European Union Bill

Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne Excerpts

Monday 9th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blackwell]

If by not turning up you allow a decision to be taken that binds the UK, you are implicitly supporting it.

[Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne]

Noble Lords on all sides of the House must now surely recognise that this amendment is a mistake. I feel absolutely sure that it is an honest mistake, but it is a mistake based on a misunderstanding of the rules in the European Union. In order to work well in the European Union, you have to recognise that members come from many different states—as they have always done. In order to draw the members together so that they come to the meetings and all the rest of it, the European Union has different sorts of rules that are designed to attract them, to make absolutely sure that they come to the meetings. There are some very tough rules indeed if you do not turn up, and that is why this amendment is such a mistake. We cannot pass it because it would so gravely handicap United Kingdom Ministers in the Council of Ministers.

This way of working is commonplace throughout the European Union. If you do not turn up when it is a unanimous vote—and many votes are unanimous in different European Union institutions—you will be deemed to have agreed. That is what forces people to come from so many different nations. It is an enormous effort and very expensive for the Union and so on, so there are a number of rules that act like a magnet. This is one of them. Therefore, with the greatest respect, I suggest to noble Lords opposite—to the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Stamford, for example, and others—that they should rapidly withdraw this amendment. It is a little embarrassing. If it were to go through, we would be the laughing-stock of the Council of Ministers.

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

I have a slightly more general question to put about a thread which is running through all our amendments and proceedings. It concerns the Government’s attitude to enhanced co-operation. We have heard much about the general position of Ministers who would find themselves isolated in the Council of Ministers because, although they might support a proposal, they would have to take it to a referendum that they might lose. That is why I ask: how serious is that, really? If nine or more countries wanted to go ahead with a proposal—it used to be eight, but I think it is now nine under the Lisbon treaty—what would be the Government’s attitude to it? How worrying is enhanced co-operation? I imagine that the Government may say that they do not particularly want a two-speed Europe. Of course, some of us would prefer a third speed or gear—a reverse gear. But it would be nice at some point during our proceedings to understand how the Government view enhanced co-operation generally.

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[Lord Liddle]

My Lords, of course this side of the House will not pursue this amendment and we will withdraw it. Before I withdraw it formally, I should say that I am very glad that we have put forward this amendment because it has raised some interesting points. The point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, has not been adequately answered by the Government. In this discussion, we also have had a first: it is the first time since we started Committee stage that the Government have said that they might go away and look at something, which is quite remarkable. We have been passing rather like ships in the night.

The government Benches on the one hand and the Opposition and opinion generally throughout the House on the other hand have been talking, although not really engaging. This is the first time that the Government have said that they will consider the wording. I should have thought that if the need is to find a form of words to cover the agreement on a consensus without a vote one could find more specific words than “or otherwise support”. I see no objection to adding something on the lines of what is suggested in Amendment 32A in order to make clear that this is not intended to be a restraint on Ministers.

[Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne]

Is it not proper for this Bill and, therefore, this Government to use the correct wording found in the Lisbon treaty? That is exactly where the wording comes from.

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[Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne]

My Lords, I oppose the amendment put forward by the noble Lord. My reasons are not in spirit different from those of the noble Lord, Lord Hannay of Chiswick. I wish this Bill to succeed and I wish to reconnect the British public with the European Union movement of legislation and with what happens with our Members of the European Parliament and Ministers. But I profoundly agree with the view of the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton at Epsom, that these amendments would hollow out the Bill completely. The noble Lord and I might differ on other things to do with the Bill, but I agree that these amendments would have a completely negative effect. We would be left with a hollowed-out Bill that simply would not be worth putting before Parliament again.

Indeed, if I can tweak the noses of some of the noble Lords opposite, if we agreed these amendments we would be left with merely a referendum on the euro, which I understand is what the previous legislation from the Opposition put forward, whereas other points in that legislation were not acceptable.

The amendments in this particular group go right against the philosophy of the Bill itself. As a former Member of the European Parliament, it is galling indeed for MEPs to receive something between 30 per cent and 35 per cent of the vote. It is shameful and shows how weak successive Governments have been in putting European Union thinking, philosophy and practices—good or bad, positive or less than positive—in front of the British people, who are the ultimate deciders. We have failed as Members of this House and of the other House, and other member states have not had that failure. I put that point forward previously.

