European Union: Recent Developments

Lord Lea of Crondall Excerpts

Monday 17th December 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lea of Crondall]

My Lords, we read that the Prime Minister is thinking about making a speech about Europe but cannot decide what to say, so I have written him a draft and I can give the House advance hearing of it today. It is as follows.

“I was eight years old when Harold Wilson called the referendum in 1975 and advocated a yes vote. I was able to knock on doors to urge a yes vote on the basis of the 1971 White Paper visualising ever closer union. That, of course, was under Ted Heath’s Government. In doing this in 1975, I gave my support to our recently elected and most distinguished leader, Margaret Thatcher, following in the trailblazing footsteps of Ted Heath.

“Friends, we are often accused of being dishonest about the European project, so let me be brutally frank or else we will all have a nervous breakdown”—I think that the absence of Members on the Conservative Benches this evening probably suggests that most of them have had a nervous breakdown already. “The noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, never claimed that the British people were misled in 1975”. Well, she could not, having been leader of the yes campaign for the Conservative Party in 1975 on the basis of that White Paper and the Act of 1973.

“I say all that because nothing is gained”—and this is David Cameron speaking, just to remind people who have just walked in—“by playing around with the word ‘sovereignty’. It is bandied around as if it has a unique and unambiguous meaning. We are members of NATO, are we not?” Can I ask UKIP Members whether they are happy that we are members of NATO?

[Lord Willoughby de Broke]

Yes, I can answer that—

[Lord Lea of Crondall]

“Yes” is a sufficient answer.

[Lord Willoughby de Broke]

Because NATO does not make our laws.

[Lord Lea of Crondall]

NATO has majority voting in its own way. What about the UN? Is there any comment from UKIP about that?

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

My Lords—

[Lord Lea of Crondall]

No, obviously not.

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

Yes, my Lords.

[Lord Lea of Crondall]

They have no comment because their case is demolished.

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

I am doing my best.

[Lord Lea of Crondall]

It is healthy to—

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

Would the noble Lord please not go on asking questions to which he does not want answers because they are too uncomfortable for him? We are happy to be in the United Nations because we could withdraw—

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

This is a Second Reading debate. Given the lateness of the hour, we should really have one speech after the other rather than general exchanges. Perhaps the noble Lord who is speaking could bear that in mind.

[Lord Lea of Crondall]

Am I going to get extra time for this?

[Lord Stoddart of Swindon]

I merely wish to correct the noble Lord. He pointed to me when he referred to UKIP. I am not a member of UKIP; I am Independent Labour.

[Lord Lea of Crondall]

I do not know what the disagreement is between UKIP and the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart. Perhaps it is simply that the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, having been a member of the Labour Party, has misgivings about joining people of that ilk. However, I am talking about policy, and perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, could answer separately. I forgive him if he thinks—

[A noble Lord]

Get on with it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lea of Crondall]

I am getting on with it. My question stands. I remind noble Lords that I am David Cameron at the moment and I shall continue with my speech.

“It is healthy to ask why we are in the EU. To be geographically precise, are we in Europe as seen from Peking? Of course we are. Are we in Europe as seen from Washington? Of course we are. If we were not, would Washington still look at a place called Europe as a great power in the world? Of course it would. The only thing is that we would not be there and we would be diminished. Therefore, this is the right place to be, but we have not been doing a very good job in answering that question recently, with the honourable exception of the speech given a month ago by Ed Miliband.

“People have suggested recently that Europe was somehow part of the cause of the financial crisis in 2008. That crisis has certainly spread around the world, including throughout Europe. It started off with Lehman Brothers in New York and London, but it is not the reason for the current crisis. We want the eurozone to succeed. If it does not, the penalties for Britain will be very heavy. We want to ensure that there is greater accountability in relation to EU spending, although I have to point out that the UK economy as a whole is a net beneficiary.

“I take this opportunity to remind some of my young Turks in smart City suits who have rural seats that I do not hear much talk of repatriating the common agricultural policy; nor do I hear much talk about which of the 10 measures under the Social Chapter are going to be candidates for repeal, because I now realise that they are there to stay. One of the central reasons for this and other questions is based on the proposition that we cannot cherry-pick the acquis. This is the fallacy of many of the speeches that people have attempted to put into the Conservative newspapers to keep some sort of coherence in Conservative policy when coherence there is none.

“Why has Angela Merkel put so much political capital into the euro? She has done so because it is in Germany’s national interest but it is also in Europe’s interest. None of the existential doubt in Britain”—and I take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, about the two overlapping existential doubts—“is based on anything other than two different types of mirage. If we are not careful, we will be back to the economic nationalism of the 1930s. We have, today, a worse recession than we had in the 1930s if one looks at the statistics”—my noble friend Lord Eatwell pointed this out in this House only a few days ago. “Speaking of the 1930s, I ask where exactly we want to see German military strength fitting into the European picture over the next 30 to 50 years. The answer is, surely, what one might call Foreign Office rule number 1 as applies to the EU: ‘If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em’; or, to use the vernacular, ‘It’s better to be inside the tent looking out than outside the tent looking in’.

