EU: Reform

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Wednesday 19th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, we have been very transparent about the reforms we want. The Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister have set out publicly their vision for a more competitive, flexible and democratically accountable EU, with fair treatment for those within the eurozone and those outside it. That is in the interests of all member states. My noble friend refers to the potential for a convention. The only convention to date that has examined extensive revision of the treaties is the one in which my noble friend served some while ago. It compromised 105 full members, including Heads of State, members of national Parliaments, MEPs and Commission representatives, and the process took two and a half years. As a mature organisation, Heads of State are capable of talking to each other and coming to mature decisions.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, I am sure the noble Baroness will agree that Sir John Major commands enormous respect on all sides of this House. Will she therefore endorse very clearly what he said last week about our membership of the European Union: that despite the frustrations of membership, which are many, and despite the reforms that are needed, which are many, there is absolutely no doubt—without equivocation—that our interests lie in remaining a member of the EU? Do this Government agree with the former Conservative Prime Minister?

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, I admire Sir John Major. I know the work he did as Prime Minister and within European matters, and the struggles that he faced. He above all people knows what is involved. I agree with what he said, which was that our future is within a reformed European Union. The Prime Minister David Cameron has said that, too.

EU: Reform

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Monday 13th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

I feel a debate coming on. The work that we are doing between now and the general election has been clearly set out by the Foreign Secretary. For example, we have listened carefully to voters over this year. It has been made clear that the British public feel that change is needed. We will not make any rapid response to some of the tabloid stories to which the previous questioner referred. We shall look very carefully at issues such as migration. Although we agree that free movement is an important principle for the EU, it is not a completely unqualified right. That in itself requires one particular body of people to look at it and to negotiate it. All I can say is that I know my Foreign Secretary has an even busier life than I do and will be well advised.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, I add my most sincere congratulations to the noble Baroness on her translation to the Foreign Office. Has she noticed the remarks of the Mayor of London, who wishes to include in the Government’s renegotiation strategy the imposition of numerical limits on the number of migrants from existing members of the European Union? Does she agree that such a proposal would be totally inconsistent with the founding principles of the treaty of Rome? Would she therefore agree that it should not be included in the Government’s renegotiation agenda?

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, who could miss statements by the Mayor of London? As I have just made clear, free movement is not an absolute right within the European Union. The noble Lord has great experience in these matters and is aware of that. We want to make sure that we return free movement to its former position, whereby we avoid large-scale migrations in the future wherever possible. We are already discussing that with our colleagues in the rest of Europe. We want to ensure that migration is for the purpose of work and not to exploit welfare benefits. We have made a great deal of progress on that and we have done it in a non-discriminatory way. We are also finding that other countries are now beginning to look at the same kind of work, as in Germany. In that way, one can address the problem without necessarily having to go to the finality of quotas.

Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (EUC Report)

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Tuesday 17th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, I do not have much to add to the excellence of the report by the noble Lord, Lord Tugendhat, and his committee. It is a truly comprehensive report. I put my name down to speak in this debate because, as a strong supporter of open trade—as a believer that it is a driver of economic growth and of great help to poor people through lowering prices—I am very concerned, on the basis of my own contacts and workings on the continent, about the political mood towards TTIP in the European Union at the moment, and I think that a major political effort will be required if this objective is to be secured. At the end of the debate I would like to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Livingston, whether he shares this concern about the progress of the negotiations and the rising political opposition to TTIP, and what the Government propose to do about it.

Of course, trade negotiations are always difficult, as I learnt in the time I spent in my noble friend Lord Mandelson’s cabinet when he was Trade Commissioner in Brussels. The United States is an extremely difficult partner to deal with. Its political system is, if anything, even more dysfunctional than that of the European Union. Therefore, it is extremely difficult for an American Administration to get their ducks in a row to do a major trade agreement.

There is no certainty at the moment about when trade promotion authority, which is essential to this, is going to be secured—possibly at the end of this year, possibly early in the life of the next Congress. There is great uncertainty about that. There is a lot of opposition to trade agreements within the Democratic Party as well as on the part of the Tea Party on the right. The noble Lord, Lord Lamont, is right that the way in which the regulatory institutions in the United States operate is that a lot of them are independent, as it were, of the Administration and it is quite difficult to get them to agree to make progress.

