Britain will vote on all EU power grabs

All transfers of power to Brussels will have to be approved by British voters under sweeping changes promised by the Conservatives yesterday.

Labour's refusal to allow a referendum on the revised EU constitution was described by William Hague as bare-faced political deceit.

The Shadow Foreign Secretary said that not only will the Tories offer a vote on the constitution, they would put all future changes in power to a referendum.

He promised to enshrine in law a guarantee binding all future governments to hold votes on any deal handing control to the EU.

The next Conservative government, he said, would amend the 1972 European Communities Act, which first allowed EU law to be incorporated into the British legal system.

To cheers at the party conference, he said: "If any future government agrees any treaty that transfers further competences from Britain to the EU, a national referendum before it could be ratified would be required by law.

"And so, as we campaign for the referendum the people of our country were solemnly promised, we are fighting not only for them to have their say now but for them always to have their say."

In a thinly-veiled warning to Gordon Brown that the Tories will make the referendum campaign central to any snap election.

Mr Hague said: "In the weeks to come we will do our utmost to explain this treaty's significance and why its importance merits the British people's judgment in a national referendum.

"If trust in politics is to be restored, manifesto commitments must be honoured."

Mr Hague said the Government's attempts to portray the new treaty as fundamentally different from the earlier constitution is 'one of the most barefaced-and deliberate misrepresentations in the modern annals of political deceit'.

Almost every EU leader admitted that in fact the new treaty is in all essentials the old, rejected EU constitution 'by another name', he said.

The treaty would create the first permanent EU president, an EU foreign minister in all but name and abolish Britain's right to veto EU proposals in 60 key areas.

Mr Hague also attacked the Liberal Democrats for failing to stick to their commitment to a referendum.

"Now, faced with the prospect, a shiver has run through them - looking in vain for a Liberal spine it could crawl up," he said.