European Union Bill

Lord Flight Excerpts

Monday 13th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goodhart]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Waddington said early in his speech that some Members of your Lordships’ House are opponents of this Bill, and no doubt he includes me among the opponents. I am not an opponent of the Bill and nor are others of any significance in the House. What we want to do is make sure that matters which until now have not had to be decided by Parliament will be decided by Act of Parliament, and we are entirely in favour of giving the right to a referendum in matters of importance, which the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, has already described. We are looking for a different Bill, but we have no wish to destroy this one.

Referendums to be voted on by an entire country involve a lot of work on the part of those arranging them and cost a great deal of money. I understand that the referendum voted on a couple of months ago cost something in the order of £120 million. That is why referendums should be used only for matters of real national importance. Another reason, which is perhaps even more important, is that we must recognise that people will vote in a referendum only on issues of real interest to them. So far, the principle of the way referendums should be used has been recognised and observed. Only one referendum, of course, has been voted on across the whole of the United Kingdom; the 1975 referendum on our continued membership of the European Union. Since then, there have been referendums in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland on the important subject of devolution.

Those of us who support Amendments 14 to 21 accept that three of those issues, as the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, has said, are now covered by Clause 6. In all probability, they would justify a referendum. They are the creation of a single integrated military force in Amendment 15, making the euro the currency of the United Kingdom in Amendment 18, and bringing the United Kingdom into the Schengen protocol in Amendment 19. But extending referendums to other matters now covered by Clause 6 and its subsidiary, Schedule 1, wastes time and money and is completely unjustified.

In Committee, I spent some time demonstrating this, particularly in relation to matters affecting the legal system. I take, for example, the possibility that the United Kingdom Government might wish to participate in the European public prosecutor’s office. This is an organisation that does not now and may well never exist, and it is perhaps unlikely that the United Kingdom would participate in it if it did, although it is a possibility. But the point about this is that the EPPO, to shorten the name, is far from being a potentially serious change to the United Kingdom legal system. If your Lordships look at the terms of the TEU or the TFEU that deal with this issue, it becomes obvious that the EPPO would apply only to offences against the EU’s financial interests or to serious crime that has a cross-border dimension. Those would represent a tiny proportion of prosecutions in the United Kingdom and would affect hardly any of the ordinary citizens of this country. So if an EPPO is created and the British Government want to join it, what will happen? Most citizens will surely say, “This does not affect me so I am not going to waste my time by going out to vote on it”. Of course, the dinosaurs of UKIP will thunder down to the polling station to cast their votes. No doubt they would win in those circumstances, but that does not represent the real view of the people of this country.

There are also several cases in the Bill where the existing provisions of treaties require unanimity, but there is a possibility that member states might get together in the future to agree to QMV. Since the United Kingdom Parliament would have to give its consent to that change, it is likely that it would occur only if moving to QMV was of benefit to the United Kingdom, which it often is. It is more often than not to our benefit because it avoids the blocking of QMV, and therefore of legislation, by small member states that have a limited interest.

Matters made subject to QMV may be important or relatively trivial. It is totally inappropriate to insist on the referendum when we do not know how important or controversial the issue for that referendum will be. It is unlikely that ordinary citizens would take an interest unless it was clear to them that the referendum was a matter of importance, and one that would affect them personally.

We have never seen anything like this piece of draft legislation before. In cases where legislation has called for a referendum, that referendum comes first. It comes before any talk of an Act of Parliament. If the result is negative, there is no Act of Parliament to give effect to it. What we have here is an Act of Parliament first, followed by a referendum that might overrule it. If Parliament makes a decision, surely that decision should be binding. If Parliament wants to leave it to a referendum, so be it. What we have here is a ridiculous system that is contrary to the constitutional practice of this country.

[Lord Flight]

My Lords, the noble Lords proposing these amendments seem not to understand yet, notwithstanding the amount of time we spent in Committee, the whole point of the Bill. Put very simply, the point is that, whether by intent or by being beguiled, over the past 20 years British Governments have continued to give away sovereignty to the EU, notwithstanding that they have frequently pledged not to do so. Agreeing to the Lisbon treaty, clearly in opposition to the majority view of this country, was a huge example of just that.

This rather strange Bill and the arrangements for referenda are, I concede, a constitutional novelty. How it will work, assuming it becomes law, we shall have to see. However, it is clear that the referendum locks are there as a deterrent to prevent Governments repeating the behaviour of the past. It is fine to talk about letting the decision be made by Parliament, but we all know perfectly well that if one party has a substantial majority, Parliament is, alas, in practice an elected tyranny. There is absolutely no guarantee that even the wisest heads of this noble House will vote against the Government of the day if that Government have a substantial majority of Members in both Houses.

The issues that these amendments cover are among those that have been red line issues for Governments of both sides for some time. They are not issues that have been plucked out of the air. As was apparent from debates in Committee, there are several other issues that could have been picked up in both Schedule 1 and Clause 6, where there are clearly some aspects of transferring of power but where, for better or worse, the Government have decided not to make them subject to a referendum. It is not a case of issues being protected by the referendum lock—this is not something new that has been pulled out of the air—but about issues which have been seen as important red lines that should not be crossed by, I repeat, Governments of both persuasions.

