European Union Bill

Debate between Lord Pearson of Rannoch and Lord Garel-Jones

Monday 23rd May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

My Lords, I was not going to speak for very long on the amendment, which is in my name as well, until the intervention of the noble and Europhile Lord, Lord Garel-Jones, who informed us that John Major did not say, after the Maastricht negotiations, that he had achieved game, set and match. That is generally accepted and I must ask the noble Lord: if Mr Major did not say that, who did, or is the whole thing just a figment of Eurosceptic imagination?

[Lord Garel-Jones]

I have some advantage over both the noble Lord and the British press: I happened to be there at the time. First, Prime Minister Major never said any such thing. Secondly, if it was said, it was said by a high-ranking civil servant, whose name, for obvious reasons, I will withhold.

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

That would be just typical of the Eurocrats.

However, it is true that the Conservatives forced through the Maastricht treaty, so presumably they were quite pleased with it. Some of us resisted it in this House. In his defence, one has to say that Mr Major had discovered the error of his ways by 12 November 1996, when he wrote a letter to M Jacques Santer, who was then, whatever it was called at the time, the boss of the European Commission. The letter shows how Mr Major, and possibly the Conservative Administration at the time, realised how they had been deceived by the cunning and duplicitous octopus in Brussels. His letter is very brief, and I have read it to your Lordships before—in 1998, I think, so it bears repetition now. It reads:

“Dear Jacques,

My intention in agreeing to the Protocol on Social Policy at Maastricht was to ensure that social legislation which placed unnecessary burdens on businesses and damaged competitiveness could not be imposed on the United Kingdom. The other Heads of State and Government also agreed that arrangement, without which there would have been no agreement at all at Maastricht.

However, in its judgement today, the European Court of Justice has ruled that the scope of Article 118a”—

that is, health and safety at work, and things like that—

“is much broader than the United Kingdom envisaged when the article was originally agreed, as part of the Single European Act. This appears to mean that legislation which the United Kingdom had expected would be dealt with under the Protocol can in fact be adopted under Article 118a”.

The following is a good paragraph:

“This is contrary to the clear and express wishes of the United Kingdom Government, and goes directly counter to the spirit of what we agreed at Maastricht. It is unacceptable and must be remedied”.

He then says that he will table amendments and so on to it. His penultimate paragraph says:

“I attach the utmost importance to these amendments and I shall insist that they form part of the outcome of the Intergovernmental Conference. I do not see how new agreements can be reached if earlier agreements are being undermined”.

That was in the run-up to the Amsterdam treaty. The Conservatives then lost the election and the new Labour Government signed up to the Social Chapter anyway, so we have the working week and so on.

That is the full picture behind the noble Lord’s intervention. At least we can see that, by the time he left office, Mr Major had understood the nature of the beast with which he was dealing, although of course when poor Mr Blair came along, he went back to the whole business of being at the heart of Europe—being nice to them and so on. We get everything that we want and that is why we are where we are today.

Finally, the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, said that the reason the French voted against the Giscard constitution was that they wanted a more social Europe. My simple question to him is: why did the Dutch then vote in exactly the same way two days later? I support the amendment.