Foreign Office lies must be exposed

The clear lies which continue to be repeated by Britain's Foreign and Commonwealth Office must be exposed and those responsible brought to account. The pattern of the lying, its continuation over several months, its repetition by two different Secretaries of State and two different Ministers for Europe and apparently supported by various of their officials must bring the whole department into complete contempt by the diplomats and Foreign Ministries of other countries thus despoiling the reputation of the entire British nation which the Department supposedly exists to enhance. Worse still is the fact that the lies in the main have been made to various committees of Parliament, the elected representatives of the British people, to whom all government departments should be held accountable. When Parliament once again convenes the lies that have been put about by the Foreign Office over the "negotiations" for the terms of the EU Reform Treaty should be at the forefront of its concerns. So how can I be so certain that these Ministers of the Crown have been lying, clearly aided and abetted by the present Prime Minister and his immediate predecessor. Let's look at the facts, on the record, as confirmed both by Hansard and more importantly by the Foreign Office's very own document on the Reform Treaty CM7174, priced at nine pounds but more cheaply and conveniently available in pdf format from this link. Note the final paragraph which has already been highlighted by this blog here, which is the negotiating authority to Britain's representatives to the Intergovernmental Conference which is supposedly negotiating the final terms of the Treaty, it simply states: "These remain our guiding principles for the IGC, which needs to follow precisely the terms of the Mandate agreed at the June European Council." In other words the mandate which then follows must be followed in every last detail (which fact has been repeatedly stressed by national leaders across the EU). Yet the Government's position throughout the run up to the parliamentary summer recess was that no negotiations had yet taken place. The British Government is therefore asking our MPs and therefore the electorate to believe that the detailed drafting changes and major losses of veto to QMV and consequently sovereignty were all put together by the national leaders at the two day European Council meeting where Britain was represented by a PM since resigned from Parliament and national affairs and a Foreign Secretary incapable of even running DEFRA. Yet even the document that proposes such a preposterous notion proves this is not the case. Scroll to the top of Page 9 of the pdf document, where the first paragraph begins as follows: "The Government therefore secured an important safeguard in negotiations" So negotiations did take place, they were on behalf of the Government and not attained solely by Blair at the Council meeting as is perfectly obvious from reading the whole document linked above and the full exchanges of the ministers to the various parliamentary committees, highlights of which are linked and quoted below. These evasions and disinformation were repeated on the floor of the House of Commons as I will show over the coming days. What should the public and/or their MP now do when the leaders of the two opposition parties who silence on this grave matter seems to make them guilty by collusion in this disgraceful conspiracy which has as its aim the destruction of our system of independent parliamentary democracy. (In fact there is evidence that some of those negotiations were put into effect before the EU Council even took place, presumably by a COREPER ruling which must have been sanctioned by the Foreign Office, see my report on EU legality from here and here, which latter was forwarded to an MP, an MEP and the then Labour Party MP, then leader of the influential Commons Home Affairs Committee whose powers had been thus trashed.) Herewith a few of the lies from Parliamentary Hansard reports... Mrs Beckett at the European Affairs Committee 07/06/07, linked from here Chairman......

What they really mean is they see negotiations going on in secret, behind a Chinese wall, denying them any access to the process.

Margaret Beckett: They are not.

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Margaret Beckett: You say it is on the table. Actually, as far as I know, it is not on the table. We do not know what is on the table at present.

Mr Cash: It is a joke. You do not even know as Foreign Secretary what is going on.

Q17 Chairman: Please show some discipline.

Margaret Beckett: May I say in response to that it is not that I do not know what is going on. It is because nothing is going on.

------------------ Mr Cash........

. I would just like to invite you to give some indication as to how it is that you are not in possession of the sort of information that we would have assumed the Foreign Secretary of this country would be in possession of in all other previous negotiations at a similar stage in the run up to a proposed treaty.

Margaret Beckett: You say to me, "We know that there are party to party negotiations." There are not. There have not been. There has been a process whereby Member States were occasionally invited to give some views. There have not been negotiations.

Q23 Mr Cash: You do not know what is going on.

Margaret Beckett: There is nothing going on.

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Mrs Beckett at the Foreign Affairs Committee 19/06/07 linked here

NOTE that this minutes have not yet been approved by the Committee.

Q170 Mr. Heathcoat-Amory: I just made the point that negotiations have been taking place, but clearly not with you.

Margaret Beckett: I am sorry, but I do not accept the characterisation that they are negotiations. ------------------------ For a report on the new Europe Minister, Jim Murphy's equally disgraceful performance read the posting on that subject from Open Europe blog, linked here.