European Union (Referendum) Bill

Lord Bowness Excerpts

Friday 24th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bowness (Con)]

My Lords, I have put my name to Amendments 10, 23 and 24 in this group. Sitting on the Conservative Benches in your Lordships’ House, I should perhaps explain why I have done so. I did so because I believe that it is in the interests of not only the United Kingdom and the European Union but also of the Conservative Party to ensure that my right honourable friend the Prime Minister, if he is the Prime Minister after the next election—on these Benches we hope that he is—is not placed in a straitjacket into which we are in danger of tying him if the provision in this Bill is not amended as suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard.

Can I just take a moment to remind the House of the history of this matter? We as a party have moved from a position of total rejection of a referendum to the promise of one in the next Parliament to the acceptance of a Bill in this Parliament and, sadly, to the inadequate Bill that now is before us.

The noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, has gone through in considerable detail the necessary steps which have to be taken to achieve an amendment of the treaties. I will not weary your Lordships by reading out or referring to Article 48 of the Treaty on European Union. Suffice it to say that it encapsulates all those steps. Suffice it to say also that this is not the first time that I have asked in your Lordships’ House this question of my noble friends on the Front Bench: how is it envisaged that you can negotiate meaningful, serious and significant changes within the period 2015 to 2017, given the provisions of the treaty by which we are bound? The answer cannot be that there is a fast-track procedure, because that is for small matters. If we are talking about only small matters, why are we going through this agony here today?

I suggest that the date is not practical. It is possible to envisage a situation where negotiations are not completed before the deadline is reached. What happens then? Do we have a referendum on incomplete negotiation? What will be the position of the hoped-for Conservative Government and the hoped-for Conservative Prime Minister then? What recommendation will he or she make to the country? The Prime Minister has said that he wants to campaign enthusiastically, post negotiations, for the United Kingdom’s continued membership of the European Union. I therefore address my remarks particularly to my noble friends on this side of the Committee. If we support him in that statement of policy, let us ensure that he has the space to do the job he has told us he wants to do, and if we do, that we will support the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Bowness, has made a brave speech and, dare I say, a consistent speech because the position he has outlined is that which was taken by the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary in 2011. He is therefore being consistent, and one could well ask why there has been a change to what he referred to as the downward slope. Historically I could make the same point over a rather longer period.

When as a young man I joined the Foreign Office in 1960 and was doing some work for Mr Edward Heath, at that time the Conservative Party was enthusiastically in favour of Europe. I concede that in 1983 there was an appalling manifesto from my party—the death warrant. Then there was a reversal of the parties. Mr Major had a torrid time with people whose paternity he doubted, but the problem is that the people whose paternity he doubted are now in the driving seat of the Conservative Party. Mr Major has made very clear his own position: he does not support Mr Wharton’s Bill, which is masquerading as a Private Member’s Bill.

It is clear that the date is crucial, so why was it chosen? I picture a little conference in the darkness of the night in Downing Street, with a large bran tub with a series of dates in it. Someone pulls a date out of the tub and says, “Why not 2017?”. It appears to be as arbitrary as that. We have been given no serious explanation of why it should be the date, but we have been given a very good explanation by the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, as to why it should not be used. We have the good fortune to have in this House the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, who has immense experience of negotiating with our European partners. We also have the benefit of the noble Lord, Lord Hannay. Having been our ambassador in UKRep in Brussels, he knows where the bodies are buried, how negotiations are carried out, and about the need to build up a team in support of the position one wishes to favour. That is the real battle.