European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Lord Pearson of Rannoch and Lord Hannay of Chiswick

Monday 18th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch (UKIP)]

My Lords, I remind the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, and those noble Lords who, in reality, want us to stay in the European Union, that a referendum in 1975 confirmed our membership of the then European Community and that our recent referendum decided we should leave it. A Written Answer to me on 9 January this year revealed that some 20,000 pieces of EU law have been imposed on this country since 1973 and there was nothing the Commons or your Lordships’ House could do to stop it. The noble Lord, Lord Lamont, referred to this. How do those who accepted the result of that first referendum and approved all those laws from the anti-democratic EU law-making system now think that Parliament should decide the manner of our going?

I wonder how many of our people understand how anti-democratic that system is and whether the result may have been even more in favour of leaving if they had known it. Indeed, I am tempted to wonder how many of your Lordships’ understand it. To test that knowledge, I ask noble Lords who know what COREPER is and what it does to raise their hands—former Eurocrats excluded. Not many—in fact hardly any. I will explain what it does. It is our most—

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

I merely wish to ask the noble Lord whether he is asking the House to play a game of Trivial Pursuit.

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

My Lords, the pursuit will be far from trivial when the answer is seen.

It is our most significant law-making body. After all EU legislation has been proposed, in secret, by the unelected Commission, it is then negotiated, still in secret, in the Committee of Permanent Representatives, or COREPER. Now most of your Lordships know what it is. When it has finished, the legislation goes to the Council of Ministers, where the United Kingdom has been outvoted on every single piece of legislation that we have opposed in the past 10 years. That is the system which has resulted in those 20,000 laws being passed, with our Parliament wholly irrelevant.

I look forward to an explanation from the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, or one of his noble remainer friends, as to why they want to go on with it and how they have the nerve to pray Parliament in aid of their desire to do so.

EU Referendum and EU Reform (EUC Report)

Debate between Lord Pearson of Rannoch and Lord Hannay of Chiswick

Wednesday 15th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch (UKIP)]

My Lords, I cannot help mentioning that, of the 34 speakers in this debate, I can see perhaps only two who think that we should leave the European Union. I remind your Lordships, and anyone who may read this debate—and indeed the one that follows, where I cannot see a single Brexiteer on the Order Paper—that your Lordships’ House is a very Europhile place, well-stocked with former government Ministers, Members of Parliament and servants of the EU, who between them have been responsible over long, and what they no doubt regard as successful, lives for bringing this country to its present state of subservience to the corrupt octopus in Brussels. It must be disappointing for them to see so much ingratitude and anger boiling up among the British people against the project in which they have invested so much and in which they so fervently believe.

That is why, during this referendum campaign, we have seen Project Octopus turning into Project Fear—we are told to be fearful of leaving the clutch of its tentacles. This morning we have Project Panic as the Chancellor threatens us with all manner of taxes and pestilence if, as the world’s fifth-largest economy, we dare to take our own place outside the failing project of European integration and simply join the 160 other countries in the world that have not made the mistake of joining it.

At the heart of this threat of economic disaster if we vote to leave next Thursday lies a wholly improbable scare: that somehow we would lose our present free trade with the single market and have to pay job-destroying tariffs to export into it. I propose to spend the rest of these few minutes examining that central fallacy in the remain position.

Government figures suggest that around 10% of our GDP goes in trade with clients in the EU—supporting some 3 million British jobs; another 10% goes to the rest of the world; and 80% stays in our domestic economy. But EU overregulation strangles all 100% of our economy, so 90% of it would be set free from Brussels overkill if we leave the EU. Of course, we would have to meet single market requirements for the 10% that we export to it, just as we do for what we export to the foreign markets outside the EU.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

The noble Lord says that EU regulation strangles our economy. Can he explain why the OECD found that we were the second-least regulated economy in the OECD—that is, we were less regulated than its non-EU members—and that the only country less regulated than us was another EU member, the Netherlands? Perhaps he could give a little thought to that before he makes foolish remarks such as the ones he has just made.

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

My Lords, I do not see that anything the noble Lord has said alters what I said. The Dutch Prime Minister recently went so far as to say that he thought a large proportion of the Dutch economy was afflicted by EU regulations. The noble Lord will simply have to wait until we are out of the European Union and then he will see how we set ourselves free.

As I was saying, we would go on exporting to the rest of the world as we do now. We would meet the conditions required by the rest of the world, just as it pays to put the steering wheel on the left if you are selling a car to the United States.

The Government’s ONS Pink Book reveals that our growing trade deficit with the single market reached £85 billion in 2015. This means that manufacturers in the EU sold us £85 billion-worth more in goods than we sell them. If we accept the Government’s suggestion that some 3 million jobs support the 10% of our GDP which exports to the single market, this means that there are around 5.5 million jobs in the EU which support exporting to us. So if the politicians in Brussels try to impose tariffs on our trade together, that would hit 2.5 million more jobs in the single market than it would here and would not be tolerated by EU manufacturers.

Let us take the specific example of our car trade, which the Prime Minister and other Europhiles pretend would suffer a 10% tariff on its exports to the single market if we leave the political construct of the EU, with consequent job losses here. That must be nonsense, because we import twice as many cars from the EU as we export to it—1.7 million cars in and 700,000 cars out—while EU manufacturers also enjoy having 64% of our domestic car market. So those powerful manufacturers, with their suppliers and employees, will simply not tolerate a tariff which would damage them so much more than us, however much Herr Juncker and Herr Schäuble and sundry other mischief in Brussels might wish to punish us for leaving the rest of the EU.

