Estates of Deceased Persons (Forfeiture Rule and Law of Succession) Bill
Debate between Lord Pearson of Rannoch and Lord Triesman(13 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Pearson of Rannoch
My Lords, I think the noble Lord, Lord Spicer, and I have something to say.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch
My Lords, I have two questions for the Minister that I asked in Committee but to which I did not get an answer. First, will he confirm that the noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, is 100 per cent right when he says that when the happy day comes—he did not put it like that—when the 1972 Act is repealed by the House of Commons and your Lordships’ House, it will then be definite that we are out of the European Union?
However, the question is not quite as simple as that. In January 1997, your Lordships were good enough to give Second Reading to a Bill in my name that did exactly that—it repealed the 1972 Act. At the time I was advised by the Clerks that this would still leave us with a problem from the Eurosceptic point of view, which wants nothing to do with any European legislation whatever. That problem would be that all the EU law that had been sewn into domestic law since 1972 would remain valid in British law. At the time, the Clerks advised me that one is not allowed to introduce a Bill into your Lordships’ House that is not capable of practical fulfilment. Their advice at the time was that it would have taken 12 parliamentary draftsmen some three months to identify all EU law sewn into domestic law, which could then have been repealed at our leisure. I am glad to say that they even suggested having a massive Henry VIII clause at the end of the procedure. Therefore, my first question to the Minister is: would it really still be the case that EU law remained in British law? There is far too much of it; nowadays the majority of our national law is passed in a wholly undemocratic process in Brussels to the exclusion of Parliament in this country.
My second question to the Minister was, and is, as follows. When, as I say, the joyous day comes that the 1972 Act is repealed, that surely means that the Lisbon treaty falls in its entirety, because the Lisbon treaty is only an amendment to several other amendments to the 1972 Act. When that happens, is this country still obliged to follow the provisions of the Lisbon treaty which govern how a country leaves the European Union? That is a process, I think—I may be wrong—under Article 50 of the Lisbon treaty, which takes two years and puts the Council in charge of the process and, indeed, the cost of the country leaving the European Union. When we repeal the 1972 Act, does that provision fall as well? Are we then, as the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, said, free of the whole wretched thing, or are we still bound by Lisbon? What about the domestic law which is sewn into our law? Surely that remains binding until repealed by Parliament.
Lord Triesman
My Lords, I apologise to both noble Lords who have just spoken. In my eagerness to get up I may have mistakenly thought that we were coming towards the end of a deliberation. My reason for thinking that was that this has been in some ways a very one-sided debate. There does not seem to be huge difference across the House, whether it is between lawyers or non-lawyers or members of one party or another. For those reasons, I hope that the House will allow me, a non-lawyer, at least temporarily to fill the shoes of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, whose name is to the amendment.
A number of noble Lords have made very clear-cut responses to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Waddington. I fear that the noble Lord, Lord Flight, is frightening himself with what may be extremely fanciful personal anxieties, which I hope that he will be able to put to bed as he rests tonight. The noble Lord, Lord Pearson, does not seem to be speaking to this debate, amendment or, indeed, to anything else that your Lordships are discussing. As I understand it—no doubt I will be corrected if I am wrong, not least by the noble Lord—we are not debating the repeal of the 1972 Act, but trying to understand its status in United Kingdom law.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch
My Lords, in actual fact what I have said is relevant to this amendment because it says that all British law is only there because of the 1972 Act. I am merely asking what happens when it is repealed.
Lord Triesman
My Lords, I am sure that on the day that proposition is in front of the House, we will have an energetic debate and probably get to the bottom of it at that time. I am very tempted to respond to the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, who asked what he should do. It would probably be ungracious to try to answer that question, but I suppose that sitting on his hands or repairing to one of the bars are among the available options. However, he illustrated the fact that there is a great deal of commonality right across the House on this issue.
I am among those who do not like declaratory clauses—I am wholly with my noble friend Lord Richard and the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, on this. I cannot understand what such clauses do other than call into question the fundamentals of our law and the statements that have been made about our law by the House of Lords and others. I cannot see the point. However, I accept that it is a political reality that there is a desire to see this kind of declaration in the Bill. That is why we support the amendment. If there is to be a declaration, it might as well be accurate. If we are going to declare things, let us be precise and accurate. The whole debate boils down to a simple proposition about what we learnt was Sir John Fiennes’s excellent writing of the original legislation, regarding which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe, was far too modest about his role.
