for Europe; this is the onward march for some sort of new political construct.
We were made citizens in 1992 in the Maastricht treaty. It is called the treaty on European Union, and in it was the question, included in the title, of citizenship. Citizenship is to me a matter of our own emotional context, the country we believe in, and what it is we are. That is citizenship. It is not the tick of a box in the Foreign Office or Brussels. It is about who we are and what we feel about our country.