European Union Referendum Bill

Debate between Lord Pearson of Rannoch and Lord Hannay of Chiswick

Monday 23rd November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 24C. In doing so, I pay tribute to the Minister for the way in which she has listened to the points raised, with some force and detail, in Committee. With the two amendments that she has produced today—Amendment 24A, in response to an amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, which I also felt was absolutely justified, so I am delighted that she has picked up his amendment and turned it into a government one, and Amendment 24B, which deals with matters that I and others raised—I think that she has made a major effort to meet the point that we made in Committee, and which I continue to make, which is that there will be a need for the electorate to receive factual, objective information from the Government about these extremely complex matters, additional to any information that will come to them, no doubt in tsunamis of rhetoric, from the two campaigns. The campaigns will be advocates but the electorate has to make a judgment, and it will be of essential value to them to have objective factual material provided by the Government. That is why we were extremely dissatisfied with the absence of any provision for this in the original Bill that was drafted by the Government and which came to us with the imprimatur of the other place because we felt that it was a completely inadequate basis on which to move forward to what is after all, as the Prime Minister said, one of the most significant and important decisions that this country has had to take for many decades. So that is a very good step forward.

I shall explain why we felt that the Government should be prepared to go further and be a bit more specific than they are in Amendment 24B, or at least than they were before the Minister gave some rather helpful clarifications this afternoon. I shall take two examples—two sub-headings—that illustrate the amendments that I and others have proposed. I start with Gibraltar because the Minister has mentioned it. What the effects of withdrawal would be is of importance to more people than just the people of Gibraltar. Our own wider electorate needs to know that Gibraltar became part of the EU only because it was a dependent territory for whose foreign affairs the United Kingdom was responsible. That was the sole basis on which it became a member, and therefore if the UK left, it would leave. That has quite important implications for the vexed issue of the land border with Spain, for example, which would cease to be an internal border of the EU and would become an external one. These are facts, not matters of opinion; they do not seek to draw the Government on to what would come after an Article 50 negotiation or anything like that. They are just so that the electorate knows that, the moment they cast their votes, certain consequences could follow from it.

Secondly, I take the law and order issue. The European arrest warrant was debated at enormous length in both Houses at the time of the Protocol 36 negotiations two years ago. It became apparent during that debate that the European arrest warrant is extraordinarily important for this country in terms of recovering indicted criminals from abroad and returning EU citizens who are accused of often very heinous crimes from here to the country where they have been indicted. These are hugely important for our law and order and our battle against international crime.

In those debates, it also became apparent how important the European arrest warrant is for the Good Friday agreement and what goes on in Northern Ireland because it has depoliticised the extradition arrangements between Ireland and Northern Ireland. In the past, they have been highly politicised and have led to a number of very unsatisfactory discussions between the two Governments, often not leading to the return of criminals who have committed terrible offences. Therefore it is important for the electorate to know that the European arrest warrant would disappear in this country if we left. I am not talking about what we might try to put in its place, the fantasies about negotiating 27 extradition agreements with the other member states or anything like that. I do not want to go there. That is not where the amendment was intended to go.

This afternoon, the Minister has given some important clarifications on a large number of the detailed specifics that I introduced. I and others will need to study them with great care. However, on the point about Gibraltar and the devolved Administrations, I entirely understand what she is saying—that it would not be right for the Government, off their own bat, to write in a report what the consequences were going to be for Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales or Gibraltar without consulting them and without having their view—but I hope that in her reply to this debate the Minister will go a little further. She said that the devolved Administrations and Gibraltar will be able to produce their own reports. That is fine. They would be reports to their parts of the electorate. I do not imagine—I do not speak in any disparaging way—that they will be widely read by the electorate of this country, yet the issues involve the electorate of the whole United Kingdom. Therefore, I hope that she will be able to say that after consultation with the Government of Gibraltar and the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland Administrations and assuming—I do not see why they should have any objection—that they are willing to do so, the Government will include the implications for the Administrations of Northern Ireland, Wales, Scotland and Gibraltar in the report to which Amendment 24B refers. This will allow the whole electorate to have a proper sight of all the implications. Frankly, those implications, particularly with regard to Northern Ireland and also to Scotland and Wales, could be very far-ranging. Therefore, I hope that when the Minister replies to this debate, she will able to cover that point.

We are making progress now. I shall listen with great care to the Minister’s reply. Others who proposed this amendment may wish to take up other points on which they would like to have clarification. Meanwhile, I look forward with interest to the Minister’s reply.

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch (UKIP)]

My Lords, buried somewhere in this group of amendments and, I think, in the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, is the question about what happens on Brexit to all the EU law which is now sewn into our domestic law. That law will remain valid until repealed. I hope that it will be helpful to your Lordships if I recall that in 1997 I got a Bill through its Second Reading in your Lordships’ House, on a vote, that would have taken the UK out of the EU. The same question arose, since one is not allowed to table Bills which cannot be executed in practice. At the time, the clerks’ advice was that it would have taken about a dozen parliamentary draftsmen about one month to identify all the EU legislation that was then part of our domestic law. The laws that the Government of the day wanted to repeal could have been brought before Parliament either singly or collectively for Parliament to repeal. Of course, the volume of EU law would be much larger now, the draftsmen required rather more numerous and/or the timescale proportionately greater. However, I make the point that the process and its happy outcome would be the same, and there is no reason why it should not be undertaken.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

I point out that I am not in receipt of such a pension. If the noble Lord was referring to me, perhaps he will withdraw the reference. I am not sure who he thinks he was referring to among those on the Order Paper, but as far as I am concerned, I am not and never have been in receipt of a pension from the European Union. I ask the noble Lord to consider the fact that he will have ample opportunity in the name of his party to put forward his views, including those on the giant octopus in Brussels, which seems to be taking a day out today. The purpose of this amendment was not as he has erroneously described it; the purpose of this amendment was to persuade the Government, which we will perhaps succeed in doing, to provide factual, objective information that will enable the electorate to make up their mind on the point the noble Lord raises.

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

My Lords, if the noble Lord is not in receipt of an EU pension, I have nothing to clarify. I do not have to name names. I am referring to previous employees of the European Union—in particular, of the Commission—who are in receipt of EU pensions, which they can lose if they go against the interests of the European Union. If no one feels guilty in that regard, of course they have nothing to say. On the amendment, I am going into the fundamental reasons why it is misguided, and with the noble Lord’s permission, I will continue.

