European Union Bill

Lord Maclennan of Rogart Excerpts

Wednesday 13th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Maclennan of Rogart]

My Lords, if the purpose of this Bill were gesture politics, with no outside effects, then perhaps it would be possible to go along with it. However, the provisions proposed in this amendment are reviewable by a Government and are by no means gestures alone. They are bound to have a significant effect on the ability of our Ministers negotiating in the Council to decide issues of massive importance to the people. We have been told that none of those issues will be considered by the people in the lifetime of this Parliament so the Government appear to be putting on ice any questions about improving the efficacy of the working of the European Union until the end of this Parliament.

My noble friend who opened this debate said that a subsequent Parliament could amend this Bill or throw it out. He is right, but he also said in an earlier debate that the Government have no intention of using this Bill in this Parliament. If that is the case, why are we having to legislate at all? It seems to me that the appropriate time to do that would be in the next Parliament if that is when these measures are supposed to bite. The notion that we are legislating for the future in this way is bound to have almost no effect on public opinion beyond putting up scaremongering notices about the possibility that after the next election we will all collapse in a heap and be walked over by our fellow members of the European Union. That is guaranteed to make the issue of Europe a very divisive one at the next election.

The amendment of my noble friend Lord Goodhart seems to be eminently sensible. It has not been rejected by another place. It is new and it is not merely differently phrased but differently conceived. I supported the sunset amendment as it was drafted but I am happy to support my noble friend’s revision. It would allow Ministers to decide, in the light of the circumstances at the time, whether the issue before Europe and before this country was of such massive importance that it would be inappropriate to prepare a referendum. My experience of dealing with European matters in Parliament suggests that debates are long and thorough about European issues. The public are made completely aware, by debate and deliberation, what the issues are. Surely some of those who are supporting this Bill must remember the debates on the Maastricht treaty—the hours after hours in which Members of Parliament considered these matters. To suggest that the public were not aware of it is simply to deny the facts of history.

The noble Lord, Lord Willoughby de Broke, suggested that this was a wrecking amendment. It is not—it is an amendment that enables the Government of the day to decide whether the national interest is better served by legislative process—by debate, as we had over Maastricht—than by having a prolonged debate in public leading to a referendum.

[Lord Willoughby de Broke]

My Lords, I took part in the debates on the Maastricht treaty. I remember them very well. The central point about those debates and about the way the treaty was pushed through is that we were not given a referendum. There was a big debate here on whether we should have a referendum on the Maastricht treaty. Unfortunately, that Motion was lost and we did not have a referendum, and that is part of the problem with the EU in this country. The people have never been given a vote since the referendum on the Common Market in 1975. This sort of amendment will stop them having a say, which they should be given.

[Lord Maclennan of Rogart]

We live in a representative democracy and elected Members of Parliament are put into that position of authority to act in the best interests of the citizens of this country. The notion that by not having referenda we are somehow denying the fundament of our parliamentary democracy seems to be a complete and utter nonsense. It is not only the Maastricht treaty that was carried through by Parliament in that way. Mrs Thatcher, when she was Prime Minister, also introduced the Single European Act which introduced majority voting and there was no question of a referendum about that. If you look at the opinion polls of those years, and indeed of the years around Maastricht, the public were far more supportive of our membership of the European Union than they are now.

I heard the remark of the Minister for Europe, Mr Lidington, that it is only people of my generation who are supportive of the European Union. When we were active young Members, supporting the European Union, the public listened and believed what we were saying—that it was in the interests of the people of Britain. Now we have a new generation, a whole generation younger than me, who claim that it is our fault that the public are not with them. The nonsense of that is that they have never seriously tried to explain what the purposes of the European Union are; what its achievements are and what its goals are. That is why we are wasting our time with this ridiculous piece of legislation, which is a waste of parliamentary time in scrutiny and is deceiving the public. We have been told it will not be voted on. There will be no referendum this side of the next election and after that the picture will all change.

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, the noble Lord knows by now that I have unlimited respect for his consistent contribution on European matters. This peroration of his is very powerful. Would he not agree that the trouble with this wretched piece of legislation is that it could not be better designed to undermine our influence on the mainland of Europe?

[Lord Maclennan of Rogart]

My Lords—

[Lord Shutt of Greetland]

My Lords, I believe that the House is ready to hear the closing speakers. I sense where the House is.

[Lord Maclennan of Rogart]

My Lords, I had sat down and was perfectly happy to hear the view of the noble Lord, Lord Judd. The House is eager to take a decision.