That Act and Section 3 in particular are the head lease. There is nothing in any other Act that does not flow from it. The more we try to obscure that or suggest that there are other things that may flow from it, the less likely it is that anyone will understand that the declaration is accurate in any sense. This is a technical, not a party political, matter. We have had fantastically good advice. What a benefit it has been to all of us. Let us carry the amendment, which I hope will be pressed, and have a declaration that we can at least say is accurate.
European Union Bill
Debate between Lord Pearson of Rannoch and Lord Triesman(13 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Pearson of Rannoch
My Lords, I shall speak briefly to underline what my noble friend Lord Stoddart has said and to put it as a precise question for the Minister. The only point on which I do not quite agree with the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, is that I think that Clause 18 as it stands is better than nothing, and no doubt especially once the Minister has explained it in a few minutes’ time. But I will speak against Amendments 57, 58 and 59, and particularly Amendment 59 for the reason that it appears to get rid of Clause 18.
My question for the Minister is this: does he actually agree with the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, that one parliament cannot bind another, even in the whole matter of our EU membership? Will he confirm that if Parliament—your Lordships’ House and the House of Commons—repeals the original 1972 Act, particularly Section 2 with which I include all the amendments that have been added, those arising from the Single European Act 1986, Maastricht, Amsterdam, Nice and so on, are we then in effect out of the European Union? Will we no longer be subject to the diktats of Brussels and the jurisdiction of the Luxembourg court? Of course I understand that a lot of British law did come from Brussels and is sewn into our own law. I also understand that that can be repealed at our leisure as we go forward. However, I would be grateful if the Minister would confirm that Clause 18 means that it is only if we repeal the 1972 Act that European law would no longer take precedence over the law of this country, and that that can be reversed by repealing the Act?
Lord Triesman
My Lords, what has come through in the debate is that it is hard to see a strong purpose for Clause 18. It is not the best drafted clause I have ever read in legislation, and I understand why—or at least I think I understand why, which I will come to in a moment. But it is also true to say that the Explanatory Notes to the Bill do the clause no favours. They do not set out why it is compelling or why any of us who think that it is obscurely drafted should feel that we can put our hand on our heart and say that we know exactly why it is written as it is. I certainly do not feel that way. I am not a lawyer. I am not learned in the law, which is the expression that has gone around the Chamber. I am a humble mathematician and I am trying hard to understand the considerable obscurities of law when compared with mathematics.
It is important to ask, as did the noble Lord, Lord Deben, only a short while ago, what the clause as it is written is for—I shall come on to the alternatives in a moment. Everybody agrees that it is declaratory in its reference to the 1972 Act. It looks as though it is attempting to balance a number of arguments which plainly have gone on in the background between those who are uncomfortable with the idea that Europe has any bearing on the way we conduct our legal lives, and may continue to do so, and those who recognise that that is a fixed reality because of the processes that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe, described in a very helpful speech. It is hard to understand the necessity of Clause 18 and it is reasonable to say that, as drafted, it is open to very wide interpretation. As a couple of noble Lords have said, that would probably make it open to judicial review.
I find myself in strong agreement—I hope that it will do her no harm—with the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, who said that the House of Commons European Scrutiny Committee’s report gave not the most glowing reference which anybody has written to a piece of legislation. The report is written with the niceness that parliamentarians occasionally reserve for a description of something they think is very poor, but, none the less, it says, in terms pretty much, that it is very poor. The Government in their response almost give up the ghost after a very short period of trying to defend it, because there is no certainty, I think, even on their part, that this was the right way to do it.
