Financial services is Britain's biggest and most successful industry. All of this agenda is nothing less than a disaster for the City of London, and it is a policy of beggar thy neighbour because the businesses of investment and insurance is not going to move from London to Frankfurt or Paris: it is going to be forced outside the European Union. It is going to move to the offshore centres. Frankly this is a deliberate policy that is being pursued by the European Union year after year after year, and it is costing my country a great deal of money.

That said, I do admire your sense of humour because you are still banging on about the Lisbon Agenda. Do you remember that - the great proclamation a few years ago that we were going to create the high-tech, dynamic economy with full employment? Here we are half way through the programme and we see high unemployment, sclerotic growth and not a cat's chance in hell of any of the Lisbon Agenda being realised.

And then you want to renegotiate Britain's rebate and we will lose a further GBP 2 billion a year! This is all so bad that it is really very good because the genie of public opinion is now firmly out of the bottle. We know that this is a political project. Frankly what I would like you to do is to press this programme as aggressively as you can because you will make the British public and the public in many other Member States so furious that when we get our chance in these ten referendums we will say no and we will say it loudly.

My constituents do not doubt the authority or the legitimacy of this democratically elected Parliament, but they do not wish to be governed by it. They want to be governed by their own people in their own parliament - and they will be during the lifetime of this Parliament. Believe me.

For the same reasons we - and they - do not wish to see the Constitution enacted because they see it as based on obsolete economic and political theories of the 1950s, of the fear of war and an outdated threat of communism. They see it as creating a Europe that is inward-looking, that is bureaucratic, that is restrictive, whereas we should be creating a Community that is innovative and outward-looking, that reaches out to the rest of the world, that is flexible and democratic. That is not the institution that we are creating here in Europe today and we wish to have no part of it. We will not support it. My constituents do not want to see the creation of a federal state called Europe. They want to be governed by their own people in their own parliament. They do not wish to give their destiny, their independence and their sovereignty to a group in Brussels, or indeed in Strasbourg.

Some 20 years ago Mrs Thatcher went to Fontainebleau and said: 'I want our money back' - and she got some of it. We want our country back and, believe you me, we are going to get it.

This speech was in response to the following point of order, made by Alessandra Mussolini MEP (Italian non-attached member, original speech in Italian):

Mr President, I would like to make a point of order. The European Parliament has a committee for women's rights and gender equality. A noted Italian daily and British newspapers report today a statement by Godfrey Bloom MEP, according to which we women are in a position to cook but not to clean behinds fridges. I point out that there are women who have fought and died for their rights, women who have come to be covered by the burqa and women who, in the European Union, suffer still from economic disparities. I know that the English have a sense of self-irony, but I am from Naples and can say that us women know how to cook, clean fridges and also do politics, whilst Godfrey Bloom knows neither how to clean fridges nor do politics.

(Applause)

Let us remember what we are talking about here. We are talking about a European Commission and a President of the European Commission. I would suggest that the super-bureaucrat, Jean Monnet, is resting very easily in his grave because the Commission model that he wanted is here. If we have the Constitution, it is here to stay. You see, Mr Monnet hated parliamentary democracy; he found it inconvenient; it got in the way of an administrator's plan for the next five, ten or fifteen years and he wanted to have a strong European Commission. What we have today is a European Union that is effectively ruled by unelected bureaucrats based in Brussels, issuing directives and regulations with which this House can do nothing other than tamper.

Just look at the Commission! It has become a rest home for failed domestic politicians. When people have to resign from cabinet or if, like Chris Patten, they lose their seat in an election, they are packed off for five or ten years at the European Commission - a Commission that has proved itself to be unreformable. Do you remember that they all resigned in disgrace in 1999? We were told that it was all going to change, it was all going to be made better. Mr Prodi took over for five years, with Mr Kinnock at his side, and what did we see? We saw the Eurostat scandal. Have we really seen an increase in transparency? The answer is 'no', and so bureaucratic and bad is it that now we have over 3 000 working groups and committees within this bureaucratic monster.

Mr Barroso came to meet our group - which was quite brave of him in many ways. He is politically skilled, he is a good operator and a good communicator. He is certainly much better at all of those things than Mr Prodi was. Mark you, that would not be very difficult, would it? But he believes in a political Europe. He supports the European Constitution: a constitution that is bad for democracy; a constitution that establishes this place as a new legal entity; a constitution whose withdrawal terms are so unacceptable as to make the EU a prison of nations.

(Applause from the Independence and Democracy Group)