madam president for decades now the member states of the european union have been making broad and benign progress towards the principles of equality of treatment before the law of privacy and of personal freedom so i hope that there will not be a retrograde step in any of the member states on this issue of equality on the basis of sexual orientation
i do not think there will be
a point that has been missed in this debate as mr landsbergis has just reminded us and as mr van dalen reminded us earlier is that this is a proposal
it is not a legislative resolution
as you will remember we went through our own debates on this in britain
we had our own arguments over section twenty-eight
i was very unusual in my party in those days in being against it
i was against it even in the very earliest days when it was still called section twenty-seven
it seemed to me utterly invidious to use the law as a mechanism to signal approval or disapproval
when we did that we put an incredibly powerful weapon into the hands of the state that was later used in the bans on pistols and hunting and so on
but the point is i am not a lithuanian legislator
we might in this house have very strong views about abortion law in poland or euthanasia law in the netherlands
these are for our constituents sensitive issues that ought to be properly determined through the national mechanisms of each member state
we should have the humility to recognise the right of democracy and parliamentary supremacy within the twenty-seven member states
