Employment is encouraged by removing restraints and scrapping regulations. I point out again in this House that those countries that have not adopted the euro have the lowest levels of unemployment. However, it goes deeper. In the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs in July, David Blunkett, the United Kingdom Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, said that we must not work against Member States, that different countries have different solutions and that defining best practice is the first step.

Therefore, we must observe what others do and learn from each other, taking and adapting from each other what suits best. We must not conjure up new projects with ever increasing budgets. The rapporteur rightly says that red tape must be cut through but is sceptical about the European Union's ability to do so. Likewise, David Blunkett said that many regulations were being passed which were impossible to implement. Just so: the first measure to be discarded is this well-meaning but artificial attempt to create social solidarity. I voted against it in committee and I ask this House to do the same.

Television is without frontiers. Twenty years ago, communist regimes could stop human beings getting across the Berlin Wall, but they could not stop television signals being beamed into East German homes. Today technology has moved on and people all over the planet can watch what they like, where they like. Yet the EU presses ahead with this paranoid, illiberal plan, with its quotas of European programming, and we all know what chaos quotas can create. The fact is that, if viewers want to watch American or any other programmes day and night, then nothing can stop them, certainly not the EU – or is that the hidden reality?

In the UK Jeux sans frontières is called 'It's a Knock-Out'. Europe's viewers, not the politicians, will deal the knock-out blow to this pipedream project, because ordinary people know that if the EU is the answer, then it must have been a stupid question.

Why do we need harmonised VAT rates? To help the single market? But we shall never achieve a single VAT rate and since there seems to be little effort to harmonise the much greater differences in rates of excise duty, one has to look for other motives. I suspect that the ultimate objective sought by the Commission is to have VAT centrally administered and collected, guaranteeing a continuing source of funds for the EU budget not subject to bickering between EU member states. We should be aware of this possibility and not allow it to occur.

First of all, the rapporteur defines Category I pupils as children of staff in the service of Community institutions and bodies. There is a significant omission here. Category I status also covers children of the staff of the UK Atomic Energy Authority seconded to the joint European tourist projects in Culham, near Oxford, and children of staff covered by the service regulations of the European Patent Office in Munich. The UK Atomic Energy Authority is most certainly not a Community institution and, furthermore, the joint European tourism project involves one EU pre-accession state, Romania, and one completely non-EU state, Switzerland.

As for the European Patent Office, it covers Switzerland, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Monaco, and will soon bring in Norway. As I had to stress during the debate on computer patents, that means that it is most assuredly not a Community institution. I am sad to have to make that point again so soon.

Too often we see an assumption in this Parliament that Europe and the EU are one and the same thing. Here is another example. This is not a trivial point in a general sense, nor is it trivial with specific regard to this report, because the rapporteur states that only 1.6% of pupils at Culham are Category I. She may well be correct, but if she actually means that only 1.6% of pupils at Culham are children of staff in the Community institutions then she could be very wide of the mark. I hope she can clarify that statistic.

I am most concerned by the Commissioner's suggestion that the option of offering the European baccalaureate outside the current school system should be considered. Could the rapporteur please clarify that as well?

Is the Commission suggesting that the European baccalaureate should be available in schools other than the European schools? I simply do not see why it is necessary to interfere with other schools in order to broaden and modernise the curriculum of the European schools. If I were a teacher and a pupil gave the EU as the answer, I would have to conclude that it was a very stupid question.

I have been watching this debate ever since the appalling attacks in New York four years ago, and that is what people in the European Union have tried to do at every attempt. It is perfectly clear that is what Mr Clarke and the UK Presidency intend to do.

Of course, I understand clearly the argument that telephone communication information can help us to track down people. But Mr Clarke said that we should share this information provided that there was a clear legal basis upon which to operate. What clear legal basis is there inside this European Union? There are no rules in the European Union; it does as it wishes. It would be a terrible mistake to entrust this organisation with that amount of information.

We should be moving forward together by cooperating, but of course that is not the approach, is it? No, we cannot have Interpol; we cannot have normal extradition treaties between Member States! We have to have Europol; we have to have the fatally flawed European arrest warrant. At every stage, cooperation between nation states goes out of the window and central control from the European Union comes in.

I was flabbergasted to hear you say, Mr Clarke, that this is not a sterile debate about principles. I would have thought that at this, of all times, we ought to take a step back and have a real think about good principles. In the case of the United Kingdom, is it worth us losing the presumption of innocence before guilt? Is it worth us losing our right to trial by jury? Is it worth us losing habeas corpus, our basic protection against the police state? Is it worth us losing all of these things in the name of the war on terror and in the name of pushing yet more of our law-making ability towards the European Union?

