European Union (Referendum) Bill

Debate between Lord Kerr of Kinlochard and Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton

Friday 24th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard]

My Lords, the amendment would remove the specific 2017 date from the Bill; it would not, of course, remove the insistence in Clause 1(1) that there should be a referendum but would merely leave open the date.

At Second Reading, in my usual low-key, modest, respectable, Cross-Bencher way, I touched on the reasons why I, as a negotiator, thought it unwise to put our negotiators in the forthcoming renegotiation under time pressure by locking them into a 2017 requirement for the successful completion of a renegotiation, which it seems that we will not start until 2015. Reading Hansard and seeing what I said at Second Reading, I am reminded of Warren Hastings in Westminster Hall at his impeachment, standing amazed at his own moderation.

I am struck by the fact that we do not know what it is that we will be renegotiating. We do not know what we want. The noble Lord, Lord Owen, had a point at Second Reading when he suggested that we should start now trying to win friends and influence people on whatever it is we want to achieve. I rather agree, but we do not know what we want to achieve. We have seen three or four hints in recent weeks. We have been told that we may want to scrap free movement of persons, in Article 3 of the treaty, or to have the EU drop its Charter of Fundamental Rights, in Article 6 of the treaty, and resile from the European Convention on Human Rights.

We may want to roll back EU competence in labour and social law and change the single market rules to give Whitehall a veto on EU laws on financial services. Indeed, on that, we have been told that the message for the foreigners is, “Reform or we leave”. All that sounds quite big stuff, involving fairly fundamental issues. Putting it as mildly as I can, I warn the House that all that would take time. Perhaps I should touch very briefly on the timetable for treaty revision.

[Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton]

My Lords, will the noble Lord please explain to me—if he is able to—when he uses the term “we may”, which “we” is he talking about? Is he talking about “we” meaning the country, “we” meaning the Government or “we” meaning part of the Government?

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard]

I am sorry; I spoke loosely. I was talking about the Government of the day in the United Kingdom seeking treaty renegotiation.

There are four stages to treaty amendment, and the Conservative Party has argued that renegotiation will end in treaty amendment. It has defined success as treaty amendment. Stage one is that one has to find 14 other member state Governments who agree that one’s proposals for change make sense, or at least that they are worth considering in a convention. You have to have a simple majority.

The second stage would be a convention in which the national Parliaments, the European Parliament, the Commission—