I cannot see the point of the clause or that it is at all helpful. I have real sympathy with the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, that parliaments cannot bind their successors. That view at least, about the character of parliamentary Government, must be common ground among us. In those circumstances, it must be common ground that Parliament is supreme, and it must be common ground that, should Parliament wish to stand down the 1972 Act, it would be within its competence to do so. It is extremely unlikely that it would, but that is neither here nor there in the terms in which the noble Lord put that proposition to the Committee. The supremacy argument is very powerful. One of the reasons that I have great difficulty with much of this legislation is that it seems to reduce the role of Parliament and the supremacy that it should enjoy. The points that have been made ad nauseam in your Lordships' House about multiple referenda do nothing for the objective of propping up the supremacy of Parliament, but the general proposition made by the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, must be right.
If the Government feel that it is essential to have in place a clause that is declaratory, it might as well have the following characteristics. First, it should be so clear that even those of us who are not learned in the law understand it. Secondly, it should be sufficiently clear that it does not give rise to frequent legal challenge. Thirdly, it should make reference to—if I may put it this way—the core code that is involved in European legislation and not gloss over that. For those reasons, Amendment 57 offers greater clarification. It may well have been written with people who are used to dealing with sovereignty issues somewhere in the background, but it is none the less a straightforward clarification. Beyond that, Amendment 59 does that by a very direct reference to what I described as the core code—to the central proposition about why the status of our relationship to Europe is as it is.
If we did not have this clause at all, which would be my preference, much of what I said in the past few moments would not be particularly relevant. But if there is to be a declaratory cause it should at least have the characteristics that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, introduced in his speech this evening. It is impossible to misinterpret or misunderstand it. That has great merit and I hope that he will not mind my saying so from the opposition Benches. It does not alter my view that, as the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong, said, the clause is not really necessary, but Amendment 59 has a convincing pedigree and that is what recommends it to me.
Lord Howell of Guildford
My Lords, I will look first at Amendments 57 and 58 and then come to the vagueness charges embodied in Amendment 59. I will seek to explain why the words are in the Bill. Whether the explanation is acceptable to the Committee is another matter at the moment. I will explain that the words that are in the Bill work the other way: they add to the precision of the legislation rather than to the vagueness of it. I will come to that in a moment.
As noble Lords have recognised, Amendment 57 would include on the face of the Bill that Clause 18 does not alter the rights and obligations that the UK signed up to on becoming a member state of the European Union. It also seeks to legislate explicitly that Clause 18 does not alter the primacy of EU law. I am grateful to your Lordships for drawing attention to these two important principles: that the EU law has primacy and that the UK must honour its obligations as an EU member state. I assure the Committee and particularly the noble Lord, Lord Lea, with his Amendment 58, that the Bill supports both those principles. Indeed, the Bill has to support them. It is not a question of choice. The Bill has to support those principles because to do otherwise would put us in breach of our obligations as EU members.
I have serious concerns about Amendment 57. It does not reflect accurately the legal position regarding the UK's membership of the European Union. I say that because the UK follows the dualist constitutional model. Giving treaties effect in the UK is always a two-stage process. That did not seem to feature in the debate that we just had. The first stage—the signing of the treaty during which the UK may take on rights and obligations—is governed by public international law. The rights and obligations assumed by the UK on becoming an EU member state are governed by public, international law rather than domestic law. Those rights and obligations are binding on the United Kingdom under international law irrespective of the existence of the European Communities Act or any other Act of Parliament and will continue to be so as long as the UK continues to be a member state of the European Union. It follows that the EU Bill does not and cannot change the rights and obligations assumed by the United Kingdom on becoming a member of the European Union. It would be misleading to suggest in this or in any Bill that any Act of Parliament could do this. Such a change could only be done by the UK renegotiating the terms of its membership of the European Union.
I say to the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, that Governments can of course seek to bind future Governments. Most Governments whom I know, and whom many of your Lordships know, have sought to bring in great legislation. Let us take, for instance, some of the privatisation provisions under the earlier Thatcher Government. Our hope was that those would endure. We hoped that a future Government would feel bound by privatisation visions, not renationalise the whole of the then privatised sector—indeed, our hopes were in fact borne out. However, a Parliament cannot bind a future Parliament; that is a completely different proposition. It is of course possible that a future Parliament could repeal the 1972 Act although, interestingly, that would not remove the United Kingdom from the European Union. It could only be done by negotiation through Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union but those things are possible. Parliament can do anything and is supreme.