It is some time since I reminded your Lordships of that founding idea, which was that the European nations had caused so much bloodshed over the centuries that they had to be gradually emasculated and put under a new form of technocratic government that was to supplant national democracy, which it has indeed done; hence the EU’s absurd claim to have brought peace to Europe since 1945, which was instead of course secured by NATO; hence also the huge but little-understood powers of the unelected Commission, with its monopoly to propose new legislation, in secret—which is now so much of our own legislation—and then to execute that legislation when it has been through the Brussels sausage machine, imposing heavy fines along the way, and subject only to that engine of EU integration, the Luxembourg court. The Commission also manages the EU budget—so badly that its accounts have not been signed off for 21 years. Believe it or not, the Commission also negotiates all our foreign trade agreements—so badly that we still do not have a free trade agreement with China, India, Russia, the USA, Australia, Canada and many of the markets of the future. Singapore has had them all for 10 years. Who knows what that failure has cost our economy; the amendment refers to our economy.

As to what is left of our democracy while we stay in the EU, the Euro-lie goes that it is upheld in the Council of Ministers from the nation states, where we have only 12% of the votes and where we have been defeated on every single one of the 55 new laws we have opposed since 1996.

My first point is, therefore, that even if we did get any advantage from our EU membership, in any of the areas mentioned in the amendment, it would still not be worth it because the price would have been our democracy. However, the fact is that we do not, as my noble friend Lord Willoughby de Broke will confirm.

Europhiles try to frighten us by pretending that jobs would be lost if we left the EU. We are back to the economy again.

European Union Referendum Bill

Debate between Lord Pearson of Rannoch and Lord Hannay of Chiswick

Monday 2nd November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch (UKIP)]

My Lords, before the noble Lord replies—

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

I do not know whether the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, is intervening in my speech. Perhaps I could reply to the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton. That is the normal practice. The point that he raised is perfectly valid, but it is not called for in this amendment. The question of the financing of these policies would as usual escape the control of your Lordships’ House and be dealt with in a Budget. I imagine that British farmers need to know under what regime they would live, what the rules and regulations would be, and above how all that regime would be brought about in time.

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

My Lords, perhaps I can put a little flesh on my noble friend Lord Hamilton’s question. I do not know whether the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, saw the Pink Book figures that emerged on Friday. They state our gross contribution for 2014 as £20 billion, of which the mandarins in Brussels were graciously pleased to send back to us a mere £7.5 billion. In the spirit of the noble Lord’s question, does the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, agree that we would have at least £12.5 billion clear to meet any financial difficulties arising from the points that he is making?

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

No, I do not agree and I do not have to address it in this debate, because it is not what we are debating. I remind the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, that in the most recent certified figures, which were produced for 2013—I am not aware of the ones to which he has just referred—the British net contribution per capita was ninth, behind that of France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxemburg, and a few other countries.

Criminal Justice and Data Protection (Protocol No. 36) Regulations 2014

Debate between Lord Pearson of Rannoch and Lord Hannay of Chiswick

Monday 17th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

My Lords, I think that tonight’s debate marks the final parliamentary chapter in this tangled tale of Britain’s block opt-out from pre-Lisbon justice and home affairs legislation, and of its aim to rejoin those 35 significant measures. Your Lordships’ House has been closely involved in this matter from the very start. It has been a tangled tale over the past two years, and I suspect that some Members may be heartily sick of a process that has involved two weighty reports from your Lordships’ Select Committee, three full-scale debates and any amount of behind-the-scenes work and consultation. Dry, complex and technical though the process may have been, however, it concerns matters that are crucial to Britain’s ability to maintain our own internal security and to combat effectively the continuously rising tide of international cross-border crime. Whether you are talking about drugs, human trafficking, money laundering, cybercrime, terrorism or child pornography, all these matters are assisted by those 35 measures.

The role that your Lordships’ House has played in terms of parliamentary scrutiny and holding the Government to account has been an exemplary one, and I pay tribute to those others, along with myself, who participated in it and to the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, who led our efforts. We should register tonight that the processes in this House have worked well. It is not part of our duty to intrude on the private grief of another place; suffice it to say that the processes there seem to be a good deal suboptimal.

We are in a totally different position, as the Minister said when he opened the debate, because when we debated and approved the triggering of the block opt-out we also approved the reintroduction of the 35 measures. We decided that in July 2013. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, and others will forgive me for pointing out that pretty well everyone who has criticised the line that the Government are now taking failed to speak in any of those debates.

Now we are where we are. I welcome the fact that the Government adjusted their Motion for tonight’s debate to take into account the fact that the 35 measures needed to be explicitly referred to. It was, I think, a bit of a mistake not to have done that in the other place. I have no hesitation in supporting the Government in the measures they now wish to rejoin. I equally have no hesitation whatever in supporting the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, in the criticism that he has made of the processes that have led us here.

I find it saddening that these European debates descend so much into what I can only describe as ideology, and are not enough concentrated on the substance of the matter—about which the evidence taken by the committee that I and others served on was pretty conclusive. It is a pity. Europe is not religion, it is politics; and in politics you have to make compromises. In this case, I believe that the Government have reached a very satisfactory compromise.

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

My Lords, when the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, accuses some of us of religious fervour, I have to say to him: “Da che pulpito vien la predica?”. From what pulpit comes the sermon? As noble Lords have said, as part of the block opt-in we are talking about tonight, we are looking at the European arrest warrant. The overriding objection to the European arrest warrant can be simply put. It allows the extradition, pretrial detention, trial, sentencing and imprisonment of British citizens in inferior foreign jurisdictions under the final jurisdiction of the inferior Luxembourg court. Trial by jury largely disappears in these cases and so does habeas corpus. Under Napoleonic law, the investigator and the judge are often the same person. There have already been several famous miscarriages of justice and I have no doubt that there will be more, whatever tinkering takes places with the system. My noble friend Lord Willoughby de Broke and others have mentioned some of those cases.

When I say that we are dealing with inferior foreign jurisdictions, I mean that we do so under the final auspices of, believe it or not, that engine of the treaties, the European court of so-called justice in Luxembourg, which is not a court of law at all—it is the engine of the treaties. It has to find in favour of ever closer union because that is what its instructions are from the treaties. When I say that we are dealing with inferior foreign jurisdictions, let me give you the example of just one of them—my beloved Italy. In Italy, pretrial detainees make up around 40% of the prison population. In this country, it is around 15%. Court processes in Italy last an average of 116 months. In the UK, it is an average of six months, rising to 10 at the Crown Court. In Italy, the maximum pretrial detention is 18 months. In England and Wales, this is set at six months, but a recent report found that our average was 13 weeks.

