European Union Bill

Debate between Baroness Falkner of Margravine and Viscount Trenchard

Monday 13th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine]

My Lords, I have considerable sympathy with this amendment. In the course of the last three months we have heard from all sides of the House the collective failure of politicians to articulate a vision of why Britain needs to co-operate with members in her region to advance her interests. Putting an obligation on Ministers to spell out positively a vision for the EU seems eminently sensible, given the context of the Bill. This is, as the noble Lord, Lord Risby, said, that once the Government have passed an Act, they would presumably like to win an amendment. It seems odd to resist an amendment such as this when we are clear that the Government would have passed an Act proposing the policy solutions that there would be and, as the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, said, would wish to maintain their credibility by seeking actively to campaign in a referendum. I cannot see why there is such resistance to this amendment.

I remind noble Lords of some of the things that have been said about the media. Even if the Government of the day were determined to win a referendum, it is entirely conceivable that a sceptical media would choose to ask questions about why the Government were spending money. We have known from the several months of debate over referendums in this House in relation to other matters that large amounts of money have been set at the door of the practicalities of holding a referendum. It would be entirely possible for our media, which did not wish us to promote that measure that was meant to be discussed in the referendum, to say that this was a huge waste of money. The fact that a requirement for promoting that measure would be enshrined in the Bill would allow the Government to say that they were carrying out what statute and legislation required them to. We have had arguments for months on the lack education and the lack of information about the European Union. This would be an opportunity for the Government of the day to move beyond those technical measures to use that process to educate the public about their vision.

I turn to the final point in the amendment that I do not think the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, in moving it, quite brought out to the extent that I would wish to do. It states,

“in participating in a campaign for any referendum held in pursuance of Sections 2, 3 or 6 or in taking other steps required by this Act.”

The discussion we have had so far pertains only to the holding of referendums. There are other measures in this Bill that do not call for the holding of referendums. Sometimes they call simply for an Act of Parliament, or for a Statement to be made to Parliament. In doing these things, an obligation would be put on the Ministers of the day to have regard for the desirability of promoting the United Kingdom’s membership of the EU. This amendment says to us as politicians that we have to step up to the mark and that if we believe that the legislation that we are passing is good legislation, we have to go out and explain why we think that it is good legislation. While I would love to say that I wholeheartedly support the amendment, I will only go so far as to say that I can see a lot of merit in it and I look forward to hearing from the Minister why he does not think that it is extremely useful and long overdue.

[Viscount Trenchard]

My Lords, I am afraid that, although I listened with great interest to my noble friend Lady Falkner, I cannot agree with her that the amendment makes much sense. I listened carefully to the noble Lords, Lord Triesman and Lord Radice, in putting forward the amendment. It is an odd amendment. What does it actually mean? Any referendum that might be held under the Act is not going to be a referendum as to whether our membership of the EU is or is not a good thing. By definition, if the Government want to put a referendum event to the people, it follows that they must already have decided that it is a good thing, so to get the result they want in the referendum, they will obviously explain the benefits as energetically and positively as they can.

There is something strange about the language of the amendment, because the desirability of promoting the United Kingdom's membership of the EU sounds rather as though we are not a member but perhaps should be. We are a member, so obviously Ministers must explain what being a member of the EU means and must honour the obligations of being a member. I fear that that is rather subjective.

Furthermore, under the Bill, a referendum other than one which the Government wanted to win might be triggered. There are many ways in which a referendum can be triggered under the Bill, as noble Lords have said. Ministers of the Crown might be obliged to put a certain point to the country but they might not necessarily want the result to be yes. The noble Lord, Lord Radice, said that Ministers have not positively made the case in public for membership of the EU on a continuing basis. I suggest that that is because many Ministers of the Crown have felt that our membership of the EU is no longer so clearly wholly beneficial as they had thought it was, or as people thought it would be 10 years ago, or longer ago than that.

The amendment does not add anything to the Bill. It is somewhat subjective and I cannot support it.

European Union Bill

Debate between Baroness Falkner of Margravine and Viscount Trenchard

Wednesday 8th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Trenchard]

My Lords, I am afraid the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, has not persuaded me of the need to include an urgency condition. It seems to me there is absolutely nothing that prevents the UK from co-ordinating with other EU member states in response to any natural disaster. Furthermore, if the amendment were adopted, the ability of the UK to react speedily might even be circumscribed. The amendment does nothing to improve clarity; rather, it confuses the situation, compromises legal certainty and is very subjective. Amendment 10 states:

“The urgency condition is where an amendment under the simplified revision procedure is considered to be urgent”.

“Considered” by whom and in what forum? It is very unclear. I venture to submit that this amendment does nothing to improve the clarity and certainty of the Bill.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine]

I too oppose the amendment, although I recognise that in tabling it the opposition Benches are very conscious of the leap in the dark that we are making to some extent with this Bill. It is about future eventualities at a time of significant flux in the world, and indeed in the European Union. One would need to be a clairvoyant to imagine what might be coming down the road in terms of emergencies and urgencies that would need rather speedier action than the normal pace of change in the European Union. In fact I think one of the reasons why there is a disconnect between the British electorate and the Union is partly because of the very slow and cumbersome methodology and pace of reacting to events. When there is a deep economic recession or a great financial or banking crisis, people out in the country want their leaders and politicians to act speedily to deal with the issues that led to those events, and perhaps would wish us to move faster than we have been capable of doing in international fora and multilateral institutions.

Despite recognising these things, I nevertheless oppose this amendment because I think what defines urgency is so subjective and so much predicated on what the Government of the day, and the policy-makers on either side of the debate, would imagine to be urgent or not. While I think we all know what is urgent when it hits us in the face, and it is quite right that we should and should then act speedily, enshrining it in law seems to raise a host of problems, not least again with judicial review. It also creates a basis of very subjective analysis as to whether something is urgent or not, and the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, in his very helpful moving of the amendment, accepted that we do take quite a long time—that even the European financial stability mechanism is going to take a leisurely pace. This really goes to the heart of the argument; that it is better for us to look for ways to facilitate speed and urgency when the urgent situation arises, rather than to seek to enshrine it in law at this stage.