European Union: Recent Developments

Lord Dobbs Excerpts

Monday 17th December 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dobbs]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Owen, with many of whose remarks I agreed—which, I suspect, may be more than will be said by the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Stamford, when he follows my remarks.

This is a bit like one of those interminable European summits where everything has been said, but not everybody has said it, so we carry on. So much has happened and yet so little has changed since we last debated these issues. We are still where we are, with the future of Europe nailed firmly to a snowflake. We were warned just last week by Monsieur Hollande that there is no possibility of change—that repatriation of powers simply is not going to happen and commitments are for life. I am not sure what experience he has as a relationship counsellor, but I think that there may be a better way.

I spoke recently to a Foreign Minister of an eastern European country. I was trying to explain to him that many British people feel disaffected because they have never been asked directly if we were willing to give up sovereignty. I must have lost my presence of mind, because I quoted Ted Heath. He said at the time that we joined the Common Market:

“There are some in this country who fear that in going into Europe, we shall in some way sacrifice independence and sovereignty. These fears”,

he added,

“I need hardly say are completely unjustified”.

That is what I tried to explain to my eastern European colleague: that far too many people in Britain feel disengaged from the European Union and misled about it. His response was that we were clearly stupid—yes, stupid. “Of course it involves giving up sovereignty”, he said. “All you had to do was look at what was going on in Europe and you would have known”. I dare say that he was right. I suspect that he found it easier than we British would to belong to a club where all his membership fees were being paid by others. However, he was entirely wrong to say that there was simply no alternative, because to say that is to deny history, democracy and close our eyes to what is happening. The Prime Minister is of course right to seek a new settlement and to search for a new way.

When Brussels came forward with an inflation-busting budget, the Prime Minister had a duty to object. How can we turn to our sick, our disabled, our elderly, our unemployed and say, “We hear your pain, we understand your needs, but it is more important to feed the European system”? It is a system that has two Parliaments, three Presidents and hundreds of officials who earn more than our Prime Minister; whose budget is so inept and corrupt that, for the 18th year, the European Court of Auditors has refused to sanction it. Why cannot the EU clean up its act? Why do fishermen still pour fish back into the sea? Why are farmers paid for not producing food? Why are officials paid more, more and more?

The whole mess is dressed up as nothing more than the growing pains of a great ideal. Brussels is growing fat on a diet of those excuses. There is growing dissatisfaction—long-term dissatisfaction—with that great ideal. There was a time when 62% came out to vote throughout Europe in European elections. On the previous occasion, in 2009, it was down to 43%. Most people simply could not be bothered, no matter how much money Brussels poured into information campaigns about its great ideal.

I do not want to bandy statistics around, because statistics are too often used in these debates as doctors use anaesthetic, but in the past five years, there is an extraordinary fact which I find rather compelling. Almost every elected Government who have come up for re-election in the European Union have been thrown out—in France, Italy, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Ireland and, of course, this country. The people have demanded that Europe’s elected Governments take responsibility. That is entirely right and proper. What about Europe’s unelected Government in Brussels? Perhaps the Minister can tell us whether a single member of that Government has been fired, forced to take a pay cut or to accept any measure of responsibility for what has been going on. They keep promising change. They say, “Yes, it will be different soon”, but their solemn undertakings are a bit like a Picasso; they seem to change every time you look at them.

David Cameron is right, spectacularly right, to say that this must stop. He is right to say that there must be a referendum, that people must be put back in control of this process and that there must be a rebalancing of rights. The possibilities for a different direction brilliantly expounded by my noble friend Lord Howell of Guildford and followed up by the noble Lord, Lord Tugendhat, deserve great consideration.

However, there comes a point when every great ideal has to face the test of reality: not academic records, not aspirations, not truisms but reality. If we may, let us spend a moment reflecting on the reality that is Greece. People seem to be running away from discussing Greece, but that is the reality of part of that great ideal: where sick people need to fill deep pockets with cash to guarantee hospital treatment; where children faint in classrooms because of a lack of nourishment; where elderly women queue for food at soup kitchens in two overcoats to protect them against the cold. There is now no hope. The suicide rate was once the lowest in Europe, but has now doubled, in a country where the Orthodox Church refuses funeral rights to those who take their own lives. We are watching a country die of despair.

Ah, but the Greeks brought it on themselves did they not? Well, no, they did not—not ordinary Greeks. Those who are suffering most are not the powerful, the rich or the elite who made those decisions. You know that they will always find ways to protect themselves. Those who are suffering are the poorest, the powerless, the old, the young and the sick—those who should be given special consideration and care. That is the reality of the European Union today, and unless David Cameron and others can persuade them that there is a better, more flexible and more democratic way, then I fear that the reality could be even worse tomorrow.