We have the great advantage, which I think the Government have not properly recognised, of having a European Commission that has been pro-free trade and is a key driver on the European side, but in my opinion there is no natural majority on the Council for ambitious trade agreements. We have allies among the northern Liberals but we always have to carry Germany, and if we are going to get an agreement through we always have to carry Italy as well; the Italian vote in the Council is crucial on these questions.

I am concerned about the general political mood after the European elections, which the noble Lord, Lord Tugendhat, referred to: the feeling that what has gone wrong, the reason for the rise of populism on the left and the right in Europe, is not that Europe has not economically reformed enough in the direction in which many in Britain want it to: rather, that there has been too much liberalisation and globalisation and that the EU has partly contributed to that. That is a large part of the motive behind the support for populism and the rise of protectionism.

There are also specific reasons, which the noble Lord referred to, such as the Snowden and BNP Paribas affairs, but the last time that I was in Brussels attending debates on this subject I was amazed by the strength of feeling among NGOs on the question of whether environmental and food safety standards would be threatened by this agreement or—the point my noble friend Lady Quin referred to—on the question of the investor-state dispute mechanism and whether it could be used as a lever to, as it were, privatise our sacred public services in Britain, including the NHS.

What alarmed me most was to be told that the German and Austrian trade unions, which in European affairs I normally look on as pillars of common sense on matters European, both economic and political, are having serious doubts about the TTIP agreement. The worry that one has politically is that there are already populists in the Parliament, but if at the same time the trade unions, the Greens and the social democratic left are mobilising against this agreement, we will find that we do not have a majority for it in the Parliament.

That would be a great pity, because the economic gains as set out—although, like anyone else, I do not believe the precise numbers that are put on these things—are potentially huge. It would also be a pity geopolitically, as the agreement would revive trans- atlanticism. At a key point in history, when there is a real risk of America turning to Asia, this would be an opportunity to revive the transatlantic relationship. It could build something that might have great long-term potential if we can, as it were, establish a trade agreement that contains within it mechanisms for agreeing on regulation for the future. That would be a tremendous step forward in America and Europe’s ability to set global standards in a world where economic power is shifting against us. It would be very important for us and crucial for our ability in future to defend our interests and values in trade.

Also, the Government have said that TTIP is very important for their own objectives of achieving reform in the EU and, if they are re-elected, for building a case for support for the EU in a referendum. Do the Government share these concerns? What are they going to do about them? How are they going to address them? We have to try to reassure on some of the points that have been made on environmental standards and food safety standards. We have to find the means of providing reassurance. We have to provide the means of finding the assurance that we are not signing away special legal privileges to corporations that allow them to override national policies and insist on their entitlements to win contracts where we want to protect our public services. We have to find some way of providing those assurances.

If you are going to win support for trade agreements that involve very big economic adjustments—and there will be big adjustments in agriculture and textiles, and possibly in automobiles, as a result of this agreement—you have to have some social mechanisms in place to compensate for those difficult adjustments.

We face a potentially serious situation. It is of great concern, and I hope the Minister will be able to assure us that the Government are fully on top of this, are determined to find allies, and have a political strategy for ensuring that this important agreement goes through.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Tuesday 10th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, I cannot possibly match the knowledge of the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond, on the subject of pensions, nor that of my noble friend Lady Drake in her wonderful speech. I would like to talk about what I see as the central problem in the Queen’s Speech and the Government’s policy, which is a woeful inadequacy in addressing what I think is the central challenge facing Britain: how our nation earns a living in this harshly competitive global age. Unless you answer that question there can be no decent jobs, no fairness at work and no opportunity for the many.

The gracious Speech had a few glancing nods in this direction—we are promised a small business and enterprise Bill, and we wait with interest to see what it contains—but to my mind it is a disparate group of nods on the competitiveness agenda: a deregulation target here, an infrastructure initiative there and a bit of licence for fracking as long as it is not in too many people’s back gardens in Sussex. What is lacking in the Speech and in the coalition’s policy is a comprehensive agenda for partnership between Government and business, a partnership that would address the major problems of stagnant productivity and the quite terrible balance of payments deficit that the nation now faces, that would pursue the rebalancing of our economy, which was promised in 2010 but on which we have yet to see any significant result, and that would build a new progressive capitalism that tackled the fundamental flaws in our economic model that were exposed in the 2008 crisis.

