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that there were two separate issues. Firstly, everybody had taken part in the debate on the basis that Amendment 27 was a wrecking amendment. Secondly, the Labour Party had presented the Amendment as reopening the debate about the substance of the British opt-out. It was reasonable in these circumstances for Ministers to argue back on that substance.
12.
Geoffrey Clifton-Brown asked about the Middle East process. The Foreign Secretary said that the Americans had pushed the Israelis quite hard on deportees. It was far from clear that they had yet done enough to bring the Palestinians back to the negotiating table. But he believed that both the Israelis and the Palestinians wanted to resume negotiations.
13. Anthony Coombs asked about prospects for a GATT Agreement. The Foreign Secretary said this would be the most important subject for discussion between the Prime Minister and the President next week. If the Americans tried to unpick aspects of the agricultural deal then it would be very difficult to hold the line within the Community on the Blair House Agreement.
14. Toby Jessel said that if the Treaty was not ratified there would still be an ERM but not a single currency or a central bank. In any fresh negotiations surely we could play on the underlying German reluctance to sacrifice the Deutchmark. The Foreign Secretary said he did not believe that there would be an immediate dash for monetary union between France and Germany but the option existed for them to go for a single currency outside the Treaty. Maastricht set out a sensible route to EMU, paved with convergence criteria. Britain had influence over that process without being committed to taking part. If we scuppered the Treaty our ability to influence the direction of European policy would be fatally damaged.
15. Ian Taylor urged that the Govenrment should spell out the costs of non-ratification. The Americans were getting very frustrated about the position and he believed that the uncertainty was influencing the stability of Sterling. Could the Govenrment not accelerate the ratification process? The Foreign Secretary noted that for the first time when he was making his Statement that he detected a will in the House to complete ratification as soon as practicable.
16. Bill Cash said that the fiasco over the legal advice on Amendment 27 cast doubt on the Government's legal advice on other aspects of the Treaty. He argued that far from non-ratification causing chaos, economic chaos would be caused by proceeding with the Treaty. In that situation the 12 would be locked into an impractical route to a single currency. The ERM would probably
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