European Union Bill

Debate between Lord Liddle and Lord Waddington

Monday 13th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Waddington]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Rowlands, was very eloquent, and I can well understand how he has reached the position that he has. Looking at just one of the amendments that we are considering, I must say that I find the wording of Amendment 15 really rather odd. It seems that, taken at its face value, all sorts of decisions could be made on a common European defence and no referendum would be required unless the intention was to permit a single, integrated military force. We could integrate our Navy with every other country’s navy and still be well short of creating a single, integrated military force, so there would not have to be a referendum. That seems very odd if you are going down the route of having referendums at all.

The noble Lord, Lord Hannay, was again rather beguiling. At one stage he said that he was putting forward these amendments in a spirit of compromise. It might look like an exercise in compromise to some people, but to others it might well look like part of a general strategy to whittle down the protection that the Bill is designed to afford. That is what I find so terribly depressing: that having gone all through Committee, and now on Report, not a word is spoken by the opponents of the Bill to suggest that they have a clue as to how disillusioned people feel and how necessary it is to give them some reassurance, or how necessary it is to show them that their views are not going to continue to be overridden and that we are not going to go on continually conceding powers so that eventually we finish up being no longer a sovereign, independent state. Never a word comes from opponents of the Bill to show that they have any realisation of the difficulties that we face at the present time.

In these debates we are constantly told that the right to a referendum can be safely whittled down here, there and everywhere. We are constantly told that referendums are an affront to parliamentary democracy, but I am bound to say that people are asking me what Parliament has done so far to guarantee our independence and to protect our fundamental freedoms. They point to what happened over the Lisbon and all the rest of it, and, as I say, they are thoroughly disillusioned. I think that they, like me, will not be at all impressed by the suggestion that somehow or other we can meet most of these problems by making sure that Parliament does its work properly.

I remind my noble friends and noble Lords of some of the history. The noble Baroness, Lady Quin, said in a speech the other day that it was made clear in the 1975 referendum that we were joining not just a common market but an EEC. Let us leave aside for a moment the fact that the question on the ballot paper was:

“Do you think the UK should stay in the European Community (Common Market)?”.

Let us leave aside for a moment the fact that there was no mention of the EEC at all. In fact, Harold Wilson, as he then was, made a great speech in which he recommended a yes vote because the threat of monetary union had gone away. I distinctly remember him saying that. That is all part of the dismal history. “Stop worrying, it is not going to happen”. Then it happens. “Well, it is not so important after all and it certainly will not happen again. This is the end of the road”.

I came back from Bermuda in 1997 having looked somewhat askance at some of the developments during the years when I was away. The first thing that happened to me was that I was invited to a rather grand dinner party at which every other guest was a Whitehall mandarin. There were three ambassadors and one or two permanent officials from the Foreign Office, and they said, “Oh, what are you banging on about, David? Stop worrying”. These are the exact words that were used to me that night: “The high-water mark of European integration has been reached”. That is what they told me. Well, the next day the tide continued to come in and it has been coming in ever since.

We are constantly told that it is safe to leave all these matters in the hands of our elected politicians. We might not have much to thank Mr Gordon Brown for, but let us give credit when credit is due; but for Brown, Tony Blair might well have used his vast majority to take us into the euro at the end of the 1990s, and a fine mess we would be in now. Remember, he dreamt up the idea of a referendum only to get him through the 2001 election. There was no question of the need for a referendum on the euro prior to that.

[Lord Liddle]

If I am correct, Mr Blair made his referendum commitment in 1996.

[Lord Waddington]

I am sorry, will you please repeat that?

[Lord Liddle]

Mr Blair made a commitment to have a referendum on the euro well in advance of the 1997 general election, in 1996. Some of us thought that that was a mistake at the time, I hasten to add.

[Lord Waddington]

That had escaped my notice. By the end of the 1990s, he was certainly sending out messages that he thought the time might well be right to think about going into the euro. If Mr Blair were in office now—this would have been relevant on one of the amendments that was not moved—he would no doubt be advocating the need to have elections for a European president, which he would urge upon us as a not very significant matter that would only increase the powers of the people and was a thoroughly good idea, when we all know perfectly well that if a European president were elected that would be a dramatic step towards a United States of Europe. In fact, from the moment of such an election, the international community, whatever the constitutional niceties of the matter, would consider that Britain had turned itself into a United States of Europe.