Noble Lords have asked what the point of Clause 18 is and why it is in the Bill. It confirms that the second stage of the dualist system, whereby the rights and obligations taken on by the UK are given effect in UK law and can therefore be enforced through the UK courts, must always be done by an Act of Parliament. Any suggestion that EU law constitutes a new, higher autonomous legal order and has or can develop into part of the UK’s legal system independent of statute are thereby refuted. That is very important indeed. Noble Lords may say: “So what? That is what the courts have always upheld”. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Williamson, acutely observed, it has been challenged. I think that the prosecution in the metric martyrs case tried to float the idea in the counter case that EU law had some autonomous existence independent of our own statute law. It has been raised and to say that it is not in question is simply factually wrong when people have questioned it.
It is therefore the view of the coalition that it is right and valuable that this declaratory clause should be in the Bill. Even if it can be said that the courts have so far upheld that position, as my noble and learned friend Lord Howe is well aware—having been, as he said, the father, godfather and grandfather of the 1972 Act and much of the legislation that flows from it—and as I know and we all know, these matters are challenged. They are, from time to time, challenged by learned legal minds and there is dispute about them. Far from this clause being unnecessary, as the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong, ventured to argue with great clarity, I maintain that on the basis of our own experience—what we hear, read and see in the public debate—it is necessary that it should be in place. That is my view on Clause 57 but I will obviously think hard about the views that were put forward by extremely acute and expert minds on this matter. However, I said that I would set out how the Government see the matter and that is how we see it.
Amendment 59 was a very important part of the argument put forward by a number of noble Lords, including my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern. Let me explain why we have in there “an Act of Parliament” rather than “by virtue of the European Communities Act 1972”. I reassure my noble and learned friend that we have thought about this very carefully because it is a complex balance of issues and we wanted very much to get it right.
The Government accept that Section 2(1) of the European Communities Act is commonly identified as the primary way in which EU law takes effect in the UK, but unfortunately that is not quite right. There are other Acts which can be interpreted as giving effect to EU law within the UK; for example, there are some provisions of the Scotland Act 1998, the Government of Wales Act 2006, the Northern Ireland Act 1998—and I believe there were other earlier Northern Ireland Acts as well, as I remember taking part in some myself. Then there are the Enterprise Act 2002 and the Equality Act 2006. They all put Ministers under an obligation to act in accordance with EU law without reference to the European Communities Act—and there may be other such Acts in future. Who knows? We have to prepare for these things. It was to address this concern and those facts that Clause 18 was deliberately drafted to refer to Acts in the plural, or an Act of Parliament, rather than solely referring to Section 2(1) of the European Communities Act 1972.
I reassure my noble friends that having carefully thought about it and come down on that side of the argument, which we believe to be the comprehensive and effective one, there was no sinister purpose. It was simply a design to ensure that all the means by which directly effective or applicable EU law could be given an effect in the UK legal order are addressed. That is the raison d’etre and the underlying argument why the clause is there, why it is necessary and why it is so worded.
I would like to say a final word, or semi-final word—or penultimate word—about the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, at Second Reading, which he touched on again today. He queried what on earth paragraph 113 was doing in the Explanatory Notes, which refers to the,
“UK subordinate legislation … and … Acts and Measures of the devolved legislatures”.
The answer is that EU law can be given effect in the UK legal order, not only directly through primary legislation but through means of delegated legislation adopted under primary legislation. The obvious example of this is the secondary legislation giving effect to EU measures adopted under Section 2(2) of the European Communities Act, and the reference in Clause 18 to,
“by virtue of an Act of Parliament”,
covers that aspect.
I said that was my penultimate comment. My noble and extremely learned friend Lord Howe did that dangerous thing of mentioning the Commonwealth, which has not really come into this Bill at all. I cannot resist making the point that if we are to promote the interests of this nation as a positive member of the European Union, and to do so fit in to this extraordinary new world in which all the wealth and accumulated savings and first the economic and now the political power have shifted to a degree away from the Atlantic nations and the West to the new emerging worlds of Asia, Africa and Latin America, these are the new networks in which we must also involve ourselves. We must work to ensure that our European membership enables us to take our full part in these things to reinforce each other.