[Lord Triesman]

My Lords—

European Union Bill

Lord Maclennan of Rogart Excerpts

Monday 13th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean]

No, my Lords, of course that is not the case. The point about what has happened in the very recent past is that not only did one of the parties in the referendum say in its manifesto that it would not raise fees but its members signed individual pledges to their electorates to say that they would not increase them, let alone put them up by three times. I do not take the noble Lord’s point on that; it was rather a weak one.

I return to the noble Lord, Lord Waddington. We understand that he has very robust views, as do many of his noble colleagues, but I hope that the Conservative Benches have listened to what I thought was the generous support from the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart. There can be no doubt where he stands on the European Union and yet he and the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, are willing to compromise on this issue. They are willing to acknowledge some of the points that have been raised on the Conservative Benches—and I make the point that it is very much the Conservative Benches, with one or two exceptions on the Liberal Democrat Benches. The noble Lords, Lord Goodhart and Lord Hannay, and others are willing to support referendums on the really important issues. That is the point. We are not saying no; we are saying, “Let’s listen to what our own Constitution Committee, with its representatives from the Conservative Benches, has said unanimously on this issue”, and it has said that referendums must be kept for the really important constitutional issues. If we do not concentrate on what is important, where we should be concentrating the British public’s attention, then indeed we do have a big argument about the role of Parliament and we do start to get into the fundamental constitutional issue of what Parliament is here to do.

It has been said that people will really want to have these referendums. I put it to your Lordships that we all know that is not true; of course they will not want them. They would want them on the euro; if we decided that we were going to leave the European Union; on Schengen issues, because immigration is such a major issue; and on whether or not there should be a European army. Those are the fundamental issues that have been at the centre of most of the arguments in this House in the whole time that I have been here, listening as we went through them over and over again. I suggest to your Lordships that going through the long list in front of us will do nothing to make the British public more confident in what we are doing here. Frankly, it will make them think that we have been dealing with trivia instead of with the important issues that face us.

[Lord Maclennan of Rogart]

My Lords, perhaps I may intervene briefly at the end of a fascinating debate. Those who are opposed to Amendment 14, which I strongly support, and the other amendments in the group have been at pains to suggest that what the British people really want is to stop the European Union taking decisions. My noble friend Lord Lamont made the point forcefully that one of the reasons for the unhappiness about the European Union is that it makes decisions in a cumbersome and not very transparent way. It does not actually always intervene to deal with the problems that occupy the British public most closely. It seems that the matters on which the Bill suggests that there should be referenda before decisions are finally taken would in fact make that doubt about the effectiveness of the European Union much stronger. It would make it more difficult for the Union to be able to answer the problems of banking, which are uppermost in many people’s minds at this time. It would make it more difficult for the Union to deal with problems of cross-border immigration and it would make it more difficult for the Union to take action on the environment, which many regard as the top priority today.

The noble Lord, Lord Lamont, talked about the indirect democracy of the European Union. Yes, I agree with him that that is a suitable characterisation. Of course all democracy is indirect in a sense, and the kind of cutting of agreements between interest groups within a Cabinet is comparable with what he described when decisions are taken at the European level. However, it is not altogether true that treaties are unamendable. We have had many treaties since we entered the Common Market which have endeavoured to make the decision- making process more democratic, open and expeditious, and I think that most of those treaties have gone through without any hostile reaction from the public. This Bill seems to have been designed to put a drag anchor on the process of improving decision making within the European Union. I do not accept the view expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, that decisions taken in the Union are irreversible. Even among those who are full members of Schengen, discussions are going on about the need to look at immigration in the light of the probable influx from Arabian countries. It is not impossible that steps will be taken to respond to that.

If we want the European Union to be more appreciated for what it does, we should not be putting rocks in the road that make it more difficult for its institutions, including the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission, to come up with legislative proposals to tackle the perceived difficulties that we all share within Europe. Most of our interests are common interests in the areas for which the European Union has responsibility. Certainly, ideologies will divide people in all countries, but because of the fact that so many of our interests are common, we do want to improve the democratic processes. Requiring referenda to be held on some of these matters by one out of 27 or 28 countries would be seen as a block on progress, democratisation and modernisation not only by other countries, but also by many people in this country who are conscious of the value of the work that the European Union has done over the 60 years of its existence.

European Union Bill

Lord Maclennan of Rogart Excerpts

Tuesday 5th April 2011 Lords Chamber

Although these matters are of concern and your Lordships have applied great assiduity and care to looking at them, I think that I have said enough to justify the Government’s assertion that Article 48(6) decisions should be treated in the same way as any other type of treaty change. If Article 48(6) decisions that transfer power or competence from the UK are deemed insignificant, there will be no referendum, although, significantly, there would be an Act of Parliament. If the decisions are larger and more important and form part of great treaties that come before this nation and are slowly processed through all member states, in several instances—including from now on in this country—through a referendum as we believe is proper, we think that that is a healthy and democratic development. On that basis, I ask noble Lords not to press their amendments.