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[Lord Davies of Stamford]

My Lords, I rise to do two things. One is to address the contention made by the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, that I have heard before from him and other noble Lords during our debates on the Bill. His contention is wrong—that the British people have been systematically deceived about the nature or purposes of the European Union, or the European Community as it previously was, and that therefore they were unable to take informed decisions at election time or, indeed, at the time of the 1975 referendum.

It was always clear from the beginning that the European Union, or the European Community, was not a dead institution that was fixed once and for all. It was a dynamic institution, even a teleological institution which had a final purpose or end; all that was stated in the preamble of the treaty of Rome. The phrase about the ever closer union of peoples was always there. Right at the beginning, even when Macmillan first suggested that we might join the Common Market, or the European Community, I remember that speeches were made by members of my own party. I was a schoolboy at the time but I was already taking an interest in these matters. I remember Hugh Gaitskell’s famous speech. My noble friend Lord Radice, who has written books on this subject, will correct me if I have the date wrong. I think that it was in 1962 that Hugh Gaitskell made a famous speech saying that the effect of our joining the European Community ,or the Common Market, would be that we would become like Texas in the United States. If I am right and that speech was made in 1962, that means that literally for the past half century this discussion about the constitutional significance, and the significance for national sovereignty, of our being members of this institution have been clearly, expressly, openly, overtly and thoroughly transparently discussed in public.

[Lord Flight]

I thank the noble Lord for giving way. It may be that he was more involved at the time than I was, although we are roughly the same age. However, I remember being organised by the Conservative Party at the time to go out and preach on voting in the referendum for the Common Market—indeed, I voted for it—specifically on the grounds that it would be a good economic prospect for this country. We had lost an empire and we needed to belong to something where we could trade. I was not even aware of the idea that I was trying to market something about political unification—fool though I may have been at the time.

[Lord Lea of Crondall]

I am sorry—I do not know who is speaking and who is intervening here.

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[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard]

I could repeat my Burke quotation with which I thought I had skewered the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, in an earlier debate but I will not. It is of the essence of Burke’s theory of parliamentary democracy, in which the Conservative Party used to believe strongly, that the people were consulted about who should sit in Parliament. The decisions of Parliament reflected the judgment of the people whom they had chosen. That seems to me to be quite a good rule and the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, is a strong one. I support these amendments with the exception of the wording of the amendment on the euro, on which I have a separate amendment to which we will come later.

[Lord Flight]

I thank the noble Lord for giving way. I spent eight or nine years as a Member of the House of Commons when one particular side had a large majority. I felt that I was simply going through the motions and that there was no prospect of the Opposition members being able to stop that which the Government of the day wished to do. It was an elected tyranny by a large majority.

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard]

I look forward to hearing the noble Lord express that view in the debate on the reform of the House of Lords.

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[Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, has gone to the heart of the issue in many ways and I applaud him for what he has said. I do not agree with a lot of what he said, but at least he was dealing with the issues and not with the bland assertion that has come from some on the Benches opposite that this side, or those who are putting forward this amendment, the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, and his supporters, have somehow not got the point of the Bill, either out of deliberate perversity or just plain ignorance. The fact is that we simply disagree. We have to argue through that disagreement and Parliament is the right place to have the argument. In so far as that was the point that the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, was making, I agree with him wholeheartedly.

I say to the noble Lord, Lord Flight, that putting forward amendments in this way is not a tactic. It is part of a reasoned argument. Much of it has come not from the political side of these Benches, but from noble Lords on the Cross Benches, who have put forward well-reasoned amendments, although, of course, he may disagree with them. The noble Lord, Lord Flight, says that he sat through what he called “an elected tyranny” in the other House. Well, that “tyranny” was elected in 1997 and the British people, in whom he places so much faith over referendums, re-elected that “tyranny” in 2001 and again in 2005, so perhaps not so jolly tyrannical after all.

[Lord Flight]

Does the noble Baroness agree that there is a difference between how people vote at elections and what happens in the House of Commons? I was simply making the point that when any party has a large majority in the House of Commons, under the British system since it was changed by Walpole from the originally intended system in the Act of Rights, I am afraid that when there is a large majority it does function as an elected tyranny on either side.

[Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean]

The fact that there is a difference in Parliament from what happens at elections is precisely what we are discussing. The fact is that after the passing of the Amsterdam treaty the British people re-elected a Labour Government and after the passing of the Nice treaty the British people re-elected a Labour Government. They had the opportunity to get rid of the Government on those occasions and they chose not to do so.

The noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, made a very interesting argument. He said, with passionate conviction, that the British people know best. Do we therefore extend that argument to a referendum on the current health proposals that are dominating our headlines and are probably far closer to the hearts of the British people than a lot of what we are discussing here? Did it occur to the Benches opposite to have a referendum on the increases in university fees?