Protocol on social policy

Amendment 27 seeks to delete the protocol on social policy from the Maastricht Treaty.

Therefore, I must once again welcome the fact that the Protocol on Social Policy has been included in the Amsterdam Treaty.

The provisions of the Maastricht Treaty will assist this move provided that the Protocols on Social Policy are fully integrated.

In total, the potent little amendment reads, as an addition to clause one: '.after Community, insert, with the exception of the Protocol on Social Policy.'

Now, in the context of the Protocol on Social Policy, we find other recently established structures and procedures which have become an integral part of the process of laying down European legislation.

However, the present author is one of those who has doubts as to how far this possibility would be used: the protocol on Social policy refers to continuing 'along the path laid down in the 1989 Social Charter'(also signed by eleven Member States).

In 1994, he sued the Conservative government of John Major for agreeing to contribute to the costs of the Protocol on Social Policy agreed in the 1993 Maastricht Treaty, although the UK had an opt-out from the protocol.

Will the Prime Minister confirm that the protocol on social policy which he agreed at Maastricht means that, when social policy and employment standards are discussed in the Community, the United Kingdom' shall not take part', shall not vote or have a voice?

Of course this is partly because of the great hopes we have of the Amsterdam Treaty, which has at least meant that the British have now come on board in terms of social policy, and that the protocol on social policy is part of the treaty.