European Union Bill

Debate between Lord Liddle and Lord Waddington

Monday 23rd May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Waddington]

My Lords, few things have done more harm to the reputation of the European Union than the telling of countries that have voted against new treaties or treaty changes that they should carry on voting until they come up with what the other members or the Commission consider the right answer. Behaviour of that sort is a denial of the right to say, “Change cannot take place unless we all agree and, as we don’t all agree, you and I must put up with the status quo”. That is what signing a treaty is all about. I submit that what happened over Denmark in the early 1990s, after the Danish people voted no to Maastricht in June 1992, was an abuse of power. It was also a terrible lost opportunity, which was responsible for much of the trouble and strife that hit the Major Government.

My noble friend Lord Spicer wrote a very perceptive article on this in Total Politics in March of this year. I hope Governments have learnt from what then happened. The Conservative Government were not happy about many aspects of Maastricht, particularly the removal from sovereign states of the power to manage their own economies. While we had opted out of the euro, there was a nagging fear that the European Court might even find that our opt-out was illegal.

[Lord Liddle]

If the Conservative Party had such objections to the Maastricht treaty, why did the Prime Minister of the time, John Major, on the day of the negotiation of the treaty describe it as “Game, set and match for Britain”?

[Lord Waddington]

I was referring to the opt-out and am describing what happened subsequently. I am not here to defend the Major Government, of which I was a member at that time, although not later when it came to ratifying the treaty. I am just describing the history of the matter.

European Union Bill

Debate between Lord Liddle and Lord Waddington

Monday 16th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Liddle]

I think the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, is right on that subject. The problem is the people who believe in the thin end of the wedge, but the way to deal with that is to have a proper process for deciding what is significant and requires a referendum and what does not in the form of an independent process that people will respect. That is what we are proposing in these amendments. It is a sensible compromise for the way forward that I hope the Government will consider seriously. It would resolve an awful lot of the big problems that people have with this Bill. I beg to move.

[Lord Waddington]

My Lords, the noble Lord referred to the two amendments as probing amendments. I think that they could better be described as tongue-in-cheek amendments. Similar amendments were moved in the House of Commons, but at least they applied to Clauses 3, 4 and 6. These amendments mysteriously apply only to matters dealt with in Clause 6. For the life of me I cannot understand why, as I am sure others will not either, if Parliament is to be involved in these matters, Parliament as a whole should not be involved. Quite obviously, members of the public will wonder what this mysterious body is. At least if Parliament as a whole was involved, they would know what was going on.

[Lord Liddle]

The noble Lord has made two points which reflect a misunderstanding of what this side is trying to propose. Parliament would be involved because it would be Parliament that would take the decision on whether a referendum was necessary on the basis of advice from either a Joint Committee of both Houses or some kind of independent committee which had real expertise on it. This is not being proposed tongue in cheek, but makes a serious point.

[Lord Waddington]

Of course I accept what the noble Lord says about the proposal not being tongue in cheek, but I certainly do not accept his argument. The fact remains that if you put in a Bill that a mysterious committee is going to have some say in the matter, you are moving even further away from a situation where the general public has any confidence at all that its views are considered when vital decisions are made. I fail entirely to see how giving a Joint Committee of both Houses a key role in deciding whether there should be a referendum will help to restore trust in the EU. I am bound to say—obviously this will not find favour with everyone in the House—that the House of Commons, controlled by the Whips, has never proved to be an effective check on the ambitions of the Europhiles, and this House, I have to say, seems to suffer from a built-in Europhiliac tendency. The idea of having a Joint Committee and expecting it to come up with a unanimous recommendation for a referendum is just pie in the sky, and I suspect that the noble Lord knows that perfectly well.

I remind the House that on 9 May, the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, implied in an unguarded moment that it was inconceivable that a Government would just give everything away for no gain. But the public are of the view that we have made a habit of giving things away. Sometimes Ministers have listened to anguished cries from the Guardian that if we do not agree with our partners we are going to be isolated, when it really would not be the end of the world if the others went ahead without us and, for instance, wasted their money on empire building like the setting up of the European External Action Service while we continue to benefit from the single market. I think that that would be a good idea.

