European Union Bill

Lord Flight Excerpts

Wednesday 25th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard]

I stand corrected and congratulate the noble Lord on his close reading of the Daily Mail. As you go down the Champs-Élysées, people are not saying to each other, “Do you know that the British are trying to block action under Articles 333.1 and 333.2, whereby one could have a qualified majority on the implementation of enhanced co-operation?”. No one knows what we are up to in this Parliament. No one in this country knows what we are up to. We are remote—we are in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. This is not the city of Athens; it is somewhere in the thickets of a forest outside.

Therefore, I feel that the Government’s principal argument—the noble Lord, Lord Taverne, spoke elegantly to it a moment ago—about the purpose of the Bill being to deal with mistrust and distrust is a little absurd. When these provisions are on the statute book, they will generate as little interest in the country as their passage, despite all our eloquence in this Chamber. There is no knowledge of these provisions outside and therefore no knowledge of the argument about distrust. It is possible that over time Jean-Claude Piris, counsel to the Council of the European Union, will prove to be more right in his prediction than even the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford. It is possible, and it seems to me plausible, that there will be a chilling effect on UK negotiators in Brussels as a result of these provisions. We know that there are going to be no referenda in this Parliament. We know that because, as the noble Lord, Lord Taverne, reminded us, the Government have said that they are not going to agree to any of these things being covered in the Bill anyway. I do not think that that is a big deal in Brussels and I do not want to exaggerate but, over time, it could become quite a big deal.

We have created an extraordinarily rigid structure with this Bill. Flexibility will be necessary—or most people will think that. The UK negotiator will be unable to agree to propositions which are in the UK interest because they would require a referendum in this country, and the Prime Minister will say to him, “We don’t want a referendum, so you have to block it. You can’t agree. Sorry, go away”. That is likely to happen over time and the result of that might be, as predicted by Jean-Claude Piris, that the others will say, “We’re stuck. The British won’t agree so we’ll go off and do it amongst ourselves”. Some, possibly the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, would consider that that was a very good thing, and in some cases it is conceivable that it would be a good thing. Others might want to do things in which we might not want to take part. However, there may be a measure in which we wanted to take part but the others felt that they could not include us because we had our referendum requirement. I speak as a rude mechanical who has spent a lot of time building things in Brussels.

I add a small very rude mechanical’s point. When the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, elegantly argued that we had not said anything in this debate about the euro, he was not strictly accurate. I hope that there is an outstanding point in the Minister’s mind, which is the reference in Clause 6(5)(e) to the euro. That, read with Clause 5(1), seems to me to mean that we would be submitting the wrong question to an Act of Parliament and referendum. The issue would be the rate at which the UK joined the euro, not whether the UK should join the euro. It seems to me that there is a little bit of overspecification in the drafting. The noble Lord, Lord Hannay, made the big point—nobody in this Chamber, so far as I know, and no amendment on the Marshalled List argues that there should not be an Act of Parliament and a referendum on joining the euro. Mine is a rude mechanical’s point—we have overspecified the decision which would be put to our Parliament and to a referendum.

We will move into a different kind of Shakespearean play on Report. I hope that the Government will reflect on some of the points which have been registered—some of them were very mechanical points, for which I apologise, but some of them were very big political points and were eloquently put from all sides of the House. I hope that we will see some changes proposed by the Government before we come back to this. We have spent far too long in the enchanted forest of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I wish that I were able to make the last speech in Committee, having made the first. Unfortunately, I think that I will have to cede that role to the noble Lord, Lord Liddle. I draw his attention to how Puck ends A Midsummer Night’s Dream. He states:

“If we shadows have offended,

Think but this, and all is mended,

That you have but slumber'd here …

And this weak and idle theme,

No more yielding but a dream”.

I wish that it were.

[Lord Flight]

My Lords, I apologise for not being present at the start of the debate as I had problems parking my bicycle on arriving at the House.

It seems to me that there is a perfectly fair debate to be had on what items should or should not be covered by referenda, but that there is no real case for treating this Bill as though it were in the same category as the counterterrorism legislation, and for arguing that it is suitable for a sunset clause. Once it becomes an Act—assuming it becomes an Act—it will not essentially be any different from other legislation in this country. It is, of course, perfectly straightforward for a Government to get elected on a manifesto that they will revoke this legislation, and so to do, but I do not believe that those supporting these amendments have made a proper case as to why the Bill should be treated any differently from other legislation. We have a perfectly established democratic process for removing legislation when a new Government are elected, if that is the will of the people. But the requirement would be for an incoming Government to have the will of the people to revoke this legislation. Secondly, if there were some automatic process of cancellation, a great legal hole would be left, unless the automatic sunset clause revoking the legislation were accompanied by fresh legislation at the same time to plug the many holes that need to be plugged that the Bill addresses.

The amendments are little more than an excuse to put the pro-EU cause and the anti-argument for this Government, who are quite rightly addressing the concerns of UK citizens. I sit down by making the comment that I feel uncomfortable that those who are opposed to the Bill seem to have the view that those British citizens—potentially the majority—who have become increasingly critical of the EU should be silenced in the interests of advocating the great EU cause. That is profoundly undemocratic in principle. Certainly, on this issue, a sunset clause would be wholly unsuitable.