I believe that the coalition had a huge opportunity to build such a partnership in 2010. It could have done more to develop the agenda of industrial activism that, in a lowly capacity, I worked with my noble friend Lord Mandelson to develop. The coalition could have taken advantage of the widespread consensus in business that fundamental reform of our economic model was necessary, not least to rebuild public confidence and trust in business itself. The speech of the noble Lord, Lord Tugendhat, was an example of how we need to think again about many of the assumptions that we have taken for granted in the past three decades.

Yet despite the best efforts of the Business Secretary, the Chancellor never seems to have been very serious about this bigger agenda. Yes, he made some speeches, but essentially Mr Osborne took a bet on a “business as usual” recovery, created by a quite unprecedented monetary stimulus and supported by a fiscal deficit that remains unsustainably high. What we are seeing is a lifting of the economic boats that have run aground on a rising tide of mortgage, household and public debt, and that will not go on. I remember that Mr Osborne used to make great fun of Gordon Brown’s hubristic boast that he had abolished boom and bust; my fear is that the coalition is creating the conditions for a return of boom and bust on an epic scale, which will once again weaken the productive base of our economy.

I hope that on this side of the House we can develop this kind of critique of the coalition in the coming year. In my view, Labour now has a great opportunity to restore its reputation as the party of business. Part of that is because of politics. In the recent elections UKIP did well, but not so well as all that; it may have reached its ceiling in Newark, and I suspect that it may be downhill all the way for UKIP now. However, the impact of UKIP will be to push the Conservative Party in a UKIP direction, both on immigration and on Europe. On both of these issues, that is contrary to the vital interests of both business and our nation.

With business and the Conservatives drifting apart, Labour has now to show that it has credible policies to back up the call for a more responsible capitalism that Ed Miliband made in 2011. I emphasise the word “capitalism” there. We need flesh on the bones of how we are going to reform corporate governance. What are going to be the new rules for mergers and takeovers? How are we going to get greater transparency in the way our savings are managed, less extravagant fees extracted and more responsibilities of ownership exercised? How are we going to rethink our financial system, because there is a real problem of finance for growing companies when banks struggle to satisfy capital adequacy requirements and to meet prudential limits on their operations? Labour has got to have answers to these questions and put them forward.

We have also got to build on the many positive initiatives that the coalition has taken, such as the Catapult centres, which actually come from the Mandelson era, to help research discoveries turn into marketable products and services. I also believe that the expansion of higher-level apprenticeships should enable us to create a non-conventional ladder of opportunity to technician status and university degrees. Labour has to demonstrate how it can break the terrible confusion and deadlock at present holding back essential infra- structure investment.

So there is a golden opportunity to build a partnership with business, but Labour has to show that it understands the world in which business leaders operate, how their survival depends on making a profit, where often the bulk of those profits are not made in Britain, and where the world is awash with alternative investment opportunities to investing here. Of course, business cannot escape criticism where its actions are contrary to the public interest, and it is right that it should be so criticised, but Governments cannot force private businesses to invest. They can only create the framework conditions in which business can respond.

I see this as a great opportunity, a great moment. All my political life, I have believed in a Britain that works together, in a party of the centre left that reaches beyond the confines—now outdated, I think—of class in order to work with business and construct a social and industrial partnership for the good of the whole country. That sense of urgency and partnership is totally absent from the coalition’s policies, and it is the ground on which I dearly hope Labour will stand in the 2015 election and beyond.

European Union (Referendum) Bill

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Friday 24th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, on this side of the House, we regard this as a significant amendment. Given that the House has decided by an overwhelming majority that the Bill is amendable, we very much hope that the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, will consider it favourably. It is a serious attempt on our side to improve the referendum proposal and make an independent impact assessment a vital condition before a referendum can properly proceed. We want rational, independent consideration of the costs and benefits of our EU membership and of the alternatives to it. The amendment is, we hope, a way to facilitate that rational consideration of the issues at stake.

