EU: Prime Minister’s Speech

Lord Framlingham Excerpts

Thursday 31st January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Framlingham]

My Lords, I warmly welcome the Prime Minister’s speech simply because at long last it has set my party on an unstoppable path to serious treaty changes and a referendum. However, I have two reservations. The first is that I believe that the changes needed are so profound that they are unlikely to be agreed by the other countries, and the second is timing. These things are not going to happen until 2017. Anyone who has run any kind of organisation knows that when it starts to go seriously wrong, as Europe is doing now, its decline has a habit of accelerating. I do not believe that time is on our side and I am anxious that we will be overtaken by events.

A wise man once said, “All great issues are essentially very simple. We make them complicated when we do not want to face them”. I believe that that is true of Europe. The issue of Europe is essentially very simple. It is about who governs this country. That sounds simplistic, but it is true. It was the question in 1975, it is the question in 2013, and it is the question that the British people understand. It will be the question in 2017—and I have no doubt, when it is put to the British people, what their answer will be.