I had to get that in, only because my noble and learned friend tempted me. It has very little to do with the amendment, but I think that I have explained why the two points raised by noble Lords with great learning and authority fit in to the fact that the clause is necessary; it may be declaratory but it does a job, and that is why it is there, and it is drafted as an Act of Parliament rather than the European Communities Act 1972 but deliberately and carefully.
I think I said a word about the amendment intended to help proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Lea. I assure him that there is no way in which Clause 18 alters the commitment or position of the primacy of European Union law, which in turn rests as it always must on the will and Act of Parliament supported by the courts. That is why I would ask noble Lords and the noble and learned Lords to consider what they have put forward and withdraw the amendment.
European Union Bill
Debate between Lord Pearson of Rannoch and Lord Triesman(13 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Pearson of Rannoch
My Lords, the question of whether this clause should stand part of the Bill gives us an opportunity to keep up to date with the Government’s present intentions regarding Article 3 of Protocol 21 of the Lisbon treaty. Perhaps I may remind the Government of their great leader’s statement made in late 2009:
“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”.
That is from the Prime Minister before he became so. The other quote I give the Government in probing this matter is from Mr David Lidington, made on 20 January this year:
“The UK has until 31 May 2014 to choose whether to accept the application of the Commission’s infringement powers and jurisdiction of the ECJ over this body of instruments or to opt out of them entirely, in which case they will cease to apply to the UK on 1 December 2014”.
More importantly—this is what I want to check up on—Mr Lidington went on to say that:
“Parliament should have the right to give its view on a decision of such importance. The Government therefore commit to a vote in both Houses of Parliament before they make a formal decision on whether they wish to opt-out”.
As I understand it, the provision in Protocol 21 allows the Government to opt out entirely from the whole justice and home affairs proceedings in Lisbon. It is true that if they accept an amendment to any of those provisions in the mean time, that provision then stands. Further, if in the mean time they opt in to anything, the 2014 deadline might not apply. I hope that your Lordships will feel it is helpful if the Government bring us up to date on how their decision is moving on opting out of the whole of the JHA provision. The last time I raised the matter was in Oral Questions, when I was told from the Front Bench by the noble Lord, Lord McNally, that this was all very difficult and sensitive and that the Government had not made up their mind. Have they made any progress?
Lord Triesman
My Lords, I shall not repeat the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, because it would have gone by so fast that what I have to say would not register.
We understand that, broadly speaking, the Government have up till now opted in rather than opted out of the arrangements made under this clause. Is there anything that they identify on the horizon which might lead them in the opposite direction to that which they have taken thus far?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I have just spent the weekend in a part of France, the Dordogne, where English seemed to be spoken rather more often than French. I am conscious that the national interest in terms of co-operation in matters of civil and criminal law is a complex area given that there are now nearly 2 million British citizens living in other states of the European Union—in Spain, France, Portugal, Cyprus and elsewhere. I have to say in answer to the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, that we have not yet come to the point where we must take a final decision on opt-in and opt-out. I have say to the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, that Her Majesty's Government have opted in to the majority of measures which have come up since the last election, but perhaps I may quote holy writ, otherwise known as the coalition agreement, which states:
“We will approach forthcoming legislation in the area of criminal justice on a case-by-case basis, with a view to maximising our country’s security, protecting Britain’s civil liberties and preserving the integrity of our criminal justice system”.
That is what we are doing.
Clause 9 deals in particular with the use of three passerelles specific to the area of justice and home affairs. These are in addition to the Government’s recent commitments to enhance current parliamentary scrutiny arrangements on the use of JHA Title V opt-in and Schengen opt-out decisions following the Written Ministerial Statement of my noble friend Lord Howell and that of the Minister for Europe on 20 January this year. As your Lordships' House will be aware, the details are subject to continuing discussions between Parliament and the Government, which is part of our commitment to enhancing parliamentary control over three key EU decisions.