Why is it important to look at alternatives? Those of us who have spent a lot of our lives in politics know that opinion polls do not always give a very accurate reading of what is likely to happen at a general election. You can often be miles ahead, but the result at a general election can be very different. Why is that? It is a point of key relevance to the Europe debate. It is because, in the mid-term of any Government, people are simply thinking about what they think of the Government. It is only when they get to the election that they start thinking about it as a choice between the Government of the day and the Opposition. If we are to have a sensible debate about the European Union, it is vital that people do not just see it as expressing an opinion in a poll in a TV reality show about what they think of Brussels, the Commission, the European Parliament and all the rest, where we know what the result would be, but that they think about what are the alternatives to our present EU membership. They need to be explored independently and objectively.

A recent attempt to do this was in the CBI’s report, Our Global Future. That is on the economics. The CBI came to the conclusion that no alternative option to full EU membership can combine all the benefits of EU membership with none of the costs. I shall not risk being accused of wasting the House’s time by reading out the report, but it went through in meticulous detail all the different options, such as the so-called WTO option, becoming a member of the EEA, the Swiss option, or having some kind of free trade agreement with the European Union. It went through all the options. Those options need to be explored properly. That was the point that the noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, was driving at. We cannot have a sensible discussion in a referendum on our EU membership without the Government saying what they would do if the people voted to come out, because it is only in those circumstances that people can make a proper choice. That is one of the reasons why we support this.

It is important to emphasise that this is not only a matter of economic and social costs and benefits. It is also about the rights of citizens, particularly our citizens living presently in other member states of the European Union, and how a withdrawal would affect their position. It is also about our security. The present Government have just been through a huge exercise on the JHA opt-out and have decided that it is essential to Britain’s security that we opt in to certain of these measures. They know that if we were not part of those measures, senior figures in the police force and in the intelligence services would have very serious doubts about government policy. We need to look at the whole range of issues to do with our EU membership.

This has to be done objectively and properly. If we are to have a fair debate, that is absolutely essential. We all know that large sections of the press are going to argue for Britain to withdraw. There is no fairness in the British press on this issue, where you have the Mail, the Express and the Sun, and to a lesser extent the Telegraph and the Times, united in their view against membership of the European Union. However, we also have a lot of misinformation now in social media. If we believe in democracy, it is the proper duty of the Government to ensure that the public are properly informed of all the options through a proper, independent analysis.

As my noble friends Lord Kinnock and Lord Giddens said in the earlier discussion, whether we are in the European Union or not is a fundamental choice for the future of this country. The debate about it must not be treated as some way of papering over the cracks in one of our political parties. It has to be treated as one of the most fundamental decisions that, in our lifetimes, we will ever take.

[Baroness Warsi]

My Lords, perhaps I may briefly refer back to what I said at Second Reading. I said that the Bill was not about being pro-European or anti-European but about being pro-democracy. The noble Lord raised a number of issues about the people being informed and I agree with him. One of the positions that the Government have taken in relation to the balance of competences review has been on having an independent review of each individual area, where organisations and individuals are given the opportunity to give evidence, and for those reports to be presented in an independent way so that people can see where the European Union helps and where it hinders.

Such a referendum will generate a huge amount of interest and a great deal of campaigning. I think of my own experience of campaigning during the AV referendum. It becomes apparent as the referendum date comes nearer that the campaign steps up and a huge amount of discussion takes place. Members of this House and of the other House will have the opportunity to have their say. Business will have its say, NGOs will have their say and both sides of the case will be put. I am convinced that when this referendum is eventually held, the yes campaign and the no campaign will have long and detailed campaigns which will allow the British public to hear both the case for and the case against. This is an opportunity to allow that debate and those campaigns to start, and to allow the British people to have their say. There is overwhelming evidence that a referendum is what the people of this country—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

I do not want to disagree totally with the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, but, quite frankly, if you look at Amendment 72 of the noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, it is clear that, under it, the Government of the day would have to say, “If you vote no, we will try to get an agreement to join the EEA”, for example; or, “We would like to have a series of agreements like the Swiss”—there are 30 or 50 of them; or, “We would have none of the above and would rely simply on our World Trade Organisation membership”. All the things that the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, has discussed in his amendment are actually also covered in Amendment 72. I am saying merely that we will come to that later, on another day.

