Brexit: Supreme Court Appeal Cost
Debate between Lord Pearson of Rannoch and Lord Tomlinson(7 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Tomlinson
The Minister stated clearly that he has come to this House and answered a number of questions. I remind him of the question that he failed to answer. I asked on Tuesday of this week whether he would tell us exactly what the Conservative manifesto said about membership of the European single market. He prefaced his reply by saying, “Of course I will”—and proceeded to do everything but.
Jan Böhmermann
Debate between Lord Pearson of Rannoch and Lord Tomlinson(8 years ago)
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European Union Bill
Debate between Lord Pearson of Rannoch and Lord Tomlinson(12 years, 12 months ago)
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Lord Pearson of Rannoch
My Lords, perhaps I could try to make it make sense for the noble Lord. There are some huge differences between the money we pay to the European Union and the money we pay to the other institutions that he has mentioned. There is, of course, the question of quantum; without a cost-benefit analysis, we will not agree the figures, but from what I said today and on 3 May, we are looking at a cost of EU membership possibly in the region of £100 billion a year.
There is also another very important point. These other institutions that the noble Lord has mentioned do not make our law. They do not make the majority of our national law—it may be—in secret. They do not have laws proposed by the unelected Commission in secret, negotiated in secret by COREPER, passed in secret by the Council and imposed on the people and this Parliament by the European Union. These other institutions certainly are not in the same class. If we are having referendums, I do not think that it would be a bad idea to have one on NATO and other institutions. The British people would probably agree them, for the reasons that the noble Lord gave. The one that they will not agree is the one on the European Union.
Lord Tomlinson
The noble Lord referred yet again to this question of a cost-benefit analysis. How is he proposing to define “benefit”? He wants to have the cost-benefit analysis, but he has told us we get no benefit. Will he give us a clue about what definition of “benefit” would satisfy his demand?
Lord Pearson of Rannoch
My Lords, if the noble Lord would be good enough to read my Bill, which is now top of the waiting list and is sitting in the Printed Paper Office not very far away, he would understand how we propose to go about a cost-benefit analysis, with a truly independent committee of inquiry reporting to Parliament and the people. However, the noble Lord makes a very good point. Although I am often asked this question, I cannot think of a single advantage or benefit that we have had from our membership of the European Union that we could not have had by friendly collaboration and free trade with our good neighbours in Europe.
European Union Bill
Debate between Lord Pearson of Rannoch and Lord Tomlinson(13 years ago)
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Lord Pearson of Rannoch
Before the Minister sits down, may I be allowed to put in a word on behalf of the Daily Express, about which he has not been wholly polite? Millions of people in this country actually welcome the campaign to leave the European Union which the Daily Express has started—it is the first national newspaper to have done so. Whatever noble and Europhile Lords might feel about the Daily Express, I would at least like to put in a word on behalf of the rest of us.
Lord Tomlinson
Before the noble Lord sits down, is he aware that these millions of people who follow the Daily Express campaign with such avidity brought such success to UKIP in the local elections?
Lord Pearson of Rannoch
Is the noble Lord not making the mistake commonly made by the political class in this country, which contains many distinguished Members of your Lordships’ House—
Lord Pearson of Rannoch
Including myself? That is very generous. The mistake is in taking the line, “Really, the people won’t be interested in this. They shouldn’t be troubled with this as they won’t understand it”. Yet if you take almost any referendum on anything to do with the European public prosecutor's office, that will be of considerable interest to the British people. They do not like it and do not want it in any form whatever. The turnout on the most supremely boring of any imaginable subject—the recent AV referendum—was 43 per cent, which really surprised people. I have to put it to the noble Lord that the British people may not only be fed up with their political class but be beginning to have doubt in our system of representative parliamentary democracy. They may want a much greater say on matters in future, like the Swiss have, for example. What is wrong with that system to reconnect the people? That is the system to reconnect them and not, I am afraid, the approach of the noble Lord.
European Union Bill
Debate between Lord Pearson of Rannoch and Lord Tomlinson(13 years ago)
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Lord Tomlinson
If that is the moderate centre, I wonder why I gave way so easily to the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, when he seemed somewhat reluctant to do so himself when he was on his feet. The intervention was not really worth the anticipated value.
Many of the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, during his speech were rather inaccurate, so just for the sake of making the record clear—
Lord Pearson of Rannoch
My Lords, on making the record clear, is the noble Lord referring to the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, or to me?
