Lord Bishop of Oxford
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Europe: Renegotiation
Lord Bishop of Oxford Excerpts(9 years ago)
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The Earl of Courtown
My Lords, the noble Lord, with his great parliamentary skills, asked whether, if my right honourable friend the Prime Minister is successful in all his negotiations, all Ministers will support that. I am sure they will.
Lord Harries of Pentregarth (CB)
I welcome the Statement and particularly the conciliatory tone of the Prime Minister’s letter. I, too, will probe the noble Earl a little about exactly what is meant by “closer union” in the phrase,
“we want to end the United Kingdom’s obligation to work towards an ‘ever closer union’”.
In his letter, the Prime Minister sets out various ways in which closer union is clearly desirable, for example steps towards a single digital market and a capital markets union. Everyone, particularly the Government, agrees that we want much more unity in our policy on immigration and refugees. I hope the Government also agree that we want a much greater coming to one mind on defence and foreign policy. If we want to work closer and closer together on all these aspects of major policy, what exactly is being rejected in this phrase?
The Earl of Courtown
My Lords, the noble and right reverend Lord is quite right. There are many issues that have been an advantage, but we still want to halt the constant flow of powers to Brussels, including by ensuring a stronger role for national Parliaments, dealing with the concept which the noble and right reverend Lord mentioned. It is interesting that, in late October, Frans Timmermans, the First Vice-President of the European Commission, said, on BBC Radio 4:
“If I understand correctly, what the British Government want is to say: ‘We don’t want this, others might want this and it’s up to them, but we don’t want to be forced into an ever-closer union in the sense of more and more integration’. I would say to that: ‘Fair enough, there’s nobody who will tell you that you are forced into integration with other European countries’”.