I would say that it is not, and, in practical terms, none of what you are proposing will work – remember that the Madrid bombers and the New York bombers all had valid I.D. I am sorry, Mr Schulz, but there is no such thing as a 'European identity'. We should be dealing with this at a nation state level and cooperating together, rather than thinking that the European Union can solve any of this. It will not.

As Mr Radwan stressed, other problems are the extent to which risk-spreading amongst individual banks of a banking group should imply a reduction in regulatory capital, and the difficulty of defining the division of responsibility across national supervisors. There are no objective answers to those vexed questions. For that reason I question the competence of this Parliament in this field. It is ridiculous that we should be involved in the minutiae of this directive given how complex and yet how important it is. But this is how Parliament works, with all of us Members, however experienced or inexperienced in the arcane arts of banking regulation, expected to make hundreds of reasoned judgments on questions, many of which cannot be answered in any objective way.

The rapporteur recommends that, owing to doubt, this directive should be reviewed in the future. The banking industry does not need that. Banks spend their time dealing with risk and uncertainty. Adding further uncertainty over future regulation will not help them to plan or look after our interests as customers and shareholders.

The bottom line is that there is no right amount of regulatory capital. If we kept that in mind when legislating, we would come up with rules that are a great deal simpler, and the Members of this Parliament would be spared from the farcical exercise of voting on hundreds of amendments.

I would say this to them: although you are not elected, you will be treated as full members of the European political elite. You will be entitled to the very generous daily allowance; you will find the chauffeur service at your disposal; there will be an endless round of breakfasts, lunches, dinners and drinks receptions. After all that, with your expanded waistlines, the plan is that you go back to your home countries and tell people that all is well with this club that you have agreed to join.

As Marx said – and I mean Groucho Marx, not Karl Marx – 'I wouldn't join any club that would have me as a member'. As far as the EU is concerned that is pretty sound advice, because this is a club whose accounts have not been signed off for the last ten years. This is a club, as you heard from the group leaders earlier, that is treating the voters of France and the Netherlands with absolute contempt as it tries to impose the provisions of a Constitution that should be dead. It is a club that will take away your very rights to govern yourselves and, sadly, is increasingly beginning to resemble the very political system from which you have just escaped. You will hear barracking from those who live on this European Union and who earn far more here than they would ever be worth in the commercial world.

You are here as observers, so just have a look around. What are we doing here today? What a nonsense that we are spending EUR 200 million a year of taxpayers' money on the monthly jaunt to Strasbourg. Have a look tomorrow and on Wednesday and Thursday at the absolutely farcical voting system here and realise that whatever Mr Barroso said last week about deregulation, less regulation and the sixty legislative acts they intend to withdraw, there have been some 2 000 legislative instruments passed in the short period since 1 July, when the British took over the Presidency of the Council.

Please look and go back and tell your people the truth. The ten Member States that joined last year all had referendums in their countries. I understand there is no intention to hold referendums in Romania and Bulgaria. Do not those people deserve the chance at least to vote in a referendum and have a debate? Would it not be a huge, historic mistake to railroad those people into this failing European Union without first telling them the truth? The British people were lied to 30 years ago about this European club. Your people deserve better than that.

(Applause from the IND/DEM Group)

Mr Sterckx says that we should not tinker with international agreements which are already satisfactory. He says that we must not take over the role of railway company marketing managers. Above all, he says that the system must benefit passengers. Only an EU politician could say all that and then propose extending the scope of legislation. There is already a perfectly good international agreement in place between 42 nations, including many non-EU countries, to facilitate cross-border railway travel. In 2002 international railway companies signed a voluntary Charter containing quality standards for rail passenger services – the COTIF Convention.

We cannot legislate, for example, for French, German and British railways. They all operate under very different conditions. National governments, in conjunction with railway operators, should decide what regulation is appropriate, not the European Union. To be fair, the Commission only wanted regulation to cover cross-border rail travel, but Mr Sterckx goes further by proposing regulation for in-country domestic rail travel.

In another report from the Committee on Transport and Tourism concerning the certification of train crews, the rapporteur, Mr Savary, calls for the psychological testing of train crews. May I suggest that psychological testing be extended to the rapporteurs of this Parliament? Perhaps a simple word association test would be useful. If in response rapporteurs used the words 'integration', 'harmonisation' or 'regulation', they should be immediately disqualified from holding office. This might possibly cut down the amount of this kind of nonsense, but not, I suspect, until we have first legislated for harmonised and integrated psychology tests.

Mr Guellec clearly does not pick up simple messages from ordinary voters. His fellow Frenchmen rejected the EU Constitution, yet it is an essential ingredient of his report. That is no surprise, for the rapporteur's own website has a whole section devoted to the Constitution, including a table of key dates. The most recent key date for Mr Guellec is 29 October 2004, when the Constitutional Treaty was signed in Rome. The day of the French referendum, 29 May 2005, is not even a minor detail for him. He said that territorial cohesion becomes an essential objective of the EU in the Constitution. Sadly for him the Constitution is not an essential objective for French and Dutch voters.