Under English and Welsh law, there is a presumption in favour of releasing the defendant pending trial. In Italy, circumstantial evidence is enough for a judge to order a pretrial detention. In Italy, a pretrial detention is decided not in open court but by a judge in chambers, possibly by the same chap who investigated the case in the first place. The defendant has no right to take part in the decision-making process and is not represented by a lawyer.

I hope that that is enough for Italy. Then there is Greece, that cradle of the Symeou case. I could go on about other EU jurisdictions, but I hope that I have said enough to make my point. No amount of convenience can override the principle that we should not be sending our citizens into these rotten systems, unless our courts are satisfied that the evidence which sends them there is sufficient.

There is only one advantage in going ahead with the European arrest warrant and these opt-ins. They will move the United Kingdom even further along the road to leaving the failed project that is the European Union.

European Union: Justice and Home Affairs

Debate between Lord Pearson of Rannoch and Lord Hannay of Chiswick

Thursday 8th May 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords—

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch (UKIP)]

My Lords—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

My Lords, it is of course a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, who expresses with such purity his enthusiasm for the European dream, which is, of course, also shared by so many of your Lordships, blissfully unaware that the dream has turned into a nightmare for millions of people in this country and elsewhere in Europe.

As to the Motions before us, it appears that the corrupt octopus in Brussels is putting a tentacle round yet more of our sovereignty and, once again, the Government are a willing accomplice. It is small wonder that the British people are getting angrier by the day and more disdainful of us, their political and bureaucratic class. The Prime Minister, addressing the Conservative Party conference on 4 November 2009, said:

“The third area where we will negotiate for a return of powers is criminal justice. We must be sure that the measures included in the Lisbon Treaty will not bring creeping control over our criminal justice system by EU judges. We will want to prevent EU judges gaining steadily greater control over our criminal justice system by negotiating an arrangement which would protect it. That will mean limiting the European Court of Justice’s jurisdiction over criminal law to its pre-Lisbon level, and ensuring that only British authorities can initiate criminal investigations in Britain”.

He continued with really quite a good bit:

“I recognise, of course, that taking back power in these areas, or negotiating arrangements that suit the UK, is not something we can do unilaterally. It means changing the rules of an institution of which we are a member—changing rules that Britain has signed up to. If we want to make changes, we will need to do that through negotiation with our European partners, and we will need the agreement of all twenty seven member states”.

I trust your Lordships will agree that that is a pretty clear commitment to the return of powers to this country from Brussels in our criminal justice system and, indeed, as we know from the Prime Minister, elsewhere.

However, Mr Cameron spoke with slippery inaccuracy, to put it politely, when he said that of course he would have to gain the consent of all 27 other member states in order to achieve his aim. He may have thought, as a committed Europhile, that he was giving himself an escape route from his promise, in which he clearly did not believe. The point is, of course, that by 4 November 2009 the Lisbon treaty was already law, complete with its block opt-out for the UK from all 135 criminal justice measures. When he made that speech he was simply not telling the truth—or let me be generous and put it down to ignorance—because we did not, and do not, need the consent of any other member state to escape from any or every one of these wretched measures.

In fact, we have now opted out of all of them. All we need to do is to leave it at that, but no—in direct contradiction to Mr Cameron’s promise, his Government are proposing to opt back in to the most pernicious of them, including the infamous European arrest warrant. I do not really want to descend into its sordid detail, or indeed that of Eurojust, or the freezing of evidence and confiscation orders. The wider point is that all these areas have been under the sole control of Parliament for centuries and the Government intend to put them within the jurisdiction of that engine of European integration, the Luxembourg court of so-called justice.

The Government and those who support that transfer do not seem to understand that it is simply not acceptable to the British people for them to be liable to be extradited, to stand trial in an inferior foreign jurisdiction, at the request of an inferior foreign investigator—perhaps for a crime that is not even a crime in this country, such as xenophobia—and left to rot for months in a foreign jail before being tried without a jury.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

Perhaps the noble Lord could spend just a little time on the sordid detail of the European arrest warrant. Does he object to us being able to get criminals back from Spain, France, Germany or Italy in order that we can try them and, if necessary, convict them for crimes of a very serious nature? Does he regard as sordid detail the fact that we are able to return nationals of other member states rapidly to their countries, where they have committed or are indicted for crimes, at a time when they are in this country and possibly at risk of committing more crimes?

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

My Lords, all that can be done as it was done for a very long time, by intergovernmental collaboration. I object to the fact that any one of our citizens should be treated as Andrew Symeou was treated. I do not think that the convenient price that the noble Lord advances for this awful piece of legislation is worth the candle, nor do many British people—actually, most British people.

As I was saying, it is not good enough to say that this is convenient for our police and bureaucracy, which is what the noble Lord was indicating. It is not good enough to say that crime crosses borders, and that all these often corrupt jurisdictions have signed up to the European Charter of Fundamental Rights so they must be as fair as our own. None of these excuses washes with real people in this country. Just one Andrew Symeou case is too many, and there have been others.

Nor is it an excuse for Mr Cameron and the Conservative Party to say that one of the last areas of our national sovereignty is being tossed to the octopus because they are in coalition with the Liberal Democrats, who love this sort of thing—hence, their present standing in the opinion polls. The coalition agreement pledged to,

“ensure that there is no further transfer of sovereignty or powers over the course of the next Parliament”.

Then we had the Queen’s Speech on 25 May 2010, which reaffirmed that legislation would be introduced,

“to ensure that in future this Parliament and the British people have their say on any proposed transfer of powers to the European Union”.

We then had the European Union Act on 19 July 2011. Your Lordships will forgive me, but I have still not understood why these proposed opt-ins do not trigger the national referendum required by that Act. We still have the power to opt out of all these measures, and indeed have done so, so why is opting back in not a transfer of sovereignty?