European Union Bill
Debate between Lord Pearson of Rannoch and Lord Tomlinson
Lord Tomlinson
My Lords, some time ago I was given a copy of a speech made by a former Comptroller and Auditor-General of the United Kingdom, Sir John Bourn. I put it in a plastic folder and kept it on my desk so that I could produce it the next time someone was so foolish as to raise the question of the qualification of European Union accounts. The noble Lord, Lord Stevens, has hit the jackpot today. He is the recipient of the message from Sir John Bourn, who confirmed in June 2006 that,
“if the UK had the same system as the EU, he would have to qualify all 500 UK expenditure accounts rather than just those where he thought there was a problem (13 in 2005)”.
He went on to say:
“It is worth noting that the accounts of Britain’s Department for Work and Pensions, which is responsible for distributing pension and other social security benefits, have been qualified by the National Audit Office for each of the last 18 years”.
Nothing has changed since 2005.
“Fraud and error in the payment of UK benefits amounts to an estimated £2.5 billion a year—that is substantially more than the £224 million that is thought to be fraudulently taken from the EU”.
I thought that that was worth reading into the record, so that it is absolutely clear. Every time we debate Europe, the canard is produced about a Europe riddled with fraud, as if our example is somehow the perfect one that the rest of Europe should adopt and follow.
The European Union Bill arises from the section in the coalition programme on Europe, in which the Government said that they would,
“examine the case for a United Kingdom Sovereignty Bill to make it clear that ultimate authority remains with Parliament”.
Yet the Government in their response to the House of Commons European Scrutiny Committee said at paragraph 6:
“The Government has never claimed that Parliamentary sovereignty is currently under threat in relation to EU matters. We would agree that, to date, the UK Courts … have rebutted arguments that EU law has an autonomous entrenched status in UK law and have recognised that EU law takes effect in the UK through Acts of Parliament”.
The Government continued, having already demolished the argument about UK sovereignty, to proceed to a Bill that includes Clause 18. In a further report to the House of Commons Select Committee, when they had quoted three main sources for their concern, the Government said:
“Although none of these sources has in any way undermined the operation of Parliamentary sovereignty in relation to EU matters to date, we do think that there is a need to put the matter beyond speculation for the future”.
So this was not a real problem for today; it was an imaginary problem for tomorrow. Yet, when they were pursued further—this is my last quotation—they went on to say in a rather paranoid state of mind that Clause 18 had been included in the Bill to,
“address concerns that the doctrine of Parliamentary sovereignty may in the future be eroded by decisions of the courts”.
Here we have yet another example of the paranoia that is developing in the coalition about the courts. First, it was about the European Court of Justice; then it was about the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights; and now there is this fear that courts in this country may, at some time in the future, exercise an unreasonable power over what they consider to be parliamentary sovereignty. I view Clause 18 as unnecessary in its totality and I hope that the Minister can find persuasive, cogent reasoning to convince us why your Lordships’ House should not seek to delete it at a later stage.
During discussion of the Bill today, we have witnessed a rather sad scene: a rather unhappy and lonely duo on the Front Bench. They are usually such a happy couple, but we have had the noble Lord, Lord Howell, looking fairly miserable and the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, doing his best to raise a smile once in a while. It is not surprising that they are looking discomfited, however much they are wedded and welded together by coalition politics, because today they have by and large been abandoned by the Conservatives—apart from the noble Lord, Lord Sheikh. I always listen to the noble Lord, Lord Sheikh, with interest, but, with respect, he gave a rather eccentric constitutional interpretation about binding your successors. Apart from that, they were abandoned by the Conservatives, rather disowned by the Liberals—with the exception of the noble Baroness, Lady Nicholson, who, I thought, tried to play both sides against the middle—and found no support on either the Labour or the Cross Benches. That is a unique achievement even for a dynamic duo such as the coalition’s Robin and Batman on foreign affairs. They have managed to find precious little support anywhere in this House. Even if they were reasonably confident of getting support from the usual suspects on Euroscepticism in this House, they have found that, as we already knew, they were not going far enough to placate any of them.
We have an EU Bill under which there are only two real issues. There is the so-called referendum lock, on which I shall not have the impertinence to say anything, because the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe of Aberavon, demolished it in his remarkable speech earlier. The other part of it is sovereignty, which has not found a friend in the House, as far as I can see. We have Parts 1 and 3. If I followed my instincts, I would possibly get into trouble, but my instincts are that the Bill needs two main amendments: “delete Part 1” and “delete Part 3”. Then we could have a vote on Part 2. That would make it a Bill that would get unanimous support not only in the coalition but in the whole of the House. That is one possibility. The case for the hierarchy of referendum locks has been destroyed and Clause 18 has been shown to be a sham.
