Kenneth Clarke, Conservative Chancellor in International Currency Review Vol 23 No 4 1996
"I look forward to the day when the Westminster Parliament is just a council chamber in Europe"

Claud Cheysson, former French Foreign Minister and member of the European Commission:
"The Europe of Maastricht could only have been created in the absence of democracy"

Klaus Kinkel, German Foreign Minister
"Politicians should have the courage to take decisions....against the will of the people"

Raymonde Barre, French Prime Minister and Commissioner
"I have never understood why public opinion about European ideas should be taken into account"

Costas Verras, President of the Brussels Association of Journalists
"The Commission acts like a military junta"

M. Willy de Clerq, MEP
"EC Governments should not try to explain the Maastricht Treaty. It is unexplainable. Treaty decisions are far too removed from daily life for people to understand"

Edwina Currie MP Conservative Cabinet Minister, and other roles.
"In a parliamentary democracy, MPs are elected to make decisions, and should be left to it"

Edward Heath
"There are some who fear that, in going into Europe, we in some way will sacrifice independence and democracy.....These fears I need hardly add are completely unjustified"

Francis Maude and Douglas Hurd, Conservative Ministers
breached their Privy Councillors Oath by signature of the Maastricht Treaty. Dame Barbara Mills considered charges of treason brought against them as sound in law and submitted them to the Attorney General who, having committed the same offences, did nothing. Douglas Hurd admitted that he had not read the Treaty when he signed it.

Tristram Garel-Jones Conservative Foreign Office Minister
-considered that it would be "presumptious" to publish the Maastricht Treaty, or let MPs see it, until every country had signed it. The British people were not to be allowed to know what was in the Treaty until after ratification. The first sight that MPs and the public had of it was when it was leaked on to the internet.

John Major Prime Minister
"We have reduced the cost of new regulations almost to nothing" The British Retail Consortium estimated the cost for shops alone of the regulations he was talking about would be £758 million

Michael Heseltine Conservative Minister
in response to protests about EU regulations John Major had Heseltine introduce a derulation bill. In the last stages of passage through the House of Commons a junior minister admitted that all regulation from Brussels had been excluded from it. Between 1992, when the bill was introduced, and 1995 Whitehall poured out more than 13000 regulations, more than any previous 4-year period.

House of Commons
In 1990 passed a resolution that no Minister of the Crown" should give agreement to EEC legislation until the Select Committee had examined it. This resolution was ignored.

John Major Prime Minister
Upon complaints about the Maastricht Treaty John Major protested that he had given his word to our partners and he knew that the British people would not want him to break it. He did not mention that the British people had not authorised him to give it.

Sir James Goldsmith
"Let the people decide"

David Noakes. 01326 316298 ; 07974 437 097.