“Nevertheless, to read the Telegraph, the Express, the Daily Mail and the Murdoch press, anyone would think that we had more influence in the world and played a more leading economic role outside than we do. However, these are simply the dying flailings of the dinosaur’s tail of the insular world of the British press, which simply thinks that those beyond Calais cannot speak English and are therefore not for consideration.

“This leads to my final point about the problem of public opinion. Public opinion must be reached by intermediation—the media is short for intermediation. The media are 100% Anglo-American, English-speaking-only publishers. They do not have commercial interest in the success of the continent, and they do not want Europe to succeed. They are vitriolic towards Europe and want to keep the special relationship with the United States. However, if they think that, in the case of a Europe of a successful 28 without Britain in it, the United States would have a special relationship with Britain, all I can say is, ‘Your name must be Rip Van Winkle’. That, I say to my fellow friends in the Conservative Party, is the truth, and I ask you to reflect upon it.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Stoddart of Swindon]

The noble Lord shakes his head, but the former President of France specifically said that he would like to see north African countries in the European Union. France, therefore, would like these countries to join the European Union.

If you have all these countries in the Union, what does it mean? If you take Turkey and Ukraine together, by the time they come in, that is about 140 million extra people. By the time we have finished with all of them there will be 700 million people. If experience is anything to go by, the larger the EU becomes, the more centralised and authoritarian it becomes. For those reasons, I am opposed to any further expansion.

Every entrant into the EU reduces the existing countries’ influence, including of course our own. We must also remember that the rules of the European Union mean that sometime or other after these countries join the European Union they have the right of entry into this country to work and settle. So there are difficult problems about building ever more countries into the European Union. I used to talk about a country called Europe. Now we seem to be talking about an empire called Europe. In the end, it will not do Europe any good.

The second point is about the Commission membership. I can hardly oppose what is proposed. When we were debating the Lisbon treaty, some of us, including the noble Lords, Lord Pearson and Lord Willoughby de Broke, said that it was right that every country should have its own Commissioner. But we were told that as Europe got larger, they could not have each have a Commissioner because it would be too difficult to run the whole thing with so many Commissioners. I can hardly be against that. I welcome the fact that the Irish are to have their own Commissioner and other countries as well.

Then we come to developments in the EU, which is the third part of this debate. Of course, there have been so many developments in the European Union since we last had a debate that it is difficult to sort them out. I have done my best. I start with the eurozone. It is still in acute financial trouble, as we have already heard. There are problems in most of the countries of the eurozone. We have heard that unemployment in Spain and Greece is more than 25%. There has been rioting in the streets. Teargas has been hurled at demonstrators and some of them have been injured by police violence. There is hatred among some of the countries, particularly between Greece and Germany. That is not supposed to happen in the European Union. We are all supposed to be jolly friends together. But what has happened in the eurozone is pushing the European Union apart. According to Eurostat on 3 December, 24.5% of EU citizens are at risk of poverty or social exclusion and that figure is increasing. What do those people who are in favour of expanding this organisation and keeping it going make of that?

When we went into the Common Market, we were promised that this was a great leap forward and that this was the organisation to be in. Britain would thrive and prosper inside it and so would every other country. Instead of that, the reverse is happening. Those of those who warned against ditching the pound and not adopting the euro were insulted by those, like Mr Blair, who led the campaign to ditch the pound. Mr Blair now thinks that people like myself are a virus because we happen to take a different point of view from him about the future of this country. He is the man who said before the 1997 election that he was a British patriot and then went on to sign the Lisbon treaty, got rid of many of our freedoms, and sacrificed part of our rebate. I had to say that because I resent having been insulted in that way by that particular person.

Then we have Frau Merkel telling us that outside Europe Union the United Kingdom will be alone. How insensitive can you get? I am of an age when I can remember being alone in 1940 and Frau Merkel seems to have forgotten about that. She also seems to have forgotten that there is a Commonwealth and Britain is part of that Commonwealth and one of its leaders. She was backed in all of that by Herr Schäuble, the German finance minister, who also believes that Britain could not exist outside the European Union.

Nearer to home, our own Prime Minister says he wishes to remain in the EU and once again he cites Norway to make his point. The United Kingdom has a population of 62 million. Norway has a population of 5 million. There is no comparison at all. Let us have a look at Norway. I mentioned some of Norway’s benefits in a previous debate. Let us look at Norway in other ways. It has the second highest GDP per capita in the world—in the world, not in the EU. It is the second wealthiest country in the world in monetary value and has the largest capital reserve per capita in the world.

[Lord Lea of Crondall]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, for giving way as I gave way a couple of times to him. Is he not aware, as it has been pointed out to him on more than one occasion, that oil and gas represent 22% of Norwegian GDP and 67% of Norwegian exports and that is the heart of the reason why Norway is so successful. Does he not accept that?

[Lord Stoddart of Swindon]

I understand all that. When I was a member of the Energy Select Committee in the House of Commons, we recommended that the then Government should do exactly the same as Norway. It is a pity they did not, because we would be very much better off now. That is the answer to the noble Lord. I understand all of these things. I have been around a long time.

The fact of the matter is that the Prime Minister says that Norway trades with the single market but has no say in the making of the rules and regulations.