I remind your Lordships that the passerelles are: Article 81(3) of the TFEU, which permits measures concerning family law with cross-border implications to be subject to the ordinary legislative procedure and therefore qualified majority voting; Article 82(2)(d) of the TFEU, which enables the Council to add to the list of criminal law procedures that can be subject to subsequent EU legislation under the ordinary legislative procedure; and Article 83(1) of the TFEU, which allows for additions to the list of criminal offences and sanctions in the areas of serious cross-border crime on which the EU can set minimum standards. These are considered to be sufficiently serious and significant moves for this clause to stand part.
The parliamentary approval process for the three passerelles comprises two stages rather than one. This reflects the operation of our opt-in protocol on the area of freedom, security and justice annexed to the treaties and, more specifically, the arrangements governing our opt-in. It requires two decisions to be taken: first, the initial opt-in to negotiations and, secondly, the adoption of the final negotiated measure. Clause 9 affords Parliament control over both these decisions by requiring a positive vote in both Houses to approve the Government’s proposal to opt in to the negotiation, and then parliamentary approval through primary legislation once the UK has opted into the negotiation and that negotiation is complete.
Having said that, the clause helps to fulfil pledges made in the The Coalition: Our Programme for Government, in that the use of any passerelle clause will be subject to approval through an Act of Parliament and represents an enhanced level of control afforded to Parliament. Having reassured the Committee on that, I hope that it will accept that this clause stand part of the Bill.
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.
Lord Triesman
My Lords, obviously the past is made up of facts but, as today has illustrated richly, the retelling of history is made up of the view taken by those who look at the facts. Having listened to what has been said in this debate, I have to say that some of the accounts of the facts do very scant justice either to what took place or, indeed, to some other countries. To be told that people were made to vote again and that the referenda were enforced appears to give very little credit whatever to the determination of the peoples of Denmark, Ireland, France or Holland, and I do not see why we should spend our time here insulting them. They were perfectly capable of settling the first propositions put in front of them and they were perfectly capable of assessing the changes. If it is said that, for example, consent was finally achieved in Ireland because of the financial problems that the country was facing—bailed out, it was said, by the straitjacket of the euro—I find that an astonishing bit of history. The banking and liquidity collapse of the country appears to have had no role; the sub-prime derivatives in which the banks of that country were so heavily involved that it had to set up a “bad bank” to deal with the mass of debt that had been accumulated appears to have had no role; and the massive speculative forces in property, finally producing a major financial threat which arose from those kinds of difficulties, also apparently had no role.
European Union Bill
Debate between Lord Pearson of Rannoch and Lord Triesman(13 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Triesman
I suspect that the noble Lord has a slightly different experience of political life to mine, if that is the conclusion that he draws. My conclusion is that you can fight either side in a referendum and find that within a short period you did not like the result, whether things have changed or not, and the opportunity to fight it again will occur. It may very well be, for example, that some of those people who thought that the proposal to change the electoral system should not have been defeated as heavily as it fortunately was last Thursday will come back and conclude that they should have another go on another occasion. I shall not be wholly surprised if they decide that that is what they are going to do, even at the cost of having the experience repeated.
The point about reconnecting with the electorate is very critical. The electorate is dismayed with Parliament and parliamentarians on occasions, for a raft of reasons, and I shall not bore your Lordships by going through all those reasons in the recent past. As I said earlier, I do not think that a feeling of greater warmth towards parliamentarians will be achieved by parliamentarians giving up work in some of the areas that would be regarded as being the nitty gritty, not the big constitutional issues at all. I have looked through the list in Clause 6(5)—paragraphs (c), (d), (f), (g) and (h). I mention those because I am an inveterate campaigner on behalf of all sorts of causes, including those of the party I have the privilege to represent. I have thought hard about having any one of those paragraphs, let alone any combination of them, about how the campaign on them would be fought and what the doorstep would be like as you went around trying to do that kind of political work. It is not because of the ignorance or foolishness of the electorate; that is not the reason at all. Yet there is an expectation that many of those issues will have so much fine-grained detail within them that the electorate expects someone to have done a lot of this work, especially if they have elected those people to come here and do it. In our case, we are not elected but they nonetheless have a healthy respect for the work that this House can do because of the knowledge and expertise that we know is in it.