The common purpose of this Bill, for those of us who support it, is to regain not just the trust but the knowledge base that the British people used to have so many years ago with the first referendum in the early 1970s. A huge amount of work was put forward by those who opposed membership and those who supported it. The result was that on the table was a mass of information about what grew to be the European Union. Indeed, looking back at those speeches reminds one of the profundity of the knowledge base put forward by different Members of both Houses of our Parliament.

The curious thing about these amendments—

[Lord Tomlinson]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness, but when she romanticises about the 1975 referendum, would she perhaps reflect that it was a rather shoddy device from the Labour Party, to which I belonged at that time, and the House of Commons? That party did not have a decisive policy in relation to Europe, and this was the shoddy compromise to make sure that we got away with it.

[Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne]

I am perhaps just a few days younger than the noble Lord. What I recall as a campaigner with my father, my uncles and my cousins, was that we wanted to put forward the maximum amount of knowledge to the voters. All I am suggesting—and I think, correctly, that it is evidence based—is that the information flow is now so weak that nobody in the United Kingdom knows very much about the European Union at all. Indeed, the level of ignorance is shameful and it has to be put down to us in Parliament and to successive Governments. We have the knowledge and we should be putting it forward. The core purpose of this Bill is to reconnect—to use that wording again—with the British public, to bring the knowledge base forward. I suggest that these amendments would destroy that purpose, and that is not a proper thing to do. The public have a right to know, and if we do not tell them they cannot know.

The curious thing about the amendments is their self-contradictory terms and the disparity in what they seek to achieve. Some amendments propose to extend referendum provision to common fisheries policies, rights of citizens and the ECHR, which is outside the parameters of this Bill. The Bill does not transfer those powers or competences from the UK to the EU, so it is a very curious set of amendments.

The amendment that troubles me most of all is the one that would remove our capability to stop qualified majority voting with the veto for areas in common foreign and security policy. I hardly need to remind the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, that Article 42(2) of the treaty of Lisbon states:

“The common security and defence policy shall include the progressive framing of a common Union defence policy. This will lead to a common defence, when the European Council, acting unanimously, so decides”.

Here I refer to Amendment 28A, which would remove our capacity to stop that happening sometimes. Article 42(2) goes on to say:

“It shall in that case recommend to the Member States the adoption of such a decision in accordance with … constitutional requirements”.

In other words, I am talking about irreversible decisions to transfer power and/or competences from the UK to the EU on issues such as a common EU defence policy—for example, with a European army, whereby the UK might lose its freedom to decide if and when we send our troops. There would have been no Libya; we would have had to wait for the Italians to agree, for example. Do those who propose the amendments recognise that that is what could very easily happen? A move to qualified majority voting from the veto on any important policy area in part 3 of the TFEU is set out in Schedule 1 on the common foreign security policy, enlargement and direct taxation. These are traditional red lines for us and these amendments would destroy our position.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

I am a bit puzzled by the noble Baroness’s line of questioning over whether those of us who tabled amendments, including myself, understood that point. Of course we understand that it would require, as she read out, a unanimous decision, including the British Government’s decision, to do that. Nobody doubts that; it means to say that there are no circumstances in which we could be forced to take that decision against our will, and nobody is suggesting that we should. I do not really see what the issue at stake is in that matter. It requires unanimity, like everything else in this part of the Bill. The assumption appears to be—and perhaps it is shared by the noble Baroness—that we are legislating for some weak-kneed, limp-wristed British Government of the future, who will simply give everything away and collapse in a heap. I can see noble Lords’ heads nodding—and there you are. You have proved beyond peradventure that you are trying to break one of the rules of the British constitution that one Parliament does not legislate for another.

[Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne]

The point of my remarks is very simple. I believe most profoundly, along with a number of others who support the Bill, that that is exactly the sort of transfer of sovereignty—absolutely au fond the transfer of real sovereignty of the kind that matters most of all to us, which is our defence—which should surely be put in front of the British people. I refer to the making of a common defence and security policy. Let us take Amendment 28A; let us recall that the Council of Ministers and the European Council and the institutions of the European Union in their wisdom can make unanimous decisions without many people being present—not only without ourselves being present but without others who would agree with us and are also members of NATO, for example. So we can have a unanimous decision without core members of NATO being present. Those are common defence and security policy issues. I believe most powerfully that that is the fundamental transfer of real sovereignty, which puts many other things in the pale. It really matters.

