European Union Referendum (Date of Referendum etc.) Regulations 2016

Lord Hamilton of Epsom Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, like my noble friend Lord Howell of Guildford, I have to make a confession, which is that I quite mistakenly voted to stay in the EU in 1975. At that time we were the fourth-richest country in the EU—Germany, France and Italy had bigger GDPs than we had. It is quite interesting that we are now the second-richest country in the EU. There was a great sense of optimism on my part when we joined. I thought that we were such a poverty-stricken country—we were not going anywhere and we seemed to be riddled with problems—and we were joining this rich man’s club. Now those roles are reversed: we are the rich ones and it is the EU that faces very serious problems. It is rather interesting that there is no optimism in the message from those who say we should remain in the EU. They merely have a Project Fear, saying that it will be the end of the world if we pull out.

I was rather interested, as my noble friend Lord Stevens was, by my right honourable friend Sajid Javid’s remark that if we had been outside the EU today he would not have joined. We have to think about that. Are all these people who express such enthusiasm for the EU really saying that if we were outside the EU today we would join it? If we search our inner selves, many of us who might be in favour of staying in would not be keen to join today. That is certainly a significant factor in this whole debate. Let us face it: the EU is not thriving. My noble friend Lord Hague some time ago described the role of the UK in the EU as like being trapped in a burning house with no exits. Things have moved on since then. The heat of the fire has now gone up considerably and the whole building is at great risk of collapsing, but there is another factor: the possibility of an exit.

I want to address something that has been raised an awful lot this evening: what is the vision of those of us who want to pull out? We must be clear about the significance of staying in. There are certainties, near certainties and unknowns in any path that people might decide to take. The certainties here are that we will go on with much of the same, receiving edicts from the unelected Commission in Brussels and with no right of veto in our own Parliament. We will continue to send net contributions of around £10 billion a year to Brussels. We will be unable to make any free trade treaties of our own with countries around the world because that is an EU competence and we have no right to do so. Of course, we will continue to lose cases at the European Court of Justice. To date, we have lost 101 out of 130 and I am sure that will go on.

However, it is the near certainties about Europe that are much more troubling, and no one has really mentioned them. I am quite interested in this. The immigration crisis is leading now to the destruction of the Schengen area. No one has much doubt that the Schengen area is about to come to a grinding halt. How long can we go on having free movement of labour in Europe if we go on getting these massive immigration flows coming in? I would have thought that threatened it. A growing number of economists say that the eurozone is now completely unsustainable. For some time it has operated on the basis that it is much too cheap for the northern countries such as Germany and Holland and much too expensive for those in southern areas of the eurozone. That means it cannot go on as it is and there must be limited time before it eventually collapses. The problem with all this is that we are somewhat shackled, not to a corpse but certainly to a dying man. One must ask whether that is really the future we want for this country.

The unknown, of course, is that we do not know how long all this will take to map out. I am absolutely sure that the eurozone will eventually break up and then there is the question of whether it will take the rest of the EU with it when that happens.

Let us put the criteria for Brexit. As my noble friend Lord Lawson said, what we absolutely know is that if we vote to come out we will repeal the accession Act 1972, which means we will not be subjected to any more edicts from Brussels. We will also be £350 million a week better off as the result of not sending money to Europe. We will gain the freedom to create our own treaties, which is very important. Let us face it: the future of economics is not in the EU. The future of trade is all over the world and we should establish treaties with countries across the globe. We will regain control of our borders. In light of the immigration flows at the moment, that must be a good idea. Then, of course, under the existing organisation, we will have two years anyway to negotiate a new treaty with the EU. I sincerely hope that that will be a free-trade treaty, which will put us on a par with those countries that are not asked to pay contributions or to obey every edict that comes out of Europe.

The unknowns are that we do not know how long these negotiations might take or what effect this will have on inward investment into the United Kingdom. On the other hand, there might be people who will invest in the United Kingdom because they like us having less legislative pressure on our businesses than in the past. The fact is that the eurozone faces a major crisis and its survival is at stake. If the eurozone collapses—as many people are coming to the conclusion that it must in the fullness of time—it is a question of whether the EU stays together as well. In that case, we should get out before this disaster comes across the whole of the EU.