European Union: United Kingdom Renegotiation

Debate between Baroness Stowell of Beeston and Lord Liddle

Thursday 4th February 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

The noble Lord is right to point out that the next business of your Lordships’ House is on a reasoned opinion, using one of the mechanisms that currently exist for sovereign parliaments to make their views known. The draft text proposes that parliaments have much greater power, with a red card, than they have currently. Clearly, a lot of the detail is still to be sorted out on mechanisms that would be used and how the red card would interplay with the yellow card. I think it is safe to assume that having at parliaments’ disposal a power that they do not currently have to block legislation would be a strong incentive to them to be more active than they might have been when they had at their disposal only a yellow card. My right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary is right to suggest that there might be greater co-ordination between parliaments across Europe to ensure that they get to the minimum level to have real and dramatic effect with the use of this new power.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, does the noble Baroness accept that many of us on this side of the House welcome the progress that the Prime Minister has made towards enabling him to argue the case for remaining in Europe in the coming referendum? However, if he is to win that case, would he take advice from Members of this House that he should not spend his time, as he did yesterday in the other place, trying to rally Eurosceptics against Brexit? Rather, he should make a positive and patriotic case for Britain’s membership of the EU. This should not be a “project fear”, but a “project hope”.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for offering his support to the Prime Minister, although I do not agree with how he described the Prime Minister’s approach to this. The Prime Minister has put forward a series of changes that address real concerns of the British people—British people who see real value in being a member of the European Union, but, quite frankly, are a bit fed up with it and the way it operates. The Prime Minister set out to renegotiate some of the terms that address those matters, whether it is around welfare or powers taken away from us. If he gets an agreement that he is satisfied is a good deal for the British people, then in the course of the next few months he will want to talk to those who are uncertain, a bit unsure and a bit undecided. Being successful in trying to persuade people requires any of us who seek to influence the views of others to be respectful of those who are currently unsure which way they might want to vote. We very much hope, whatever it is that the Prime Minister is battling for, that they vote with him.