Perhaps I may ask the Minister another question. If a national referendum was held on whether we should opt in to these measures, how does he think the vote would go? Does the answer, that the British public would reject it in large measure, not show why the Government are practising this dishonest sophistry to deny our people that vote, which they have indeed promised, however they try to wriggle out of it?

My third question—I think for the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, who is to answer in this debate—is the one that I attempted to put before his noble friend Lord Faulks finished his introduction, and I apologise if I was not in order in doing so. The noble Lord, Lord Faulks, said that the Government had nobly refused to join the EU’s proposal for a European public prosecutor because it is inimical to our tried and tested legal system of police, prosecutor, court and jury, each with their separate function. My question is whether the EU’s proposal of its foreign system does not show where the EU intends eventually to go. By agreeing to the 35 measures, are the Government not giving in to yet more EU salami-slicing, in its well known fashion, along the way to its final goal? Even the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, in his peroration, said that a European public prosecutor was perhaps a little premature—quite so: it is premature indeed.

I thought of not speaking in this debate because this sort of behaviour by the Government and the Labour Party can do nothing but increase the support for my party, the UK Independence Party—UKIP is the only vehicle that our people can use to free them from the failed and ruinous experiment of European integration—but, on reflection, I decided to do so because I know that what I have to say today will not have the slightest effect on the Government, just as it has not for the past 22 years, so I thought that I might as well at least put the feelings of real people on the record in your Lordships’ House.

The Government and Labour are toying with the liberty of the individual—with the liberty of our citizens, than which they hold few greater responsibilities. Our people do not like this; they do not like the European Union, and will eventually demand to leave the whole ill fated venture.

Liaison Committee: Third Report

Debate between Lord Pearson of Rannoch and Lord Hannay of Chiswick

Monday 26th March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

My Lords, I understand that the decision of the European Commission to review the common fisheries policy is due more to the series on television by Mr Fearnley-Whittingstall than to your Lordships’ Select Committee. And anyway, we await reform of the common fisheries policy, as we have for the past 30 years.

I do not want to turn this into a debate on the pluses and minuses of the European Union, but I want to explain to your Lordships why seven European committees is still far too many. I referred to the series of Questions from the noble Lords, Lord Tebbit and Lord Vinson, the answers to which show that the Select Committee has had virtually no influence on legislation coming to us from Brussels. That is not surprising. Your Lordships may be aware of the process of European legislation, which is proposed in secret by the Commission, negotiated in secret in COREPER and passed in secret in the Council. There is nothing that your Lordships’ House or the other place can do when it has gone through that process.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

I hesitate to interrupt the noble Lord when he is in full flight on one of his well chosen paths, but I wonder how on earth he thinks that a government reply to another Member of this House can demonstrate that the influence of the committee and its sub-committees is nil. Of course, the noble Lord wants that to be the answer; of course, he wants there to be a reduction in the sub-committees and the committee to ensure that we do not scrutinise the European Union properly, because he wants to strengthen the argument to leave the European Union. However, it would be quite nice if we could address the subject before the House, which is the matter of the Liaison Committee’s report, and could above all face the fact that the European Committee deals with a core function that is not dealt with by any other committee or by the House as a whole. If you reduce that core function, you reduce the effectiveness of how we scrutinise this work. I wish that the noble Lord would take account of that instead of arguing the contrary.

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

My Lords, I was about to explain to your Lordships why that core function is pointless compared to the work that the other Select Committees do in this House—and we have heard of powerful examples from the Science and Technology Committee. All the other committees are taken very seriously in this country and worldwide, whereas the debates of the European Committee in your Lordships’ House are ill attended and do nothing to inform public opinion about how the European Union works—and its membership, as I have said again and again, is solidly Europhile. We have just had two interventions to prove that.

The noble Lord, Lord Roper, has told us that the committee scrutinises very effectively European legislation. It writes to Ministers. But your Lordships will be aware of the scrutiny reserve, an agreement whereby successive Governments have given an assurance, although it is not a legal assurance, to both Houses of Parliament that if a piece of legislation is under scrutiny the Government of the day will not sign up to it in Brussels unless that committee agrees. Written Answers from the Government show that that has been overridden hundreds of times in the past 10 years—I think it is 343 times in the past five years.

I mention all this only to show that we put all this effort into the European Union committees and get very little out of them. I am sorry to offend noble and Europhile Lords, and I hope that the House does not think that I am banging on again about Europe. But hearing the comments about the eminent scientists in this Room who have spoken only for the Science and Technology Committee, and looking at the other committees, which are full of expertise and widely respected in the country and internationally, I fear that we have the balance wrong. Two or three European committees, including the main one, would be quite enough. We should redirect those energies into committees that will serve the House and the country well.

Euro

Debate between Lord Pearson of Rannoch and Lord Hannay of Chiswick

Thursday 27th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

My Lords—

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

My Lords—

Estates of Deceased Persons (Forfeiture Rule and Law of Succession) Bill

Debate between Lord Pearson of Rannoch and Lord Hannay of Chiswick

Wednesday 15th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

Would the noble Lord agree that the whole tenor of his speech—it is something like the sixth time I have heard it, during Second Reading, Committee and Report—is that he supports the Bill because he believes it is a step on the way to us getting out of the Community? That is why he supports it, and I hope that anyone who votes for it understands that.

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

My Lords, as I said on Second Reading, I think that this Bill is a “thus far and no further” Bill, and therefore it is to be welcomed. However, it is also a “shutting the stable door” Bill, because the European Union already has all the powers it needs to continue down its very unfortunate path towards complete integration, in the teeth of the growing opposition of the people of Europe.

European Union Bill

Debate between Lord Pearson of Rannoch and Lord Hannay of Chiswick

Wednesday 25th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

My Lords, I suppose that these amendments, particularly Amendment 63, are the most brazen attempt yet by Europhile Lords to deny the British people a say on any aspect of our membership of the European Union. We have heard a good deal in our debates from noble and Europhile Lords about the Bill being an attempt to bind successive Parliaments or Governments. Of course, it should be no such thing. An incoming Government could simply repeal the whole thing if they dared to risk the anger of the British people. With the way in which the EU has developed and is developing, that looks rather unlikely. I do not suppose that they would even dare to put such a repeal in their manifesto, although manifestos do not seem to matter much to our new political class, as in the formation of a coalition Government for whom no one voted.