[Lord Liddle]

Briefly, the Opposition attach a lot of importance to this consideration of alternatives. We would hope that there would be some kind of agreed amendment between my noble friend Lord Anderson and the noble Lords, Lord Wigley and Lord Turnbull, which we might consider on Report.

[Lord Dobbs]

My Lords, I, too, will be brief. I entirely endorse the sentiment behind these amendments. Of course the alternatives must be spelled out. This historic decision which we wish to put to the people should never be taken blind. It is, however, a question of the best mechanism for those alternatives to be spelled out. We hope that they would be taken care of simply by what is called democracy: by a referendum campaign that would be long, arduous and very detailed. I think the people would demand to know from those who were suggesting that we should not stay within the European Union precisely what the alternative was. If that alternative were not offered, they would come to their own conclusions.

It is also, however, a matter that can be dealt with under the terms of the Bill after it has been passed. It does not need to be—

International Trade

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Harrison for taking the initiative in organising this debate and for his very thoughtful speech. We have had many excellent contributions, notably from my noble friend Lady Symons who is experienced in the practice of trade promotion. Earlier we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Marland, and various sectors have been discussed, ranging from the challenge of UK wine by the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, to the reputation of Scotch whisky by the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, and my noble friend Lord O’Neill. The complexities of financial services were considered by the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, while my noble friend Lady Thornton talked about the potential of social enterprise.

It is a great pleasure to welcome to his first debate the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Livingston of Parkhead. I think he has answered Questions before but this is his first debate. He probably does not remember but I first met him when he was part of a group of businesspeople whom my noble friend Lord Mandelson, of Hartlepool and Foy, sought advice from when he was Business Secretary. We all welcome him to the Front Bench and his new role, and wish him every success in what is a vital national interest.

I start with the central point that one or two noble Lords have mentioned: improving our trade is essential to the rebalancing of the economy which the Chancellor set out as one of his key objectives in 2010. I will focus on trade policy rather than trade promotion, because I think that the Minister has an important role in trade policy. Of course, this all takes place in the context of globalisation. The noble Lord, Lord Davies, pointed out the extraordinary change in economic openness in the past 20 years. The figures I saw were that from 1960 until the end of the Cold War only one in five of the world’s population lived in an economically open society. Now, on some calculations, it is as high as 90%. That is a huge transformation.

Of course, for advocates of openness, this leads to a major political challenge because people, particularly in the developed world, worry about where their jobs are going to come from if we face all this low-wage competition. The Government talk about a global race. I would like to know how the Minister interprets this. Clearly, there are causes for optimism in Britain’s economic and trade position, as the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, said, but among the general public many people feel that the rewards of globalisation are being appropriated by the few, not the many, and worry that instead of a race to the top, we are actually seeing a race to the bottom.

One of the key political challenges for all the political parties in Britain is how to build public support for economic openness. Of course, we do not help that if we get into a political race to see who can be the toughest against immigration. When we talk about trade, we have to be prepared to make the argument that it is not just our exporters who benefit from more open trade, it is our poorest families—for instance, in buying children’s shoes and clothes—who have greatly benefited from the opening up of the world economy in the past 20 years.

What is the Government’s strategy for trade? How does the current emphasis on regional agreements fit in with sustaining the multilateral trade system? The noble Lord, Lord Davies, asked a lot of very relevant questions about the transatlantic trade initiative. I am not going to repeat them; it is vital and a great opportunity but it also raises lots of difficulties. The noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, talked about people’s fears about how trade arbitration can overcome laws that we have agreed either in the UK or at EU level. That is a legitimate concern. The points made by the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, about parliamentary accountability at both EU and national level are of great importance.

Another question is: does the Minister recognise the key importance of services to Britain’s trade prospects? I am sure he does. But once we say that we recognise the key importance of services, we get straight into the question of migration. For instance, as I know from when I was in the Commission, in the negotiations between the EU and India, a key demand of the Indians was for a more liberal visa regime for their IT companies. How do we handle these questions?

A key economic strength of Britain is in our higher education—I declare an interest as pro chancellor of Lancaster University—medicine, culture and sport. The Minister is a former director of Celtic. In all these areas, British success depends on an open policy towards people from the rest of the world. Where do the Government stand on this?