I would be aghast if that happened through the mechanism that the Government have put forward in this Bill, which is a good Bill and not a great constitutional Bill as the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, suggested. I do not think it is that at all; it is a very good, solid, small and middle-of-the-road Bill, which opens the door for us to speak directly to the British public. I cannot help but feel that if we close the door again, as the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, and his colleagues would recommend, and put down a referendum merely on the euro, which it is extremely unlikely that we will ever join—look at Greece, for a start—and we do not have referenda, it will all be done by Twitter anyway. It will all be done on the web. This mass of knowledge base that the public have will be expressed in another way, and our Parliament will become ever more excluded from what in effect will be the national debate.

My only point is a simple one. The integrity of the Bill is demonstrated by the linkage with the people. The only way in which we as parliamentarians can offer the people a true linkage is by referendum power. I was interested and pleased to see—result or no result—that 42 per cent of the electorate turned out on the referendum last Thursday. People want to express their views. They want to be asked; if they are given the knowledge, they will respond. They are very used to it these days—are not we all, with iPhones and so on? It is most foolish and self-defeating to say, as the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, did, that these amendments, which are in many ways contradictory, as I have already pointed out—some going too far and some not going far enough; in that sense they are really wide of the mark in some respects—do not remove the context in which the Bill is based and would not be foolish in terms of Britain’s future.

[Lord Goodhart]

My Lords, I am entirely in disagreement with what my noble friend has been saying. This Bill is full of absurdities, and the most absurd of those is that referendums will have to be held for changes in 56 sets of EU rules, even if they are minor changes that are of no particular interest to members of the public.

There is a large number of these possible proceedings, listed especially in Clause 6 and Schedule 1. Of these, only one—the decision to make the euro the currency of the United Kingdom—would clearly justify a referendum. In practice, it is inconceivable that there will be any decision to seek to make our currency the euro. It is arguable that a decision under the Schengen protocol to remove UK border controls would also justify a referendum, but none of the other matters in the Bill does so.

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[Lord Tomlinson]

My Lords, I take great pleasure in following the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart. He dealt with that specific example of the European public prosecutor's office and quite rightly pointed out, rather rhetorically, how many would be affected. My question is: how many would care? In addition to his views that it would be a waste of time and money, I have one much more serious complaint about it. It would be the greatest democratic turn-off that we could have and would encourage a process of non-participation in public decision-making. Our democracy is in sufficient difficulty without us placing additional obstacles between the success of our democratic systems and the use of so-called democracy through referenda on many of these trivial issues.

The noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, spoke earlier about disillusioned citizens. My view is that Clause 6 drives a coach and horses through any sensible concept of parliamentary democracy. I can conceive of little that would more enrage our people than to see Parliament surrender its powers on anything other than the most serious constitutional issues in which the people ought to be engaged. We proudly go out and talk to all sorts of people about being the mother of Parliaments. I feel that with Clause 6 as it is, a lot of people might be tempted to question the paternity.

The noble Baroness, Lady Nicholson, reminded us that she has been a Member of the European Parliament. I remind your Lordships that I, too, spent 15 years in the European Parliament. To the best of my knowledge and belief, nobody at any time during those 15 years raised any of the subjects in Schedule 1, demanding to have a say in resolving such decisions.

[Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne]

I cannot raise the question of age discrimination, because that is now illegal, but might it be a little before my time that the noble Lord was in the European Parliament, and that, for example, the section which I have just quoted from the treaty of Lisbon is entirely new? The noble Lord might realise that things have changed.

[Lord Tomlinson]

I am glad that the noble Baroness felt it necessary to point that out. However, since I left the European Parliament, I have had the privilege of representing your Lordships’ House in the Convention on the Future of Europe, which kept me a little abreast of some of the things that were going on. There is an idea that any one of the subjects listed in Schedule 1 is appropriate for public engagement through a referendum, in the hope that that will then provide the missing link to inspire the people of Britain in relation to Europe, but not one of them has that inspirational quality. If we are going to inspire people about Europe, as I said at Second Reading but will not repeat now, we have to address the issues of great concern: the environment, what we are doing on world poverty, the role of Europe in the world, and the things which we do together and which have created success, rather than engage them with every bit of trivia that we can imagine. In terms of referenda subjects, that is what Schedule 1 is.