Let us face it: sometimes peer pressure has got to work on the vain and on those who wish to be thought good members of the club with disastrous consequences like Mr Blair’s surrender over the rebate. I listened very carefully to what the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, had to say about that matter at Question Time today. I invite him to read with care various contributions made in this House on 4 February 2008 when we had a debate on the European budget. Every action of Mr Blair was dissected and examined with great care. All his convolutions, distortions and changes of front were brought out into the open. I do not think that any impartial person could honestly say that it is a very happy story. Governments are often not very good at saying no and Parliaments have gone along with them. That makes this Bill as it stands very necessary and overdue and makes the amendments very dangerous.

European Union Bill

Debate between Lord Liddle and Lord Waddington

Tuesday 26th April 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Liddle]

I certainly do not want to contradict what the noble Lord has said, but he ought to remember that, loving Europe’s history as I do, I know that it is also a history of bloody conflict, of massacre and genocide, which the European Union has played a major part in bringing to an end. I listened to the Minister’s supporters speaking from his Benches, and it seems that they all think that the history of the European Union is essentially one of betrayal. So when Winston Churchill called for Europe to unite, that was a betrayal, and when Harold Macmillan decided to take us into the Common Market, that was a betrayal.

[Lord Waddington]

I wonder if the noble Lord would allow me to put him right on this matter because it was raised the other day by my noble friend Lord Howell. In his great speech at Zurich, Winston Churchill said that he wished America, Britain and even perhaps the Soviet Union to be the godfathers of the new Europe, and he quite obviously was not considering that we were qualified for membership because of our own worldwide interests. He said that Germany and France should bury their differences and build a new Europe of which we would be the godfathers. We want no more of this nonsense of pretending that Winston Churchill committed himself to Britain being a member of the European Union, because he said exactly the opposite.

European Union Bill

Debate between Lord Liddle and Lord Waddington

Tuesday 26th April 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Liddle]

This is a similar amendment, which is an attempt to insert in Clause 4(1)(j) an exception of where a conferral of powers would strengthen the ability of the European Commission to enforce European Union competition, state aid and single market rules. Why move this? This is a clear national interest. The Prime Minister has just produced a great glossy booklet about the single market, which he has sent around the chancelleries of Europe to convince his partners that Britain is fully engaged in the European Union. It is a central interest of the United Kingdom. We face a constant complaint that there is, in practice, a lack of a level playing field within the European Union. To enforce the single market, we are largely dependent on the ability and strength of the European Commission in enforcing its rules. I am not saying that immediate changes to those rules are required, but we should have the flexibility, again, to look in a positive light if proposals are made. Again, these are not fundamental issues that involve transfers of powers. These are issues where action could well be in the British national interest, giving us something we want: a deeper, more integrated single market that is good for British business.

We all know that there are areas of the single market where action is much needed. The services directive has been passed; how will it be enforced? The Commission says that it will act. What will be the result when it tries, and what conclusions will be drawn from that? We do not know at this stage. We should be open to seeing what might have to be done to make the services directive effective. Similarly, on the Commission’s competition powers, I should like to see a more proactive European Commission in enforcing competition. However, we do not know whether the existing procedures will prove adequate to the purpose. On state aid, again, there is a very difficult balance to be struck between too much interference in the minutiae of state aid—activities by member states that should not go anywhere near Brussels—and the need to create a level playing field for the future. All I am saying here is that there are issues that might, in future, require us to accept changes. We should be open to that, rather than ruling them out. That is why I beg to move this amendment.

[Lord Waddington]

Surely there is a point to be made with regard to this amendment, which could have been made with equal force about the previous amendment. It is not a mere drafting point. You may have a conferral of power that strengthens the ability of the European Commission to enforce European Union competitive state aid and single market rules, but also has other very serious consequences. This is just one of the examples where you have to be very careful to make sure that one power is not used for a different purpose. It is plain—and not just a question of bad draftsmanship—that if you were to do this, you would allow the conferral of a power that did a lot of mischief as well as the things that the noble Lord rightly wants to see done.