I suspect that, on most of those issues, you would get far greater traction on the doorstep by discussing the Eurovision Song Contest than you would ever get by a serious attempt to discuss some of these issues in detail. As most noble Lords who have campaigned in politics will know, I know that the kinds of discussions you have on the doorstep are real ones: about wider economic issues and a wide variety of issues. However, it is not typically the case that people want to get into a large number of sub-clauses under the arrangements of Article 312(2) of the European constitution. In fact, to my dismay, I have never had that raised with me anywhere. I look forward to the occasion when it might be.
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.
Lord Triesman
It is terribly tempting to go into experiences of Swiss referenda in the cantons. Sadly for the House, I have some experience of them. That is what tells me that I should not retell it here because it is not exactly what the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, thinks it might be. I hope that the House is not misunderstanding my point, which is not that people are unable to grasp complex ideas or are uninterested in them. It is that, in general, I believe they have a sentiment which suggests that the really critical things should be put before them but that there is also a responsibility on parliamentarians to do a high level of detailed work and to get some of that work done.
Lord Triesman
My Lords, that makes the point that I wished to make about the character of the alliances, even in an area that is as sensitive for us as defence. I suspect that most people would conclude that our membership of those alliances has been absolutely fundamental to the security of our country and would not wish to see them shaken. Were there to be some absolutely massive change in the architecture of defence, it might be so substantive as to require a mechanism that is contained in an amendment and has been in past undertakings that we have made. However, it would be a fairly extraordinary event that looked as though it were even more significant than the arrangements that we have under the provisions of the NATO treaty.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch
Surely the noble Lord must agree that, as the noble Baroness, Lady Nicholson, said, these other organisations do not make our law. We can leave them tomorrow if we want, with far greater ease than we can leave the European Union. The EU makes our law, which is a difference. We would be in a very different position with an EU army from the one we are in with NATO.
Lord Triesman
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, made the point that the arrangements made under the NATO treaty, about its command structure and the obligations on members, have the effect, whether described as law or not, of determining how we behave in the defence of this country. It is impossible to argue that that is not substantively the case.
As I said earlier, this clause provides, more than anything else, the opportunity for continuous internal division and splits—not harmonisation or bringing people back to political activism and political understanding but rather the alternative. If the argument flows in the other direction—that we will never use it, or that the process of being bound to the mast is not really there and we will sail by without anybody noticing that it is happening—the Government should, out of courtesy to the House, simply make a statement that this is a form of dressing up a political proposal for people who feel disenfranchised in any respect by what has happened in the development of the European Union. They should say that that is what it is for; it is not at all for anything practical. That is really the status of this clause.
European Union Bill
Debate between Lord Pearson of Rannoch and Lord Triesman(13 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Triesman
My Lords, the observation is completely accurate and adds weight to the point that I make, namely that it is in these areas where people are trying to work through the provision of stable legal systems and better democratic systems that we have seen the replacement in many cases of conflict between those states. That is a huge success.
Of course, we have supported accessions from their initiation through to full EU membership. Major parties on all sides of the House have done so, despite the inconveniences that have sometimes occurred but which were minor in the overall context. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, that not all these gains can be washed away by tales of cynicism, whisky, chocolates or anything else. By and large, in my experience, people have sought the gains because they have wanted a better and more peaceful life, and have wanted their children to enjoy a better future.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch
My Lords, can the noble Lord name a single European country that would have gone to war with another since 1945 in the absence of the project of European integration?
Lord Triesman
My Lords, I was going to go through one or two. Certainly Serbia will serve the purpose. A number of countries in the region, for one reason or another, went to war. It was only when a different kind of future was offered to them that they began to think about the alternative future that their children might enjoy which did not involve shooting each other.
I understand, in debating the amendment, that the issues that I have raised are not supported everywhere or by everyone. I take the point of the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart: I regard the movement of labour in a free market as broadly beneficial, but I know that not everybody thinks so. Many people have expressed anxieties about it. This has been one issue that has come out of part of the accession. I believe that, broadly speaking, it has been economically advantageous to Europe rather than the contrary. However, I accept that many people who expressed anxieties were dismissed in a trivial way or saw their anxieties given grudging attention. Probably that did not serve the argument well.