Talking of the way in which the EU is developing, is it not really quite remarkable that we have debated this Bill for so many hours without even discussing the euro? I suppose that could be because the Government, Europhile Lords and the political class in general have just about got round to understanding that the euro was designed for disaster—a disaster of unemployment and austerity measures being visited on the people of Ireland, Greece, Portugal and Spain—and soon, who knows, Italy? But, of course, the political class cannot bring itself to face up to this obvious fact: the euro itself is merely the result of the whole project of European integration, which is equally misguided, as time will tell.

This determination to avoid these inconvenient truths has perhaps been best demonstrated by the BBC “Today” programme’s recent coverage of the civil unrest in Spain. It steadfastly attributes it to the Government’s austerity measures, but firmly refuses to discuss why these measures have come about, which are thanks to Spain’s membership of the euro, with its single unsuitable interest and exchange rates, which created the boom from which the people of Spain are now suffering the bust. Where does the euro come from? Why of course, it comes from the equally misguided project of European integration for which it was supposed to be the cement. It is the same for Greece, Ireland and Portugal—all slightly different cases, but all of them in their present predicaments entirely thanks to their membership of the euro and the European Union.

Earlier in our proceedings, I asked the noble Lord, Lord Howell, to respond to these facts.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

Does the noble Lord not recognise that there is no Motion on the Order Paper in this Committee stage contesting the fact that if this country wished to join the euro there would have to be a referendum? We are time-limited in completing this debate, so could he address the measures before us and not the ones he wishes to speak about?

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

The noble Lord may find my remarks inconvenient, perhaps because they are entirely on target. I am explaining why the British people do not want these amendments and a large part of that is because of the damage that the euro has done, and which they can see it is doing. Could I also ask the noble Lord, Lord Howell, to respond to the delicate little point that the big idea behind the whole project of European integration is also proving to be misguided? I asked him that earlier.

This is essential to the amendment, as I hope even the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, will agree. That big idea, as I never tire of reminding your Lordships, was that the nation states—the democracies of Europe—were responsible for two world wars and the long history of bloodshed. They therefore had to be emasculated and diluted into a new form of supranational government run by bureaucrats. The whole project of European integration, with its attendant euro, has at its heart the destruction of national democracy and its replacement with the anti-democratic structure that is the EU. That is why the unelected Commission still has the monopoly of proposing all EU legislation in secret, which is now the majority of our national law. That law is then negotiated by bureaucrats from the nation states in COREPER and then passed, still largely in secret in the Council of Ministers from the nation states, with your Lordships’ House and the House of Commons having virtually no influence—in fact, no influence.

When you tell them this in Washington, they simply cannot believe it. I wonder how many of the good people travelling here today with President Obama are aware of it. I imagine that he may pay some tribute today to the European Union, and I wonder whether he will know what he is talking about if he does.

European Union Bill

Debate between Lord Pearson of Rannoch and Lord Hannay of Chiswick

Tuesday 17th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

As a matter of fact, it is real. We have £10 billion that are only loans at the moment; we have £10 billion for the cash we hand over, going up; we have £26 billion for food; we have £18 billion for climate change; and we have £60 billion for overregulation. These are the figures.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

I hesitate to intrude into the noble Lord’s game of tiddlywinks with statistics, which he has been playing for the past hour or so. Can he settle on one set of measurements, rather than playing around between net contributions, gross contributions—both to the budget—trade effects, and loans to the investment bank? He plays around with these all the time. Would it not be a bit simpler if he stuck to the net contribution per capita in each country? We would then come to quite startling results, one of which is that Britain is by no means the highest net contributor per capita to the EU budget any longer, and that other countries are more so. It would be simpler if he stuck to one lot of statistics and stopped playing tiddlywinks at this late hour of the evening.

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

I do not know whether the British people would agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, that the figures I have mentioned are tiddlywinks. I am aware that Holland pays a greater per capita ransom to the European Union than we do, but that is not the point. I am trying to look at this from the point of view of the United Kingdom. I am not looking at it from the point of view of the corrupt octopus in Brussels.

I was about to conclude by commenting on the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, when he mentioned the figures paid into the budget by these other countries which are in the European economic area. I should just mention that the countries in the European economic area are not afflicted with the common fisheries and agricultural policies. They are not part of the customs union; they are not afflicted by the common trade policy; they are not in the common foreign and security policy. They are not worried about justice and home affairs being overtaken by Brussels, and of course they are not in EMU, so they are in a very different position from us. They can negotiate all their own foreign trade arrangements. There is a recent report from the Swiss Government comparing their present bilateral arrangements from outside the European Union with what the costs would have been had they been in the European Union. It is not a wild Eurosceptic making these suggestions; it is the Swiss Government who said that membership of the European Union would have cost eight times what their bilateral arrangements cost.

As to the IMF, I did not bring it in. Of course, I agree that we are also supporting problems in the European Union—the eurozone—through the IMF. I think that the tally, if we take it through the financial facility, the loans to Ireland and others, comes to around £4 billion a year. I was good enough not to mention that because I was not suggesting that we leave the International Monetary Fund. I was merely trying to concentrate on our costs as members of the European Union. This was a probing amendment, as I wanted to discuss the prospect of the British people getting a say on the cost of European Union membership. I am very grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken, and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

European Union Bill

Debate between Lord Pearson of Rannoch and Lord Hannay of Chiswick

Tuesday 3rd May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

My Lords, I speak against these amendments. Amendment 23B assumes that the EU single market is a good thing for this country. That is a common misconception among the political class upon which I should like to cast a little doubt. This is a big and detailed subject and I recommend that any serious student should consult the briefing notes on the globalbritain.org website, which demolish the whole myth of the EU's economic usefulness and that of its single market.

