Lord Howell of Guildford: My Lords, I rise early in what will be a very interesting debate not just to congratulate my noble friend Lord Blackwell both on initiating the debate and on his excellent speech with which I very largely concur but also to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, on the superb work which the European Union Committee does in keeping us abreast of the unfolding stream of proposals from the convention praesidium on the European constitution and other matters. 
I wish particularly to emphasise the extreme importance that we on this side of the House attach to this whole issue, which we believe to be one of national and constitutional significance. Frankly, I believe that issues of this kind at this level of constitutional importance should be debated in government time. I hope that they always will be in the future. As it is such a large issue we shall return to it again and again and there will be a lot more to discuss, and probably very soon too, but time is not with us. I hope that it will be useful if I try to set out the views of some of us on this side of the House about the whole matter. 
First, we are told—my noble friend Lord Blackwell touched on this—that this is just another treaty in line with the various treaties amending the original Treaty of Rome, and therefore that it should be dealt with in the way that other treaties have been dealt with by normal procedures and decided by Royal prerogative and so on. That is not correct. The proposed constitutional treaty, however it is amended, will be a blockbuster. It will replace all previous European Union and EC treaties from the Treaty of Rome onwards. So, it is not just another treaty amending existing EU legislation. It will be much the most important and far-reaching piece of EU legislation ever to come before us, giving the EU institutions a new source of legitimacy—this goes beyond the Treaty of Rome—above the nation states. 
My noble friend Lord Blackwell mentioned turning things upside down. The proposed constitutional treaty turns upside down the whole assumption that the democracy and legitimacy of the European Union institutions come from below and are ceded to them and gives a new legitimacy imposed from above. The draft constitution is a vastly comprehensive document—although we have not seen all of it yet—including a massive new charter of social rights—which we were told would not be grafted on to it, but will be—and just about everything else except God and space. Perhaps space has got into it now but I think that, so far, God has not. 
The Government say not only that it is just another treaty but also that we need not worry ourselves because it is all yet to be decided. That is not correct either. As my noble friend Lord Blackwell rightly made clear, many of the key issues appear to have been agreed by the Government and are government policy. The Prime Minister called for a proper constitution in his Cardiff speech. The Foreign Secretary says that he wants one and even the noble Baroness, if I may say so, has confirmed that the Government want an EU constitutional treaty provided—I believe she said—that it is a clear text and a reference document for the public—something which I am afraid she will not get if we are to believe the excellent Gisela Stuart who has been trying to get such a thing but has concluded that what is coming will be more complex and more remote. 
In short, let us hear no more of the point about the future. This area of the EU constitution is already government policy and we should debate it as such. It is fast setting in concrete. We have only a few weeks left on the present timetable before the matter will be put to the intergovernmental council. As the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, mentioned, it could be postponed. It would be interesting to be told before the end of the debate whether there will be a postponement and what that will do, if the matter is postponed until the autumn or even until next year, to the whole enlargement timetable and to the interests of all the applicant states who are watching this matter very closely. 
There is another argument; namely, that we are wrong to be concerned because the measure will clarify the roles of the nation states and entrench them and that, anyway, foreign and security policy, as very important national areas, will not be encroached upon by the Community structure. But the convention and the draft as they stand do just that. As David Heathcoat-Amory MP, who is on the convention, has pointed out again and again, they raise important new doubts about the national role in a range of shared competences, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Blackwell, including security policy, transport, social policy, energy and many others. Far from decentralising power, clarifying the role of nation states and bringing Europe nearer to the citizen—all reasons that we were told as to why the convention had to go forward with the constitution—it appears that the draft at any rate is bringing massive new powers to the centre. 
For instance, we were told in Article 13 that the Union shall co-ordinate economic policies. That goes far further than the previous commitment by the Union to taxation, budgets and so on. We are told that subsidiarity will save us. The noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, touched on that issue with great expertise. In fact, what has come up so far is not what Gisela Stuart and other Members of Parliament argued for with heroic vigour, which was the power of our national parliaments to reject the competences and demands of the Union when it is felt that they intrude on the national scene. Instead, there is simply a procedure for delaying the process and putting the whole matter back to the Commission for review, which when held can simply allow it to go on as before. 
