Queen’s Speech

Baroness Crawley Excerpts

Thursday 28th May 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Crawley (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, welcome back the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay to her Foreign Office brief, and I welcome the noble Earl, Lord Howe, to his new roles. Both are highly respected Ministers in this House. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Helic, on a quite outstanding and moving maiden speech, which took me back to my own brief time in Bosnia in the early 1990s.

I am afraid that there will be a hint of Private Frazer from “Dad’s Army” about my short contribution to our debate on the gracious Speech. It is not really that I think, “We’re all doomed”, but I cannot shake off a certain grumpiness, having had some difficulty three weeks ago in persuading enough of the electorate to vote Labour. When it comes to general elections I am a bad loser, and one of the policy areas on which Labour colleagues and I have lost out is on the rules of engagement for an in/out referendum on our membership of the European Union.

However, three weeks seems to be a very long time in politics. Now that there is something of a cross-party settlement in favour of an EU membership referendum, I ask myself: what will our UKIP colleagues have to do next to stay in the game, especially now that the referendum Bill has been published? Will they have to up the anti-European rhetoric even further? I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, is not in his place. We may well hear calls for all civil servants to come to work wearing Union Jack waistcoats, or for Britain to withdraw from the Eurovision Song Contest—mind you, after our performance last Saturday night, they might have a point.

Meanwhile, it is a sad day as we realise that British foreign policy has been well and truly “Faraged”. Can it really be true that we all now at heart fundamentally agree with the basic UKIP proposition that there is in existence a sound ideological, economic and practical argument against the UK’s membership of the European Union? Has it really come to this?

Let me predict: when the referendum takes place, whatever the wording of the question, whatever the speeches for or against, whatever the content of the pro et contra campaigns, it will not be exclusively about the EU. It will be impossible to isolate the issue in some kind of purified political quarantine: all the grinding axes, the cosmopolitan contrarians, the disaffected voices in the regions and nations, probably all the foxhunters and certainly all those incidentally disappointed by the Government of the day—there will be plenty of those—will get on to the pitch to create an ersatz general election. We, unlike, say, Switzerland, have no tradition of coherent single-issue plebiscites and, my goodness, will it show.

The referendum could actually settle nothing. It could institutionalise and perpetrate a sterile and retrogressive debate. Imagine: what if the no campaign achieved, say, 35% to 45% of the popular vote? Will our anti-EU propagandists retreat back to the saloon bars of provincial England to talk only of golf and Joanna Lumley for the rest of their lives? I think not. Here I agree with the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, and the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, in wishing for a done-and-dusted settlement. And what if the no campaign achieves, say, 51% of the popular vote? Will the Prime Minister really walk that very day to the Dispatch Box in another place to announce a timetable to formalise the divorce from Brussels? I wonder. Referendums do not always decisively turn the ratchet; they sometimes just drive the car deeper into the ditch—ask all my Labour Party friends in Scotland.

Maybe we can resolve this whole issue today by way of a pub quiz—or a Bishops’ Bar quiz, say. What is the answer to these simple questions: would the leadership of the People’s Republic of China see its vital interests well served by a plebiscite in the UK that repudiates our status as a member state within the EU? Yes, is the short answer. A decoupled Britain and a weakened Europe, neither capable of standing to their full height amid the rapids of globalisation, would be a good day at the office for a Chinese leadership brazenly devoted to worldwide economic hegemony. Would the Scottish National Party like to see the UK vote to exit the EU? Yes, I think is the short answer, for such an outcome would legitimise its otherwise shallow claim that Scotland needs and deserves a separate political destiny now, as the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, warned.

Would the international financial community, all those companies which invest in manufacturing here and all those firms which sell foods, fashions, medicines and motors into the continent from Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester wake up the morning after a no campaign’s success and conclude that the leadership of UK plc had been secretly replaced by dastardly aliens? Yes is the short answer.

At the start of our recent general election campaign—for the month of March, to be precise—Britain’s trade deficit on goods had, according to the Office for National Statistics, risen to more than £10 billion. As we would, I am sure, all agree, this is not a good prospect for our economy which is on offer here. Were there to be a vote in favour of exiting the EU in the near future, do we think—continuing our quiz motif—that this would: (a) help correct the trade deficit, narrow it down to zero or head it in the direction of a surplus; (b) have no impact of any kind; or (c) exacerbate the trade deficit, with consequently increased pressure on sterling? Do we really think that the serious problem of our trade deficit would be positively addressed by a successful no campaign? Of course not.

No one is saying that these are not difficult times for Europe and for us Europeans. The politics of fragmentation and the realities of austerity are all too prominent in Greece, Spain and France, but the centre has to hold. In France, the Front National wants an exit referendum too. People such as Marine Le Pen abominate the whole concept of a solidarity Europe, a place where progressive values are shared and, yes, spread eastwards, and a place where national businesses, big and small, can find their way to millions of consumers who may not actually speak the same language as they do. Is Britain, after all we have been through and all the progress we have made as a society and an economy, really going to throw in its lot with the likes of Madame Le Pen? I very much hope not.

In conclusion, frankly, whatever the deal the Prime Minister secures in the negotiations now under way, we will all have to compromise to back it and mobilise all our friends, neighbours and colleagues to maximise the yes to Europe vote when the time comes. We need to get a resounding 75% of Britain voting yes for it to be done and dusted. That is the scale of the challenge we have unfortunately brought down on ourselves. In order to achieve that resounding yes vote, we have to convince the British people that their future lies in a Europe that works for them. We are not yet “all doomed”, Private Frazer, but the clock is ticking.