The background point, which is not generally understood, is that the single market is more than a free trade area, it is a customs union. This means that a single customs barrier surrounds all the countries in the Union, whose international tariffs and trading arrangements are negotiated and decided centrally by the European Commission. In a free trade area, on the other hand, the countries concerned enjoy free trade among each other, but they remain able to make their own tariff arrangements with countries outside that area. They have their own seats on the World Trade Organisation and they are also able to make their own domestic law in areas such as working time, health and safety at work, part-time workers and so on.

So a country does not need to belong to the EU to enjoy free trade with it. According to a recent government Answer to me, the EU and its single market already have free trade agreements with some 63 countries outside the EU and are on their way to having similar agreements with another 75 countries, or roughly 80 per cent of the other countries in the world. It is perhaps worth noting that both Switzerland and Norway, not in the EU or its single market, both export more per capita to the single market than we do; Switzerland three times as much and Norway five times.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way, but I fear that he is in danger of misleading the House fairly elaborately in this matter. He is talking about three things, not two: the first is a free trade area, the second is a customs union and the third is the single market. Norway, he has just stated categorically, is not part of the single market. I am afraid that he is in error. It is part of the single market, and it applies single market legislation by receiving fax messages from Brussels telling it what it has to do. The members of the European economic area are in the single market but are not in a customs union. However, I am not totally sure that this line of argument is going to get us very far—but it would be useful.

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

I do not want to delay the House, but that is why I made the distinction between a customs union and a free trade area.

The worst aspect of our membership of the EU single market is its sheer cost. Like their predecessors, this Government are determined to avoid an official cost-benefit analysis, and so we are left with the eight analyses that have been produced since the turn of the century, four of which are pretty much official, and which put the cost of our single market membership at anything between 4 per cent and 10 per cent of GDP. Indeed, the highest cost estimate came in 2005 from the Treasury itself in a paper entitled Global Europe: Full-Employment Europe under the signature of Mr Gordon Brown when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer. It put the cost of EU regulation at 6 per cent of GDP and of EU protectionism at 7 per cent. In March 2006, the French Conseil d'Analyse Economique, which is attached to their Prime Minister’s office, found that France had gained nothing from the single market or, indeed, the euro. In June 2006, the Swiss Government published their finding that joining the EU and its single market would be nine times more expensive than staying with their current sectoral free trade agreements with Brussels. Later in 2006, the EU Commissioner for Enterprise and Industry, Mr Günter Verheugen, said that EU regulation was costing its members some €600 billion a year, or around 6 per cent of GDP at the time.

One of the troubles with being in the single market is that this EU overregulation, whatever it costs, applies to the whole of our economy, not just to the 9 per cent that trades with clients in the rest of the EU. So the 11 per cent of our GDP that goes in trade with the rest of the world and the 80 per cent that stays in our domestic economy—91 per cent of our GDP—has to carry the burdens of Brussels’s overregulation. There are, of course, those who fear that were we to leave the EU and its single market our trade would somehow suffer and that, to quote the propaganda, 3 million jobs would be lost. The truth appears to be the opposite: trade would expand and jobs would be created. It is, of course, true that we have 3 million jobs exporting goods and services to clients in the EU, but they have 4.5 million jobs exporting goods and services to us. We are, in fact, the EU’s largest client. Would the French stop selling us their wine or the Germans their cars just because we had left the single market and were no longer bossed around by Brussels? Of course not. There are also the points that the World Trade Organisation would prevent any form of retaliation were we to leave and that the EU’s average external tariff is now below 1 per cent. Our trade is going up faster with the rest of the world than with the EU, both inwards and outwards. Our exports to the EU single market are declining. The single market is sclerotic and overregulated and its demographic trend is against it. It is the “Titanic”.

It is also hard to think of any other customs unions along the lines of the EU. There was the Soviet Union, and there may be something similar in the Caribbean, but nowhere else. Mercosur in South America does not count because its members are free to agree their trading relationships with non-members. Can the Government advise us of any other customs unions like the EU? If not, does that not suggest that it may not be such a great idea?

As to Amendment 23F, I do not think we need the EU getting more involved in financial regulation. Commissioner Barnier has openly said that he does not favour what he calls the Anglo-Saxon model, and we have yet to feel the damage done to the City of London and its ability to pay tax by the new EU supervisory bodies. When the movers of the amendment say that they do not want it to interfere with the UK’s general approach to financial regulation, I ask whether they have Monsieur Barnier’s agreement? The deed is done. Overall financial supervision has passed to Brussels. No provisions in this Bill will prevent that.

As to Amendment 23H, I fear that those of us who come from the Eurorealistic perspective would rather that the unelected Commission did not continue to negotiate on our behalf in a new global trade round. As the world’s fifth-largest economy, we would rather do it for ourselves.

Finally, is it not really grotesque that an organisation that has so dismally failed to look after the vast sums entrusted to it by the taxpayers of Europe should have its powers strengthened, or made more effective, as the amendments have it? More will certainly mean even worse, and I oppose the amendments.

European Union Bill

Debate between Lord Pearson of Rannoch and Lord Hannay of Chiswick

Tuesday 3rd May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Deben, was good enough to mention me in his few remarks and to accuse me of what I think was the impossible and most undesirable dream of the United Kingdom being altogether free of the European Union in all these matters. He is of course correct. However, he then mentioned the common fisheries policy as though that has to be solved by the European Union and as though the EU will not solve the acknowledged disaster which the policy is, environmentally and in every other way, if it is prevented from doing so. Surely, from our point of view, as I have mentioned before, the answer is terribly simple. We simply leave the European common fisheries policy and take back our international waters. Seventy five per cent of the fish which swim in European waters all the year round swim in waters that used to belong entirely to the United Kingdom before we made the mistake of joining the European Union. We then manage our own waters, re-establish our fish stocks and let out any surplus to foreigners.

On energy, the noble Lord again believes that the European Union is essential to solve our energy problems but, surely—

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

I am afraid that the noble Lord is yet again misleading the House. The waters did not belong to Britain before we joined the European Union. We had 12-mile limits in those days and the areas beyond those limits were high seas. The decision to go out to 250 miles was taken by the European Union collectively when we were a member.

