European Union (Referendum) Bill

Debate between Lord Foulkes of Cumnock and Lord Hannay of Chiswick

Friday 24th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

Following up the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Higgins, I am sure that the noble Lord has taken advice and that what he said is correct. But how many of his fellow citizens are going to understand that? If you read the daily press, you would believe that they think that the Bill is going to provide for a mandatory referendum. They think that the outcome of the Bill will be binding on the Government and on Parliament. If that is not the case, the noble Lord should consider very carefully—in the interests, quite rightly, of this being clear and transparent, and so that people know what they are letting themselves in for beforehand and what they are getting afterwards—whether that needs to be made clear in the Bill in some way or another, whether it is by the tense of the verbs used or something like that. Frankly, I do not believe that we can just sail through this process on the advice that he has been given and that the rest of our countrymen will understand that.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

My Lords, with respect, the noble Lords, Lord Hannay and Lord Dobbs, seem to have overlooked the fact that we are about to move on to Amendment 42A, which deals with precisely this point.

European Union Bill

Debate between Lord Foulkes of Cumnock and Lord Hannay of Chiswick

Tuesday 5th April 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

I support my noble friend's amendment. It is the practice in this House to start a Committee stage with an extremely abstruse point and this is certainly extremely abstruse. However, I argue that it is the tip of a rather large iceberg which is the overload of the list of things that have to be subjected to referenda set out in the rest of the Bill. This is the kind of entrée for that and it is absolutely right that we should have a serious debate about it now and not just treat it as a minor and abstruse matter.

The inclusion of decisions taken under Article 48(6) is a very clear symptom of a disease which seemed to be caught by the Government when they sat down to draft this Bill. Instead of opting for a very simple Bill, which would have subjected actual treaty changes to a referendum requirement—changes either to the Treaty on European Union or the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union—they included a large mass of other material, including Article 48(6). That is likely to multiply by quite a lot the damaging effect that this Bill, if enacted, would have. I hope that the Government will think again about the inclusion of these issues within the scope of the Bill and thus be willing to look kindly on this amendment.

One relevant point is that when this House ratified the Lisbon treaty and conveyed our instrument of ratification, which helped, along with the other 26, to bring it into force, we approved a whole series of ways of implementing Lisbon, of which the Article 48(6) issue is one very small part. We deposited our instrument of ratification and Lisbon came into force and the coalition Government accepted that. However, I think that the Government need to pause for a minute to think about whether we are really acting in good faith when we alter the means by which we will deal with these decisions somewhere along the line and introduce a different method of doing so. Noble Lords will gather that this argument does not apply at all to a decision to have a referendum on a change to the treaty. There would be no question of bad faith about that. I think that we would be quite wrong to do so, but if we wish to subject a future treaty change, a change to the Treaty on European Union or the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, to a referendum requirement, that is absolutely our own business. We can decide that and cannot be accused of bad faith.

However, when we start tinkering with the way in which we shall approve items that are, as it were, subcontracted under Lisbon to the Council acting by unanimity, and impose new requirements which were not there when we deposited the instrument of ratification, we are taking real risks with that intangible concept—but one which is important within the European Union—which is the confidence that every member state has in the good faith of the other member states.

I say that not because I have thought of that problem off the top of my head, but because it was brought to the attention of the committee set up in the other place to scrutinise European legislation, when it held an inquiry into the sovereignty issue, by the now retired director-general of legal services to the Council Secretariat, a man of extraordinary brilliance who gave successive British Governments massively good and helpful advice on many occasions. In his testimony, which is on the record for anyone to read in the proceedings of Mr Cash's committee, he very delicately said that if the British Government systematically involve themselves in subjecting decisions taken under Lisbon to a referendum requirement, at some stage there is a real risk that the issue of good faith will be raised.

I hope that the Government will look very carefully at this matter and see that we need to cut away a good deal of the areas listed for requirement—among them, most particularly, the one we are discussing now.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

My Lords, I support the amendment moved with such charming and disarming modesty by the noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard. Only someone with a highland title could be so disarming and modest as well as eloquent in moving such an amendment.

I speak with reluctance because I was waiting to see who was going to spring up to defend the Bill and speak against the amendment. As my noble friend Lord Kinnock says from a sedentary position, “There won't be many of them”. I have been trying to find out over the past few days and weeks who is behind the Bill, who is the architect of it, who is the genesis of it, who is pushing it, who is keen to see it go through. I even had a conversation with the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, and he certainly did not claim any responsibility for the Bill. At Second Reading, we had a number of contributions, almost none of them in favour of the Bill. Even those who were in favour were somewhat embarrassed and reluctant.

I wonder why we are taking up so much time in this House and in Parliament when there are so many other things that should be occupying our attention. The noble Lord, Lord Kerr, made a very eloquent Shakespearian beginning to his speech. If I can get a little bit of Shakespeare right, it made me think:

“Why should we, in the compass of a pale,

Keep law and form and due proportion …

When our sea-walled garden, the whole land,

Is full of weeds, her fairest flowers choked up,

Her fruit-trees all unpruned”.

A lot of things are happening outside in our land, this sea-walled garden, that need our attention, but we are being asked to spend so much time on this, it is really quite unbelievable.

I did not speak on Second Reading because I was at my first meeting of the European Union Select Committee. Excellent work is being done there scrutinising legislation that comes from the European Union. It is generally acknowledged that this House, in this Parliament, in this country scrutinises European legislation better than any other house of any other parliament in the European Union, something of which we should be proud. That makes it even more ridiculous that we are being asked to consider this Bill.