Then there are new categories that noble Lords will have to get their minds around in due course if they have not already, such as the proposed "non-legislative" Acts. What are they? How does one have a non-legislative Act? According to the draft constitution, those are apparently to be issued by the Council or the Commission in the exercise of their executive powers. There is not much decentralisation with that. 
As has been mentioned, at the centre there is to be a single pillar for everything. Justice and home affairs—freedom, security and justice, as it is now called—foreign policy and defence policy will all be under a single pillar. All will presumably—we need clarification on the subject—be under the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice. It is goodbye to a separate intergovernmental pillar. That is proposed to go, and has apparently been agreed to go. If there is any doubt about the centralising effects on the foreign policy side, we have the agreement and support of the Prime Minister for foreign policy unification, carried forward under a new euro-Minister of foreign affairs who would report to and be involved with both the Council and the Commission. That would bring the Commission into the heart of foreign affairs business. 
There are many other aspects of centralisation including the commitment—again, this has been agreed all round; it is policy—for a single legal personality for the European Union. As the noble Lord, Lord Blackwell, said, that makes the European Union "sovereign" and gives it a place or the right to a place in all international organisations, presumably including the United Nations. Before anyone says that that is a fantastic proposition, I shall quote in aid the leader of the Liberal Democrats in the European Parliament, Mr Watson, who tells us that Europe needs only one seat at the UN, so that, "Europe's world view would prevail", whatever that is. 
There is to be a European Union justice and interior Ministry and a European Union attorney-general. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, had better look out for his job. Finally, although it is quite true—the noble Baroness reminded me of it the other day—that the superiority of Community laws is of course already established by treaty and court rulings, it will now be imposed from above by the new European Union constitution. That is a new and quite different proposition. 
We on these Benches therefore believe that if the constitution idea in anything like its present form is backed by the Council of Ministers next June—it may be later; we do not know—the Government should indicate now that if necessary they would be prepared to use their veto. If they none the less let it all slip through, a referendum in the United Kingdom on the proposed constitution is absolutely essential. Indeed, a referendum will be available to several other members of the Community, so it should be available in this country as well. 
As we know, the constitution is a core part of a predominantly French-influenced plan to make the European Union a counterweight to the United States of America. As we have seen in recent days, it is plainly inspired by feelings of rivalry and, I am afraid, anti Iraq war thinking on a very intense level. If it were in place today, the UK's position on Iraq could well be declared illegal under European law. It will certainly make the whole question of repairing the trans-Atlantic alliance infinitely harder. There will be no American alliance with a France-dominated old Europe of this kind. New bridges will have to be built. I believe that the Prime Minister himself recognises that. 
Jack Straw implied this morning that we must forgive and forget the French and German antagonism of recent days. About the forgiving, I totally agree. Of course we should forgive. They are great nations and we should understand their fears. However, we should be much more cautious on forgetting. What we have here is a reassertion of centralised old-European thinking. In taking up the stance that they have, I believe that France and Germany, great nations as they are, have made a huge geo-political mistake which will damage not only them but us all. Indeed, it is already doing so. 
The concept of a fixed, written constitution is anyway a fossilised and fossilising idea. It is trying to give fixity to what is fluid and ever-changing, more so than ever in the network age in which we now live, in the relationships between nations. As the great constitutionalist Sidney Low long ago pointed out, the essence of the British constitution has always been that it is in a constant state of development, which would be frozen by the kind of proposals now being aired at the convention. We should fight against this power-seeking, rigid, European construct and, in case we are accused of being negative, fight for a democratic Europe of nation states—nation states on which the entire international order, when it is restored more properly than at present, ultimately rests and always will. 
We want a place at the table in Europe, but it must become a table where, instead of constantly trailing behind other big countries' conceptions and agendas and too often losing out, we make the running at last with our ideas and initiatives for the Union's further evolution, in very close concert with all the smaller and newer states—which incidentally have rightly refused to keep silent during the debate. That is the essence of the new Europe. Perhaps at last the time has come to make a reality of that far better vision.