Some people may have felt that changes of that kind were sufficiently profound that they wanted a say in the decision through a referendum. More than that, I suspect that they felt the need for some sort of shout about the overall size of the EU. For all that, were they to contrast the prospect of having a referendum on those questions with the ideas in the Bill about having a referendum on many minute, technocratic and in many instances unintelligible provisions, probably they would think that some of the issues raised by the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, were more important than others. It would be foolish of us not to recognise that.
I suspect that some of the same arguments could happen with the Turkish accession. Let me be clear that we—certainly I do—totally support it. I welcome the dynamism that it represents. I also have no hankering for a Europe that is built around a single religious tradition—a view which has been expressed by many of the Eurosceptics and, indeed, in some European capitals. It would be a huge gain to see Turkey as a full member of Europe. It is absolutely right, as the noble Lord, Lord Tomlinson, said, that it has always played a fundamental role in the Council of Europe. This would be a huge gain for Europe in a much more profound sense—a Europe that is welcoming and able not only to cope with, which is probably too derisory a way to put it, but to embrace a major secular but also Islamic nation with a capability of bridging the interests of Europe, the Middle East and the Caucasus and bringing a great deal to stabilising the discussion right around the southern and eastern flank of Europe.
Whatever the merits that I might express about it, I know that those merits have been accepted by all recent United Kingdom Governments. However, there remain people—it has been something of a cause in France and Poland, for example—who believe that Turkish accession would have a major impact on the style and culture of the European Union. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, described it as the ethos of the European Union. I look forward to these evolutionary changes regardless of whether others have expressed doubts. However, among those who have expressed doubts, some will probably feel that there will be an impact on them—a greater impact than some of the things that will be subject to referenda under the Bill’s provisions—and that they are not being asked their opinion.
The Minister will probably want to explain to the House the difference in approach and the apparent irrationality of the circumstances in which people will be asked for their view as between the different kinds of categories of issues at stake. The amendment draws the wrong conclusion. However, it cannot be said that the issue that it raises is inconsequential. Nevertheless, as I said at the beginning, we are opposed in principle, and we are. It would be better to remove the requirements for so many of these trigger clauses for referenda without providing any compelling definitions of issues of major constitutional importance and without an independent means of confirming the compelling nature of the decision.
It would be very helpful if the Minister could also comment on the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, about what would happen were there to be a number of countries seeking accession at the same time. I will not invite him, however, to develop a new theory of AV which might allow for multiple voting—an outcome which probably everybody would fail to understand.
I can also see one other great risk in the kind of referenda that this amendment calls for, and that is in the area of producing campaigns which could very well be xenophobic and draw out the worst in relations between those seeking entry to the European Union and the domestic community of the United Kingdom, not least because many of those communities already in the United Kingdom are dynamic and vigorous parts of the society of the United Kingdom. The tensions that could be produced by that kind of approach would be quite unacceptable.
I also believe that accession does not transfer powers from the United Kingdom and that the House would do itself a considerable favour by recognising the beneficial characteristics of the growth that we have seen, a benefit which will unquestionably continue. As we look across the whole of the achievement of a peaceful European Union, I suspect that that will be seen historically to be one of the better departing points in our history.
Lord Triesman
My Lords, I apologise if what I have said is not clear enough. My point at the very beginning of my comments was that when you begin to talk about the latitude to move in any of these areas, you can guarantee that one set of people will say that it is a new arrangement and demand the conditions which the Bill establishes for a referendum, while others will say that it is simply in the areas of competence: they can do it with a degree of codification, were that to be necessary, or they can do it under the rubric of the codified arrangements. It will always be the subject of conflict between those who believe that it is a subterfuge to extend the powers of the EU and those who believe that it can be done legitimately. I am saying that you cannot run a proper political process that way, with that much obscurity and that many arguments and with the prospect of many things not only going through our Parliament but through judicial review, and with fierce arguments around the country about the need for a referendum in those circumstances. It just strikes me as being a way of tying the hands of those who you hope and expect will be competent to conduct the discussions in the European environment to a successful conclusion in the interests of this country.
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.