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

Yes, but we should not have gone along with that decision because we should not have been in the policy in the first place. I therefore insist that most of the fish which swim now in European waters and are fished by European boats used to belong to us and they could and should belong to us again. I do not wish to detain the House—

European Union Bill

Debate between Lord Pearson of Rannoch and Lord Hannay of Chiswick

Tuesday 26th April 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

My Lords, that is not the point. The point is that it will not be the British Government or this Parliament that makes the decisions covered by these amendments; Brussels will go on doing it.

It is partly this situation, together with the fact that Brussels pays almost no attention to what our Select Committees and Parliament manage to say when they are not being completely ignored, that has led me to suggest that perhaps we do not need quite the number of Select Committees that we have, although that is perhaps a debate for another day.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

I am not quite sure of the relevance of this discussion to the amendment that we are debating. The noble Lord does not reveal how much of this is double-counting. He has given a number for the Commons and a number for the Lords, but perhaps he could enlighten us as to how many are for the same measure. Secondly, he gave figures for 2010, which was a general election year here. During that lengthy election period, the House of Commons in particular did not have a European Scrutiny Committee. It has always been recognised that there are overrides during such a period. Thirdly, I wish that the noble Lord would recognise that the scrutiny reserve is a matter for consideration between the two Houses of this Parliament and the Government. It is not a matter for the European institutions and it never has been. That has always been clear. It would therefore be good if we could get back to discussing the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Liddle.

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

My Lords, the noble Lord is trying to ameliorate an intolerable situation. It is a fact that the scrutiny reserve is a promise given by the Government of the day to Parliament that has been broken more than 500 times in the past five years. Therefore, it will not be the British Government who make the decisions covered by Amendment 16B, but Brussels—as it always has been. No British Government can therefore be trusted to decide on these issues, as set out in the amendments, because Brussels will simply go ahead, even if the British Government of the day could be trusted. If necessary, as the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, reminded us, the Commission will simply bring forward the EU’s new powers under treaty clauses that were not designed for that purpose. However, that has never stopped the Commission, as I also pointed out in our Committee proceedings on 5 April at col. 1640.

In conclusion, and without wishing to go anywhere near making a Second Reading speech, a number of noble Lords today—the noble Lords, Lord Risby and Lord Hannay, among others—as well as the Minister in Committee and at Second Reading, lamented the disconnect, as they put it, between the British people and their Government and the European Union. I should like to put to the Minister a point that I have not yet put to him; I should be grateful if he would answer it either on this occasion or at some future point in our proceedings.

The reason for the disconnect between the British people and the European Union—and, indeed, the Finnish people and the European Union, and a growing number of people in France, Germany and elsewhere—is that the big idea that gave birth to the project of European integration, honourable though it was at the time after the last war, has, in fact, gone horribly wrong. I need hardly remind the Minister of what that big idea was. It was that the nation states, with their unreliable democracies, had been responsible for the carnage of two world wars and the long history of bloodshed in Europe. Those nation states, therefore, had to be emasculated and diluted into a new form of supranational government run by technocrats. That is where the Commission gets its monopoly to propose in secret all our European legislation. That is where COREPER comes in. That is why the Council votes in secret on what is becoming the majority of our law, if that is not the case already. Surely that is what has gone wrong. Until we address it, realise and confess that the whole project has failed—not just the currency, which has clearly failed—and get out of it as soon as possible, we are all barking up the wrong tree.

European Union Bill

Debate between Lord Pearson of Rannoch and Lord Hannay of Chiswick

Tuesday 22nd March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

I think I said that the noble Baroness does not need to declare her pension as a former MEP. The difference is that pensions from the other place are not removable, whereas pensions for former EU Commissioners are removable. It is removable from former Commissioners but not from MEPs. That is what I thought I had said and that is why I went out of my way to apologise to the noble Baroness for putting her in the wrong category before.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

My Lords, the noble Lord has for years been worrying at a very old bone, and it does him no credit that he returns to it. Could he perhaps tell us how many members of the Commission have had their pensions withdrawn for having expressed political opinions in a place like your Lordships’ House? He continually rests the whole of his case on the fact that they are at risk every time they speak in debates such as this if they do not take the line that, presumably, has been dictated to them in e-mails from Brussels. That, frankly, is completely absurd, and he is just wasting the time of your Lordships’ House.

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

My Lords, I do not think that I am the one who is wasting the time of your Lordships’ House. I suggest that the noble Lord reads the opinion of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, and of our Sub-Committee on Lords’ Interests, and any other noble Lords who are interested in the subject should do that. I think it lowers the tone and skews the quality of your Lordships’ debates if people who are exposed, however remotely, to losing a very substantial pension do not continue to fulfil the obligations they had when they were Commissioners. In that, I think the EU pension is unique. It is a great shame.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

That point is often made. Of course, if we were not in the European Union, we would have to obey the EU rules for the exports that we sent to them, but not in our own internal market and not to the rest of the world. Most countries in the world export to the European Union without that problem. It is really not a real one.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

The noble Lord is propagating nonsense, if I may say so. Norway and other countries are obliged under the European Economic Area treaties to apply the single market legislation to their own market. They do not apply them only to the goods that they export to the European Union. The noble Lord would do well to recognise that he would be bossed about by Brussels even if he had his referendum and got us out of the European Union, with all the other damage that that would do to us.

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

My Lords, the noble Lord is making the usual mistake of thinking that we would stay in the European Economic Area. Why would we? Why would we not have a relationship like Switzerland and like all the other countries in the world that export to the European Union and are not bossed around by the Brussels rules?

I am not suggesting that the British people are fully up to speed with the four points that I have just made—nor, indeed, is the noble Lord, Lord Hannay—but they are getting the point that the EU is ruinously expensive, that we cannot afford it, and that it has taken away their sovereignty, and their right to elect and dismiss those who make their laws. Most of our national laws are now made secretly in Brussels, where our Government have some 9 per cent of the votes, and our MPs, for whom the people vote, are irrelevant in that process. The people are also right when they fear that they can no longer afford EU membership, which is untouched by this Bill. I give your Lordships six points to prove that.