Today’s debate has shown that everyone in this House is out of step with the government Front Bench. From the Liberal Democrats, we have had remarkable speeches from the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, and the noble Lords, Lord Taverne, Lord Maclennan and Lord Dykes, among others. From the Conservative Benches, we have had remarkable speeches from the noble Lord, Lord Brittan, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe, and very interesting contributions from the noble Lords, Lord Plumb and Lord Bowness. From the Cross Benches, we have heard from the European trio of the two Davids—the noble Lords, Lord Williamson and Lord Hannay—together with the noble Lord, Lord Kerr. From the Labour Benches, each of my colleagues who has spoken has made an impressive contribution.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch
I would not have presumed to such an honour, my Lords. Does the noble Lord agree that he has just read out a litany of the more Europhile Lords in your Lordships’ House, who have come together on this issue with unanimity and, I must say, incredible repetition in all their speeches?
Lord Tomlinson
All of them are proud to be associated with each other. All of them spoke about the Bill and none of them took 21 minutes to do so.
The Bill is a sham, a fraud, an illusion. It is a piece of cynical deceit. Where it purports to offer referendum locks, it does it in circumstances where unanimity already applies. It is the political equivalent of the three-card trick “Find the lady”: it has always moved by the time you take the cup off the top.
The big questions after today’s debate are whether this Bill can be fundamentally amended and whether it can be meaningfully amended. There is near unanimity that it is pretty near worthless as it stands. If there are to be amendments, minimum standards for turnout and majority in any referenda, were the Bill to apply, should be considered for inclusion. There should certainly be a sunset clause, as many noble Lords have said, in order to prevent the constitutional outrage of trying to bind successors with legislation that, if you mean what you say in your programme, will not apply to the current Government. I do not want referenda on anything other than issues of major constitutional significance. If the Bill is to proceed, it should have a sunset clause; otherwise, it would be an outrageous attempt by this Government to bind their successors.
This Bill is a mess and it has distracted us from serious debate on the serious issues facing Europe. It is pandering to Eurosceptics, but will we never learn? They will never be adequately fed; you feed them a little bit and they will want more. The Bill will not deliver referenda on the issues that Eurosceptics want because we all know that those issues are the ones not covered in this debate, such as the Lisbon treaty and the European investigation order.
We who believe in Europe should be finding every opportunity to talk about the benefits that the European Union is bringing to the people of Europe. When I first started in politics, we used to argue enormously about how much the fascist dictatorships in southern Europe and the colonels in Greece would cost this country in terms of the contribution that it would make to the southern flank of NATO. Nobody knew what the price was. They did not care because it was a price worth paying. Today, we do not even have to think about it, because those countries are now all fully integrated in the European community of democratic nations. We can go on and find example after example of positive issues about Europe that this coalition Government ought to be leading on in making sure that they are popularly understood in this country. That is the way to enthuse people about a destiny in the European Union. They are the sort of things that the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, used to talk about. I hope that he will get back to talking about them some time, because they are the things that are inspirational about what the European Union is, what it can be and what it can do, not just for our people but for our people in a secure Europe playing a part in securing Europe within a securer world.
My position is one of major disappointment that we have managed to spend a full parliamentary day, almost running into tomorrow, without debating the essential issues of Europe: how to make the 2020 strategy create more jobs; pushing for the single market reform that started in 1992 but that we are still not near completing; and how we get the changes to the common agricultural policy so that it can be fair in relation to the budget and play a real role in feeding the world over the next century. None of those things has been present, but those are the things that are partly the opportunity cost for having wasted so much time on a futile debate that is really about a programme that we all know is meaningless. The two parts of it, whether the referendum lock on the one hand or the sovereignty clause on the other, are totally irrelevant to the needs of our people and our country and to the role that we should be playing in building a stronger Europe.
European Union Bill
Debate between Lord Pearson of Rannoch and Lord Tomlinson(13 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Pearson of Rannoch
My Lords, the test of whether it should be declared is what a reasonable member of the public might think, and I am very glad that the noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis, has now passed the test.
Lord Tomlinson
My Lords, can I invite the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, to pass his own test? I once asked him whether he was prepared to declare the interest that he got for forestry land that he owned from the FEOGA—the European Agricultural Guidance and Guarantee Fund. All I got from him was an abusive letter and no declaration of interest. I wonder whether he wants to catch up with us now.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch
My Lords, the noble Lord is coming close to misleading the House. I put the matter straight in a letter to the Guardian newspaper, which had suggested that I had taken this grant. It is not a grant. The noble Lord might like to know that when something goes wrong with a plantation, for instance if it burns down, you have to repay the money or replant the thing at your own expense. He will be delighted to hear that the plantation in question has burnt down and I have had to replace it.
I was suggesting that even noble Lords who have been MEPs might want to mention that experience because it suggests that they may have a better understanding than most of the complicated world of Brussels, but of course it is up to them.
EU: Budgets
Debate between Lord Pearson of Rannoch and Lord Tomlinson(13 years, 5 months ago)
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