The key question for trade is that of Britain and the European Union. I know that this is a familiar theme, which I have spoken about many times in this House and we will be debating again tomorrow, but does the Minister accept the point made by several noble Lords around the Chamber that Britain outside the European Union would be in a much weaker position to make representations to China on intellectual property, to countries that are marketing counterfeit Border textiles, which the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, talked about, or to people marketing whiskies that are not genuine Scotch whiskies? I know there has been a problem with that in India. What strength would we have if we were outside the EU? The Government have to come clean on this question. How would we be able to participate in a transatlantic agreement if we were not members of the EU? What would be our prospects for attracting inward investment into this country if we were not members of the EU?

Since we have such an interest in the EU trade agenda, it is vital that Britain maximises its influence in Brussels. I know from when I worked in my noble friend Lord Mandelson’s cabinet that a large part of what the EU member states do on trade is actually to negotiate with each other on what the EU policy in negotiations with the outside world is going to be. But we all know that as a member state, we cannot negotiate with other member states if, as Herman Van Rompuy once put it in a very good speech, it always seems as though we have one hand on the door handle and are about to rush outside. This question of Britain’s relations with the EU is not some fanciful political question; it is a very real question for the Minister’s responsibilities and we greatly look forward to his reply.

European Union (Referendum) Bill

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Friday 10th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, in rising to put the Labour Party’s position on the Bill, I should like to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, on the very charming and elegant way in which he moved the Second Reading of his Bill, except that we all know that it is not really a Private Member’s Bill; it is a Conservative Party Bill for a Conservative Party purpose. That purpose is to try to create a semblance of unity in a party that is deeply divided on the question of the European Union and, at the same time, to convince voters tempted by UKIP not to follow down that path.

I realise that many Conservatives may not like this characterisation of their position on the Bill but, if challenged on it in the confidentiality of the Lobby, surely their only possible response would be one very familiar to Francis Urquhart, the character created by the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs: “You may very well think that; I couldn’t possibly comment”.

Labour does not have these visceral internal divisions to manage.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Liddle]

It does not. With one or two honourable exceptions, we are unambiguously a pro-European party. That does not mean that we want a European superstate—we do not. It does not mean that we always agree with what the European Union does; we are passionate advocates of EU reform in its economic policies, its regulatory approach, and its accountability to national Parliaments and public opinion.

Some may say, “If you believe in the European Union so strongly, why are you so unwilling to support a referendum on our membership?”. It is a fair question. “Is it only because you are not confident of winning your case?”. I wish to set out today why Labour argues that the question of whether to hold a referendum has to be judged first and foremost on the test of the national interest, not what serves one sectional force of a political party in the land. It is for that reason that we have severe doubts about this Bill.

Labour is not in principle an anti-referendum party. It was, after all, a Labour Government that ensured that we had a referendum on the decision to join in 1975. Where there has been the possibility of major constitutional change, we have proposed a referendum—on whether to join the single currency after 1997 and on the abortive constitutional treaty. In the passage of the European Union Bill through this House in 2011, we were always clear that a major change in Britain’s relationship with the EU would in future require a referendum.

The Conservative Party has never shown that consistency of commitment. Edward Heath refused a referendum in 1972; Margaret Thatcher pushed through the Single European Act without a question of a referendum; and John Major behaved similarly over Maastricht. It is true that David Cameron made a binding commitment to hold a referendum on the Lisbon treaty, but he then abandoned it once Lisbon was ratified in 2009, doubtless because he then believed that it would be damaging to his party in the 2010 general election if, as he put it, it was always “banging on about Europe”.

What has changed since then? The truth is that all that has changed is internal Conservative division and the misreading by Conservative Back-Benchers—certainly if you read the poll of the noble Lord, Lord Ashcroft, it is a misreading—of the nature of the UKIP threat to their position. That is why the party has shifted its position on a referendum.

We judge the question on the national interest. If there was a major treaty in prospect that would radically change the nature of the EU then, yes, there is already legislation on the statute book to say that there would be a referendum. However, the Cameron proposition on the referendum in his eloquently argued Bloomberg speech—with much of which I agree—is nevertheless fundamentally flawed. He has chosen, as this Bill sets out, the end of 2017 as the end date for a UK referendum without the slightest idea of what by then he will have tried to negotiate, whether there is any prospect of our partners playing ball with such a renegotiation, whether a new treaty is necessary as part of that and what he would judge to be an acceptable outcome.

