European Union Bill

Debate between Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne and Lord Hannay of Chiswick

Monday 13th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne]

My point was purely that from my experience and that of others in Brussels, a number of member states wish to keep protectionism. As the noble Lord has already clearly indicated, it is in Britain’s interests to have an open system, and in the case of the defence of the European Union and beyond it is in all our interests to have an open system. I cannot see how QMV will assist an open system when Britain may need a veto.

Since the noble Lord was involved in the defence industry at an earlier stage in his political career, the European Union has widened immensely. Some of the newest member states have had a significant interest in keeping protectionism moving in the defence industry, with some of them having very large interests in it. The contracts are massive; the potential for dealings that are less than transparent is huge, as some of the biggest contracts on the globe are before individual member states; and one of the great strengths of the potential of the EU common security and defence policy is an open system of military equipment, which would stop the protectionism to which the noble Lord rightly refers. I have failed to be convinced so far by what the noble Lord has said about the loss of the veto and the introduction of QMV.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

I think that the noble Baroness has the wrong end of the stick. I do not see how on earth Britain keeping a veto on a matter where there is no liberalisation will help us to achieve liberalisation. What are we going to veto—protectionist moves by other member states? This is absurd; it is another world. To do what the noble Lord, Lord Davies, suggests does not involve a decision to move to QMV. The noble Baroness implies that if we took the two lines out of the Bill, we would automatically and at that moment accept QMV. We are not doing that; we are simply making it possible, at a putative future moment and if we felt that it was to our advantage, to do so by means of simple legislation in Parliament without a referendum.

European Union Bill

Debate between Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne and Lord Hannay of Chiswick

Wednesday 8th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

It is not the time of night to go into a lengthy disquisition on British constitutional history, but we still live in a representative parliamentary democracy and we still accept that a Government who have a majority in the House of Commons can make laws. However, we are seeking to contradict that with this provision. The amendment that is being moved is a small, modest palliation of that.

[Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne]

This amendment is not in fact about the absolute underpinnings of this Bill, although it is a very tempting set of red herrings that have been laid in front of your Lordships’ House. This set of amendments is about whether or not there should be a 40 per cent threshold and, with your Lordships’ permission, I would like to comment purely on that point.

The 40 per cent threshold seems to me, as a former Member of Parliament and of the European Parliament, to be a rather odd thing for noble Lords to be considering today. We do not have a 40 per cent threshold in the general election or in the European election, for example. We are perfectly comfortable with assuming that 50 per cent of those who come out to vote is the threshold on which the electorate are exercising their wisdom. I find it extremely difficult to see why, just for this Bill, some noble Lords are so adamantine in their perception that a 40 per cent threshold—and no less—is the absolute minimum they will accept if a referendum is to give a valid answer from the British people.

All noble Lords who have commented on the imperative of parliamentary democracy and Parliament’s primacy are, of course, absolutely right. I think that it is Clause 18 of the Bill that, for the first time ever in many generations in Parliament, absolutely clearly defines that it is only through the primacy of Parliament that EU legislation can be accepted at all. It is our responsibility. The noble Lord, Lord Waddington, made the point in his very thoughtful intervention—and I fully support this—that we have been far too fast in ceding power from this Parliament to the European Union. However, I would perhaps remind him that that is our responsibility, certainly in the House of Commons and Government but also, to a much lesser extent, here. The noble Lord, Lord Roper, is in his place, representing the several generations of outstanding work by EU sub-committees in your Lordships’ House. That has not been the case in the House of Commons, which has let slip piece after piece of legislation pouring in from Brussels. Indeed, it is the Ministers of the day, from every single Government—from the previous Government and the ones before that—that have fed the House of Commons so little material that somehow it has unwittingly, or in some other mode, let through all of this legislation and the growing burden of all these regulations which are, I believe, oppressing the peoples of the European Union and particularly the peoples of the United Kingdom.

This modest Bill, although it is relatively lightweight, does contain two or three very important points, the first of which I believe is the primacy of Parliament over EU legislation and therefore surely over the outcome of any referendum. It also gives the wonderful possibility of a downhill-driven knowledge base to the British people and some small modicum of authority over what will happen. I very much support the Bill because of those two points.

Coming back to Burke, to the point that was raised in the context of representative parliament, I cannot help but comment, because the flavour comes through so strongly, that some of the arguments that noble Lords are putting forward tend to resonate with those of us whose female forebears fought for the vote for women. In other words, somehow some elements of the population are not fit to bring their judgment to bear on important matters affecting the United Kingdom. It is difficult. Burke, of course, was wonderful, but before him and at his day women did not have the vote. Academics had more than their current bundle of votes per person, so did the landed gentry, so did the aristocracy; well, wonderful, but today is different.

One of the key differences is that today we have modern technology. Only the day before yesterday I had five e-mails, no less, from the great Steve Jobs himself urging me to discard my newly purchased iPhone and my iPad of the week before last in favour of iCloud, where all my data are going to be parked for ever and a day. Modern people, men, women and children of all backgrounds, all income brackets, all of us—I leave aside prisoners because I do not want to interfere with the debate between two prominent powerful members of the Conservative Party on that one—all those people have knowledge now, absolute knowledge, just as much as we do, and they have time, they have energy, they get involved.

My noble friend Lord Dykes commented that—despite the absence of cricket in his tremendous tour de force of commenting on what the British public are interested in—the British people trust their political representatives to make political judgments on their behalf. Noble Lords know full well that the British public have no trust in any politician at all at the moment, although I believe that they have greater trust in your Lordships’ House than in the other place. What they do have confidence in is the knowledge that they take, albeit false knowledge, from Wikipedia, from iCloud and from other data that are now so readily available 24 hours a day and which people take, commandeer and use. Therefore, they want to be involved; they are able to be involved; they are knowledgeable about being involved and that is why the heart of the Bill is a good idea.

The 40 per cent threshold is a very odd idea, unless we are going to carry it right forward into the European Parliament, into the general election, into local elections, presumably—we can have a dismal turnout, yet we respect the council that is elected none the less and the mayors that are elected, if they are. I expect that there will be a pretty low turnout if we have elected police, for example. So we do accept that low turnout and we take just over a 50 per cent threshold as a majority. That is the way in which our parliamentary system works, that is the way in which our electoral system works. I can see no rationale, no reasonable argument that has been laid in front of your Lordships’ House so far this afternoon, which tells me that I should support this set of amendments. These referenda will be few and far between—probably once every 10 years if the European Union actually proposes a further transfer of sovereign power, which at the moment is highly unlikely. It is busy with the euro, it is busy with the superabundance of enlargement; it is not going to propose anything very important for the moment on these grounds. Maybe once every 10 or 15 years there will be a referendum. Is this of such profound significance that it outweighs the normal way in which we vote in general elections? I think not. The logic is against it because the Bill says that the primacy of the British Parliament overrides everything coming from Brussels in any case. I oppose the amendments.

European Union Bill

Debate between Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne and Lord Hannay of Chiswick

Monday 9th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[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.