European Union Bill

Lord Howe of Aberavon Excerpts

Wednesday 25th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

I am most grateful for that flattering comment from my noble friend Lord Radice.

That is exactly the burden of my remarks this morning. In adapting, as any institution needs to do, to the challenges of the future, we should not exclude doing so by decisions within the existing structures and rules, or the need, where necessary, to evolve those rules. That is a false and damaging distinction to enshrine in our law.

[Lord Howe of Aberavon]

My Lords, I notice that my name is attached to one of the amendments on the Marshalled List. I rise with rather a heavy heart to say anything at all. The kind of discussion that is now taking place—I rebuke nobody for it—and which has been launched by the Bill and beforehand, casts a shadow over an enterprise which deserves to have been given more wholehearted support from a much earlier stage.

I am on record in my own disreputable memoirs as having written a letter in 1948 commending the prospect of Britain taking part in the original negotiations on the formation of the European Community. I reproached the Attlee Government for not having then undertaken the initiative commended by Winston Churchill. It is sad that we did not join at the beginning. We were proud at the time, and entitled to be, of our survival and success in the war. However, at some points we have allowed that pride to be transformed into conceit and have staggered and stumbled in quite a less attractive way in joining this enterprise.

It was entirely right, when we had considered it carefully, to conclude as we did after the 1972 Act that the British people should be entitled to express their view on the major, fundamental change involved in the transfer and sharing of sovereignty, an enterprise that was already under way and working quite well. In that spirit, we were able in successive Governments to play a reasonable part in carrying forward an important and worthwhile policy. I was content and proud, for example, when, under the leadership of my noble friend Lady Thatcher, we circulated a document around the Community entitled Europe—the Future, which visualised steady progress in enhancing the influence of Britain and Europe on the world stage as it was developing.

I have become less and less happy with the to-ing and fro-ing, which has been illustrated as a reductio ad absurdum in this debate. I find my name attached to a thing called a “sunset clause”, which is also a “sunrise and re-set clause”, and does not do justice to the enterprise on which we were embarked and to which we are still committed. The Bill is a response to anxiety among the British people and a tendency to think that we can resolve that lack of understanding if we have an immense clutch of referenda ad infinitum. It would be far better if we were to recommit ourselves to the original enterprise rather than find ourselves engaged in this kind of discussion on this kind of issue.

There is a great course still to be put under way. I grieve at the fact that the Bill purports to give the British people an opportunity that they ought not really to have because it becomes so complex that it is absurd. They were entitled to have that question put to them, as was done in 1975; it was the major step. It is on that foundation that I would prefer us to be going forward now rather than allowing it to get into this morass of multiple referenda.

I do not support my own amendment. I apologise for the fact that it is there because I have joined the rattling to and fro in a context which does not deserve it. I hope that the amendment is not put and that the Bill does not pass, but I am not going to challenge it single-handed at this stage. However, I think that I am entitled to express my dismay in the light of what could have been achieved and sustained, and what can be achieved and sustained if we commit ourselves more wholeheartedly to the European Union, about which Winston Churchill spoke with favour and where successive Prime Ministers have led us forward—even my noble friend Lady Thatcher. We worked together for 15 years, trying to enhance the power of the United Kingdom in the European Union. Our political marriage, which lasted for 15 years, concluded in a divorce, about which the less said the better. However, I reaffirm the legitimacy of that which we did together in those years, and the legitimacy of the objective to which we should be directing ourselves.

The sooner we allow this Bill to spread itself into the morass of discontinuity and die a death, rather than have a sunset clause fluctuating one way or the other, the better. We should let it die of senility because we have had enough of it. That is what I should like to see happen.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine]

My Lords, it was on this day last year, and with some trepidation, that I stood as the first Liberal on government Benches in 96 years to support the Queen’s Speech. This party knew, as did the Conservatives, that Europe could create a huge rift between us. It is in the true spirit of what a coalition is meant to be, in European terms, that we have managed in this Bill to come together in pursuit of its fundamental objective of rebuilding trust between the British people and those who govern them.

Amendments 61 and 63 aim to do more or less the same thing: to suggest that the Bill is a complete waste of time and should therefore expire as soon as this coalition Government cease to exist. I have enormous respect for the noble Lords whose names are listed as supporting these amendments. They undoubtedly believe that this Bill is unnecessary and will do little to address the disconnect between the EU’s institutions and Britain’s. They are entitled to their view, but I regret that there has been no attempt on their part during the passage of the Bill in Committee to propose an alternative method of restoring trust.

Noble Lords on the opposition Benches have just been the custodians of power for 13 years. During their time in office, there were broken promises in consulting the people and precious little support for engaging the public in the European debate. Now, when confronted with the central aim of the Bill—to promise the British people that they will have a say in some matters to do with giving over more power to the EU, or at least to assure them that Ministers will have to justify their decisions—the response is to suggest that the Bill is an artificial construct intended simply to appease anti-Europeanism; and that it should therefore be dispensed with at the first opportunity, namely the Dissolution of this Parliament. This goes against the spirit of the Bill and we will resist that from these Benches.

I turn now to the principle of sunset clauses, somewhat anticipating what the Minister might say in response to the other two amendments.