Lisbon Treaty House of Commons Farce

I am following the entirely pointless lower house exchanges on the EU Reform Treaty when I am able and have been reasonably impressed with the contributions from some of the treacherous Conservative Party's front bench spokesmen. The following excerpt from a backbench Tory is, how ever, the most worth quoting from yesterday's proceedings, the Hansard link is here: "3.39 pm Mr. James Clappison (Hertsmere) (Con)........ Time and again, the Government return to the House from negotiations and try to put a brave face on their defeats. They have had to accept provisions that they opposed and subsequently performed contortions, with Ministers describing them in the House as a great step forward and good for the country while simultaneously introducing proposals to ensure that they would not apply here.

Historians will have an interesting time investigating the background of and motivation for the UK negotiating position last June and earlier, when the rebate was lost. My hon. Friends talk of incompetence and it may be part of the historians’ remit to investigate that. However, such failure is partly inherent in the UK’s relationship with the supranational authority of the EU.

It is a shame that Ministers cannot admit the truth to the House: sometimes, because of the nature of the institution, they cannot get their way in negotiations and they have not been able to secure what they and this country’s electorate would have preferred. We must therefore be careful and jealous of the power of the House. We must be careful about the matters for which we permit the EU to exercise power over our electorate.

Power is either exercised here, where we are accountable to our constituents and Governments are accountable to the people, or it is not. In the latter case, it is exercised elsewhere and the relevant authority is not so accountable. We sometimes pretend that, in the history of our relationship with the EU, there is some huge, underground storage facility beneath the House, containing unexercised and undistributed power.

I reiterate that power is exercised either here or in Europe, by a supranational authority, over which we have limited ability to shape what takes place. Of course, we go to the limit of that ability, but it is not the same as national parliamentary accountability. That is the shame of our current proceedings, which are a travesty. We have been denied line-by-line consideration of the treaty. There could be no more compelling evidence of the way in which power has passed from the House and the House has been degraded. That is to the House’s discredit."