European Union Bill

Baroness Williams of Crosby Excerpts

Wednesday 25th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

The noble Lord may find my remarks inconvenient, perhaps because they are entirely on target. I am explaining why the British people do not want these amendments and a large part of that is because of the damage that the euro has done, and which they can see it is doing. Could I also ask the noble Lord, Lord Howell, to respond to the delicate little point that the big idea behind the whole project of European integration is also proving to be misguided? I asked him that earlier.

This is essential to the amendment, as I hope even the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, will agree. That big idea, as I never tire of reminding your Lordships, was that the nation states—the democracies of Europe—were responsible for two world wars and the long history of bloodshed. They therefore had to be emasculated and diluted into a new form of supranational government run by bureaucrats. The whole project of European integration, with its attendant euro, has at its heart the destruction of national democracy and its replacement with the anti-democratic structure that is the EU. That is why the unelected Commission still has the monopoly of proposing all EU legislation in secret, which is now the majority of our national law. That law is then negotiated by bureaucrats from the nation states in COREPER and then passed, still largely in secret in the Council of Ministers from the nation states, with your Lordships’ House and the House of Commons having virtually no influence—in fact, no influence.

When you tell them this in Washington, they simply cannot believe it. I wonder how many of the good people travelling here today with President Obama are aware of it. I imagine that he may pay some tribute today to the European Union, and I wonder whether he will know what he is talking about if he does.

[Baroness Williams of Crosby]

Would the noble Lord acknowledge that American Presidents repeatedly, from President Eisenhower on, have urged the United Kingdom to work more intensively with the European Union, or the European Community before it, to offer it leadership and to play a major positive part in its development?

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

My Lords, of course I am aware of that. I also remember Henry Kissinger saying that he rather liked one telephone number to ring in Europe. I have to tell the noble Baroness that Mr Kissinger changed his mind when he read Mr Christopher Booker’s book, The Great Deception, after which he said, “Oh, at last I understand the thing”. We can come and go on that one, but time is pressing.

The British people are waking up to the truth of all this, and they do not like it. Eighty per cent want a referendum on EU membership. They want their democracy back and they will want any chance to be heard in any referendum, which touches on the huge deception that has been practised on them by their political class, which is their entrapment in the European Union. These amendments would deny them that opportunity, so I trust that the Government will not accept them.