What is territorial cohesion? The rapporteur can only tell us that the first formal attempt at a definition comes from the Commission. Who ever heard of such nonsense: to suggest a project and then attempt a definition? How typical of this mad European Union.

The rapporteur says that regions are the best qualified level to determine needs. He should visit the so-called region that I represent. The regional authority in Exeter cannot possibly know what is best for Gloucester, Swindon or Penzance, all many miles away. The ordinary people in those areas do not think so. Perhaps Mr Guellec is not bothered what those ordinary people think, as long as he can emphasise that his beloved EU Constitution strengthens the role of the regions. The only problem for him is that ordinary people in his own country do not agree with his approach. He certainly achieves cohesion in one respect, because ordinary people in all parts of the continent will be equally confused by his report, and he is equally out of touch with all of them.

Here we have the astonishing spectacle of the EU pouring funds into the three SEI organisations, relocating thousands of jobs in the call centre software services sector to India, just part of the relocation of so many jobs to Asia. That it makes European unemployment worse is not the point. What is relevant is the reason for the job relocation. We all know why: cheaper products, primarily because workers in that part of the world are paid less than European workers, which means less than the legal minimum European rate. If that is not the case, there is no reason to relocate in the first place.

They will also have longer working hours, actually promoted by three SEIs. Mr Menéndez del Valle actually boasts of up to five-and-a-half hours more per day available. Worse, he admits to unemployment abuses in India, including child labour. So we have cheaper products by breaking EU rules for wages and for the hours worked by employees who, I have no doubt, are often working in circumstances which an EU health and safety inspector would shut down.

In short, the EU is exploiting sweated labour, the same evil practice it is so keen to eradicate here. What a disgrace!

There is absolutely no question if you look at every independent report that in environmental terms these fisheries deals off the west coast of Africa are the environmental equivalent of setting fire to the Serengeti! The local populations are being left without any hope of earning a living and I am very disappointed that you will not at least promise us an inquiry.

However, what is one to make suddenly of all these euro-fanatics – especially down there – and the CDU in Germany, and even the great President Chirac himself, whose ardour for the European Union's endless development suddenly cools when they reach the Bosphorus?

Some this morning will detect the whiff of hypocrisy; but it is not actually hypocrisy, it is the smell of fear: fear that public support for the whole EU project will finally collapse if Turkish entry is seriously pursued. After all, the latest Eurobarometer, as Mr Poettering will surely know, showed 70% opposition to Turkish membership in France and 74% in Germany. But, as usual, Brussels will plough on. Good! Although we are against Turkish accession, we shall be quite happy to watch the EU destroy itself while trying to achieve it.

They say turkeys do not vote for Christmas, but if the EU institutions vote for Turkey, it could be a serendipitous exception to the rule.

From the UK's perspective, here we are – the fourth biggest economy in the world, the second largest global investor, a truly global trading nation – and we are not allowed to make our own trade policy! Oh no, that is done for us by the overpaid, unelected bureaucrats in Brussels and today we have a former Communist Commissar lecturing us on what we can and cannot do!

A one-size-fits-all trade policy for the European Union cannot work when you have countries and economies as different as the United Kingdom and Italy. In the modern world sovereign states use free trade agreements.

The really good news though is that British business is waking up to the fact that the innocuous-sounding common market was actually always intended to be far more than that, and British businesses are saying: we do not need the European Union, we would be better off making our own trade deals. So thank you to the European Commission. Thank you for this cock-up, because the day that Britain leaves the European Union has come much closer.

(Applause from the IND/DEM Group)

Mr Duisenberg, of course, enjoyed the support of Deutsche Bank in his fight for the presidency of the ECB. Given the curious coincidence and timing of these unusual and unexpected deaths, this House might hope that Europol and the intelligence services will look closely at the surrounding circumstances.

I am glad of the opportunity to place on record the deep resentment of my constituents in the East Midlands at the attempts by Brussels – aided, let it be said, by a supine British Government – to divide England by imposing artificial regions. It will divide the English nation and undermine our nationality.

Well, I have news for you: it will not work because the people in, for example, Derby, in the East Midlands, have no special affinity with the people of Lincolnshire. The regions are artificial. They are spurious. They have no identity. They will not work either because the English people do not want them. They voted against in the north-east by 90% in the one opportunity they had, and they will do so elsewhere.

We English are very tolerant. We are prepared to subsidise the Welsh, the Scots and most of the nations here. We do it with resignation. We will not tolerate being robbed of our nationality and our identity. So carry on with your policy. Carry on trying to divide us, because what you will do is inflame the English and English nationalism and we will assert ourselves and we will insist on governing ourselves again.