European Union Referendum Bill

Lord Cavendish of Furness Excerpts

Tuesday 13th October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cavendish of Furness (Con)]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Dubs. I always enjoy his breadth of interest, although I would probably hesitate to cite the European arrest warrant as the EU’s high-water mark.

I rise to support the measure before us and do so with enthusiasm. I congratulate the Government on its introduction; the time has surely come for this hugely important issue to be resolved. I have read most of the debates in another place. There were impressive interventions and the outcome was unambiguous. Since there is nothing obvious that I want to change about the Bill, my few remarks will be devoted to the nature of the debate that follows the Bill becoming law.

I have never made a secret of my Euroscepticism. However, I still believe that it is just conceivable that enough in the way of reform could be achieved to persuade me to vote in favour of remaining in the EU. To that extent, my mind is not closed. In fact, many of us have more open minds than has been acknowledged in the debate today.

One possible avenue for such reform might originate with our EU partners rather than with ourselves. Might it not be the case that a combination of factors could conspire to persuade our partners that Britain’s aspirations are not, after all, so very far removed from their own? Might it not also be the case that consensus develops among those partners that our leaving might be the last straw for such a troubled and dysfunctional enterprise, whose competence, economic performance and direction of travel have in reality ceased to inspire confidence?

Those of us who lean towards the Brexit outcome need of course to understand the downsides and costs, and not to underestimate them. By that I do not mean absurd and dishonest statements, such as the one that claims that 3 million jobs are dependent on our staying in the EU. That claim rests on the ridiculous assumption that this country, outside the EU, would cease to trade with its former partners. Anyone who persists with such an argument, as I think the noble Lord, Lord Davies, was, must surely need also to concede that, by the same measurement, 4.5 million EU jobs are dependent on trade with the UK.

I am after serious and detailed analysis of the implications of staying as well as leaving, as other noble Lords are. When my noble friend the Minister comes to wind up, could she try to tell us a little more about how people will be able to access authoritative and independent research on these issues? Whitehall analysis and comment on its own will not command public trust without what one might term some kind of independent review. I thought that my noble friend Lord Inglewood, who is not in his place, put this in context very well. I hope that the Minister will read his remarks with some care.

The debate, I believe—and this has not been touched on—should take account of a problem of the modern age, which is the increasingly corporatist nature of all activity throughout the western world and the resulting political fall-out. The state, perhaps inevitably a little bit corporatist, feels more comfortable dealing with large corporations than with small ones. The corporatist world—industry and commerce—meanwhile has to a great extent ushered in what I might call extreme politics, mentioned here by the noble Lord, Lord Liddle. The anger we see on the streets here and elsewhere is less directed at free-market capitalism, which in my lifetime has lifted literally billions of people out of poverty, and more towards corporatism, which has in the last few years cheated and disenfranchised many of the most vulnerable people in the world.

I am not arguing that the leaders of big business are all venal and bad; of course they are not. There are many admirable business leaders, and they are very well represented in your Lordships’ House. However, huge corporate size, wealth and power are almost inevitably corrupting, and in the end self-defeating, because they undermine competition, and those that they are meant to serve become lost to view. As it currently functions, the EU is the personification of corporatism and a denier of freedom and democracy. The link between the rulers and the ruled has faded almost to the point of invisibility,

I have always held that a much neglected problem with Britain’s relationship with the EU stems from the simple incompatibility of our legal systems. I am convinced, for example, that it accounts for much of Whitehall’s infamous gold-plating, which is so dementing for those of us who try to run a small or medium-sized business.

I remind your Lordships that such businesses generate 95% of the British economy and more attention needs to be addressed to their concerns. We have had many lectures today, led by the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, about trade. I make the point that many of those lectures come from people who have never traded. I have spent my entire adult life trading with the rest of the world, and I can assure your Lordships, in spite of what the CBI says, that neither I, nor any of my colleagues or people whom I know, have any fear of our future outside the European Union.

Crucially, the debate should—and I fervently hope will, following the passing of this Bill—concern itself with how we are governed and how our people want to be governed. Our system of government can be traced back 2,000 years, when the inhabitants of these damp islands decided to put an end to unaccountable power. The ensuing constitutional journey, which included such milestones as Magna Carta, celebrated this year, has not always been smooth, but the version ultimately bequeathed to us gave us the rule of law, an independent judiciary and democracy. It was exported to the whole of the English-speaking world and seems to me to have stood the test of time quite as well as other systems adopted by countries that, in the main, are very much younger than our own. Europe is a young concept, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London reminded us.

I would not think of offering advice to other countries as to how they should govern themselves; nor, out of good manners, would I claim that our system of government is better than theirs. However, there needs to be a very compelling case indeed to give up our tried and tested form of government in favour of another. But with some 60% of our laws already being decided outside of this Palace of Westminster, and with the persistence of the mantra of “ever closer union”, that is precisely what is being asked of us if we are to remain members. As was eloquently pointed out in another place, “ever closer union” leads to only one destination and that is Union.

As my right honourable friend the Prime Minister pointed out in his Bloomberg speech:

“It is national parliaments which are, and will remain, the true source of real democratic legitimacy and accountability in the EU”.

For me, the preservation of our ancient freedoms and our democracy will ultimately be the test that trumps all others.