[Lord Maclennan of Rogart]

Before my noble friend sits down—

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, my noble friend has sat down and there has been an agreement through the usual channels that this might be a convenient moment for the noble Lord who moved the amendment to respond and for us to move on after that. There have been a considerable number of interventions. My noble friend the Minister has been extremely generous with his responses. I invite the Committee to move on and the mover of the amendment to speak.

Queen's Speech

Lord Maclennan of Rogart Excerpts

Wednesday 26th May 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Maclennan of Rogart]

My Lords, I have listened to this debate from the very beginning to this predetermined hour. It has demonstrated the great strength of this House in bringing to the discussions a wealth of opinion and knowledge from sometimes unexpected quarters. It has not been a partisan debate. We have heard a number of people agreeing with those sitting on different Benches. It is entirely appropriate that a coalition Government should be backed by that kind of a Chamber, which brings constructive recommendations and does not react in a purely dogmatic way to the great and troubling issues of the present.

In one sense, I welcome the coalition’s ending of what might have been seen as an increasingly presidential system, with policy too much dictated from the top—from No. 10. We are not seeing that replaced by a duumvirate, but rather by a recognition that the voices of those elected to Parliament and those with the responsibility of participating in these debates should be heard and taken fully into account.

I was interested to hear the noble Lord, Lord Blackwell, who has on a number of occasions thought it right to focus on the negative about the European Union, giving a rather positive suggestion that we should cast our eyes more widely and not simply focus on the European Union. As someone who, shortly after I entered political life at the age of 29, became the PPS to the last Commonwealth Secretary, the late Lord Thomson of Monifieth, who went on to become our first Minister for Europe, I have never thought that these things were inconsistent.

In opening the debate, the noble Lord, Lord Howell, whose appointment has been widely welcomed, given his great experience of many aspects of foreign policy, recognised the extensiveness of the dangers that we face in the world today. We heard from him a long list of interests and concerns, which have been echoed and magnified throughout the debate. We heard about natural disasters, poverty, malnutrition, the exploitation of the less well off, the threats of disease, uncontrolled population growth, the settlement of disputes by force rather than according to the edicts or prescriptions of public international law and the lack of certainty about what the rules of public international law are or ought to be on the use of force in humanitarian crises. We also heard about the violation of human rights and many other matters. All these things require us to focus as a nation on what our priorities must be.

Never has that been truer than at the moment, when our economic weaknesses have been displayed in a humiliating fashion. We must intervene effectively in the global issues that have been discussed. We should not underestimate our capacity, but we have to be realistic about our capabilities and not exaggerate what we can effect beneficently.

I hope that the words of the noble Lord, Lord Owen, on the Strategic Defence Review will be listened to. He has always been concerned about that aspect of our national interest. He made the important recommendation that the review should be far-reaching. He said that we should not accept any limitation on the commitments that we can afford and those that we cannot afford and that we should consider what makes most sense.

I want to speak in particular about the European Union, because I do not entirely accept what the noble Lord, Lord Owen, said about the danger of being locked into the EU strategically. I argue that our capacity for influencing the issues that have been raised in this debate will be immensely strengthened if the European Union speaks with one voice. As the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, pointed out, we should not differentiate ourselves from and hold at arm’s length the economic problems of the eurozone. We must recognise that those problems impact directly on this country. The fact that we did not join the euro has, if anything, diminished our capacity to avoid the crisis and has to some extent weakened our voice in coming to grips with it. We must not for a moment stand back in a vain—in both senses of the word—attempt to proclaim a superiority that we certainly do not merit.

If the European Union is not embroiling and entangling us, but making a serious contribution to such matters as climate change, on which it conspicuously failed to make any significant impact in the outcome of the Copenhagen conference, there is a lesson for us. Our voice and interests—what has been referred to as our international network of historic contacts in the Commonwealth and other alliances—will be amplified immensely if we can come together with the European Union. If we recognise the limitations of our diplomatic capacity, which are reflected to some extent in the cuts that have been made in the departmental spending of our Foreign and Commonwealth Office, let us welcome the setting up of the External Action Service. Let us back that, where we can, with a political attempt to bring together the understanding of the member countries of the European Union, and utilise our connections and theirs—many of them also have colonial and imperial links—so that we can play a part in settling international disputes and holding risks and terrors at bay by exercising the weight that the European Union’s state of development really does require of us.