The truth is that he is playing Russian roulette with the British economic recovery. So far we have seen a recovery in consumer confidence and the housing market, but there is as yet very little sign of new business investment and exports. If the business world was to think seriously that this Bill had the slightest chance of passage and that the Conservatives were likely winners of the next general election, the uncertainty generated over our continuing membership of the EU for the next four years could have a devastating economic effect. If the Labour Party were now to acquiesce in the central proposition of this Bill, it could well make that possibility a certainty, with a negative impact on investment, living standards and growth. People may not believe me, but listen to what Nissan has to say, listen to what Siemens has to say, listen to what Goldman Sachs and other overseas banks based in the City have to say. Do we really want to create now four years of major economic uncertainty by passing this Bill?

Even if you disregard the wider consequences, the Bill is flawed. First, as your Lordships’ Constitution Committee and Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee have pointed out, the Bill sets a question for the referendum that the Electoral Commission has judged unsatisfactory. Secondly, it leaves to ministerial discretion the procedures for holding a referendum without the opportunity for parliamentary scrutiny which every other referendum proposition put into legislation has allowed.

Thirdly, 16 year-olds will be able to vote in Scotland on the question of the country’s independence but not on whether Britain should stay in the EU, which is a key question for their future. Fourthly, Gibraltarians will have a voice in Britain’s future in the EU, but not the hundreds of thousands of British citizens living and working in the rest of the Union.

Fifthly, the Bill does not nothing to facilitate the fullest possible unbiased public debate before a referendum is held. In that respect it is an “all power to the Daily Mail” Bill. Sixthly—and this is what I care about most—it is a threat to our union, the United Kingdom. If, as is perfectly possible, Scotland in 2017 were to vote to stay in the EU and England to leave, that would re-open the result of what many of us on all sides of this House want to be a decisive rejection of independence in the Scottish referendum this autumn.

A referendum now would settle nothing. A vote to leave would open up complex negotiations on the nature of Britain’s future relationship with the EU, with demands possibly emerging for a further referendum on the outcome of those negotiations. A vote to stay could be re-opened if, say within a decade, there is a major treaty change. All in all, this Bill is a pig in a poke and it cannot be in the national interest to buy into it. Their Lordships would be failing in their constitutional duty if they did not give this bad Bill the fullest parliamentary scrutiny.

EU: Balance of Competences Review

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Thursday 9th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Warsi]

It is always interesting to hear the noble Lord’s views on the issue of Europe. I am sure that he was pleased that UKIP representatives had an opportunity to feed into the first set of reports. The Government fundamentally believe that we can have a better Europe and that we should have and push for further reform. It is obvious from the first set of reports that have come through in the balance of competences review that many of the issues that have been raised by the Prime Minister’s and the Government’s existing reform agenda came out as part of those reports.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, following on from the noble Baroness’s talk about the need for a programme of reform to create a better Europe, can she clarify what the Government’s objective is? Is it to put together a comprehensive programme of reform which, on this side of the House, we would be happy to engage in discussion about, or is it to demand, as the noble Lord, Lord Spicer, hinted, special deals on repatriations, opt-outs and derogations, which frankly is a road to nowhere? It is likely to be a set of impossible demands which eventually leads to British exit.

[Baroness Warsi]

The Government’s position has been clear: reform is an ongoing process and we can have a better Europe. For example, one of things that came out of the balance of competences review is how different competences and different regulations were being implemented by member states. There were concerns about the UK’s gold-plating, for example, of much that was coming out of Europe. We feel that that is an ongoing process. I think that the noble Lord and noble Lords opposite will accept that there is a great democratic deficit at the moment in support for the European Union. Therefore it is not only about making the case for whether we need to be in or out of Europe but about making the case for how we can have a better Europe, renegotiating a new settlement and then going to the people and saying to them, “You have the final decision”.

EU: Reform

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Thursday 9th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, this has been an excellent short debate and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, for raising this topic. To be honest, the quality of the contributions is likely to be considerably in advance of what we hear tomorrow, and I think that this is a much more relevant topic for debate on the future of Britain’s relations with Europe. As I listened to the excellent speeches from all noble Lords who have spoken, it struck me that we should be using our wonderful Lords Select Committee to try to put together some kind of consensus about what a reform agenda for the EU would be. That would be a very valuable exercise.