As regards how we are going to behave, we have 56 areas of decision-making where referenda could overturn the wish of what we have always thought of as a sovereign Parliament. What are we really going to be saying to our negotiating partners? Will it be, “We’re really in favour of this measure but we can’t vote for it because we’re not allowed”, or, “If we give you a nod and a wink about being in favour of it, we have to put down a formal disclaimer? We certainly can’t abstain because that will be interpreted as support”. That will really be inspirational and reconnect the British people with decisions on Europe.

What will we in fact find ourselves doing? Rather than abstaining and giving reasoned objections, as regards many of the 56 areas of decision it will be easier and less absurd for a Government to vote against and to deny progress. In consequence, we will be marginalised in Europe, with other countries making each of the decisions that they need to in their national interest. We will be the defenders of their national self-interest by having created conditions that we cannot possibly fulfil.

We should be sensible about the Bill. I am not one who wants to make modest amendments to it; I think that it is a shoddy and shabby Bill that serves no useful purpose to the body politic and has no benefit of engagement, apart from to half a dozen anoraks in the odd referendum that there might be. If we really want to serve the British people, we will get rid of the Bill, and if we cannot do that, we should produce at least half a dozen sensible amendments that take the guts out of it, particularly Clause 6.

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[Lord Stoddart of Swindon]

They are grouped so I am speaking to all of them. I am actually speaking in favour of the Government and I was just coming to that. I was going to say that this issue transcends party politics and that the Government have been forced by public pressure, and indeed party pressure though not only from the Conservative Party, to bring forward this Bill to reassure the people of this country that they will have a voice and that we will no longer hand over powers—great powers at that—to the European Union until Parliament has had a proper say, and indeed the people have had a proper say in matters of great note—not on little matters but matters of great note.

[Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne]

Perhaps the noble Lord will explain, given his right and proper loyalty to the sovereignty of the United Kingdom, why he supports amendments that make the euro, which after all is a financial mechanism, of greater value in sovereignty terms than defence, which was the issue that I raised.

[Lord Stoddart of Swindon]

Every issue that transfers powers from this country to the European Union is very important. The Bill is about ensuring that when great powers are transferred, the people of this country as well as Parliament will have a say.

It is a pity that we have got to this stage. Nevertheless, because there has not been proper parliamentary scrutiny over the 40 years that we have been a member of the European Union, we have now got to a stage where the Government have had to bow to the demand that the people should be consulted and proper parliamentary scrutiny should happen.

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[Lord Triesman]

That may well be one of the substantive issues that people might concede was necessary, but it is also true—and I was grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, when he made the point about the interest that we rightly take in the defence of this country—that we already undertake a great deal of what we do in the defence of this country inside alliances about which the British people are not asked at all other than in general elections. They are certainly asked in the context of whether we are willing to sustain an independent nuclear deterrent—another issue that had ramifications inside the Labour Party, I readily acknowledge—

[Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne]

I—

[Lord Triesman]

Let me try to finish my sentence. Generally speaking, we have undertaken our defence, either in NATO or in NATO plus one or two others, often under the command of Americans or of others, quite frequently these days with people drawn from the Nordic countries in military command. We have developed alliances, I should add, often in circumstances that are stressful and rapidly moving, when UN decisions have required it and when there have been potential massive attacks on civilians. In those sorts of circumstances and against the economic background in which we are all living at the moment, I did not take huge umbrage when the Prime Minister, Mr Cameron, suggested that the United Kingdom and France might co-operate on the use of aircraft carriers. I did not think that that was a terrible threat to the UK’s security.

[Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne]

Does the noble Lord agree, when he makes a comparison between the United Kingdom exercising a great deal of authority inside other alliances, that there is a bit of a difference between, say, NATO or the UN and the European Union? None of the other alliances of which we are an important member has the acquis communautaire, and none therefore binds us so tightly into legal provisions that we accept and implement. It is therefore a different story with the EU, and that is what the Bill addresses.