There will probably always be some differences on areas such as social Europe but I think that there is a possibility of achieving a large measure of agreement on what such a reform agenda should be. However, the key point, which I put to the Minister during Questions this morning, is that an agenda for reform has to be a multilateral agenda for Europe and not a set of British demands for the repatriation of this power and opt-outs from this or that directive. I was glad to hear the noble Lord, Lord Howell, endorse that approach.

I do not agree with the Prime Minister’s speech about a referendum—we can debate that tomorrow—but it was extremely well crafted. There is a lot of common ground on about 80% of what it had to say about the future of the European Union.

However, the Government’s reform agenda has certain flaws. The questions asked by the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, were extremely relevant. I had intended to ask them myself. I will not repeat them but I will add to them. First, the assumption that there will be a major treaty change in the next Parliament is debatable at best. Some of the countries which most favour reform—the Netherlands, for example—are among the partners who are most opposed to a comprehensive treaty change. So we do not necessarily win allies on reform by demanding treaty change.

Secondly, as the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, said, our approach to future enlargement and the linking of that to the question of migration and limitations on migration, threatens to put against us in Europe most of the new member states that, when I worked for Tony Blair, we fought hardest to get onside. There are obviously many issues that need to be considered on the question of migration—social security benefits and so on—but if it is thought that we are playing a populist game on these issues, we will simply alienate a large section of the European Union.

The third error the Government are making is the assumption that the eurozone will become a much more integrated area and that we will have to accept a kind of permanent outer-tier status in the European Union. That is not realistic. I am sure that we can negotiate non-discrimination clauses and commitments that would reassure people who worry that a eurozone bloc might discriminate against us. I am sure that that could be done and the integrity of the single market preserved.

There is wide range of issues within the EU in which Britain should seek to play a leading role, such as energy and climate change; defence and security, where our bilateral co-operation with France is presently very strong; foreign policy; free trade agreements; and the deepening of the single market. We should not automatically assume that we will be outer-tier players. That is not a viable vision for Britain’s future in the European Union. I do not see a country such as Great Britain putting up for decades with the idea that it is only on the outer fringe.

The Government may have some of the right ideas about reform but they are not, in our view on this side of the House, going about it in the right way. There is a big opportunity for change coming up with the appointment of a new European Commission. Who will be the President? Are we pressing for reforms to how the Commission works? One of the key things in trying to ensure that Europe focuses on a limited number of key priorities rather than trying to legislate over a wide area is to think about how you streamline the European Commission so that it has a limited number of priorities, and making an agreement with the European Council about what those priorities would be.

I do not think that the agenda for the future should be one of repatriation of powers. However, it should certainly be one of understanding between the Council and the Commission about how competences that the treaties give to the European Union should be exercised. We must have another go at the question of more sharply defining the principles of proportionality and subsidiarity. For the moment, that is enough. The Government have a lot of major questions to answer.

UK: EU Membership

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Tuesday 7th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Warsi]

My Lords, I am always supportive of Brits holding leadership positions in all institutions, including EU ones. Certainly, strong female leaders from this House have made a great impact in those institutions.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, does the Minister think that the Government are going about it in the right way to win friends and influence people to carry through their legitimate programme of reform for the EU? In the last month we have seen Ministers of the Crown stigmatising Bulgarians and Romanians as benefit tourists, threatening, to the great annoyance of the Polish Foreign Minister, Poles with benefit changes in the UK and attempting to blame Germany for all the horrors of the First World War. Is this the right way to go about winning friends in Europe?

[Baroness Warsi]

It is important that Ministers do what they can to make sure that the best possible outcome for Britain is achieved. I think the noble Lord would accept that the first ever cut in the EU’s seven-year budget last year and protection of the UK’s rebate were two great successes. He would also accept that changes and reforms to the common fisheries policy—again Britain putting its interests on the table but doing so in the interests of all of the European Union—are progressive steps. We can therefore show that the Government can act in the interests of the United Kingdom in a way that is also beneficial to the rest of the European Union.