European Union (Approvals) Bill [HL]

Lord Renton of Mount Harry Excerpts

Tuesday 30th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Renton of Mount Harry]

My Lords, I listened with great interest to what my noble friend Lord Gardiner had to say in taking us through the Bill. I am particularly interested in it because I played some part in the previous Bill on this subject so it is good to be talking about it again.

I have no objection to the first part of the European Union (Approvals) Bill—if it is appropriate to deposit papers and historical records at the European University Institute in Florence, so be it—but I find the second and major part rather difficult. I am surprised by the draft decision in relation to the Europe for Citizens programme.

I have managed to get hold of the Council of the European Union’s document on the programme, which came out on 4 July. Pages 9 and 10 talk about its specific objectives being to,

“raise awareness of remembrance, common history and values and the Union’s aim that is to promote peace, its values and the well-being of its peoples by stimulating debate, reflection and development of networks”,

and then to,

“encourage democratic and civic participation of citizens at Union level”.

It continues:

“In order to achieve its objectives, the programme shall finance inter alia the following types of actions … Mutual learning and cooperation activities such as … Citizens’ meetings, town-twinning, networks of twinned towns … remembrance projects with a … European dimension”.

I do not see how all that fits in with the present programmes and ideas of some of the most serious people in the Conservative Party. Here we are: we are just removing ourselves from the justice provisions of the European Union. It is ironic, for example, that we are planning a referendum on whether we stay in the EU and at the same time taking hold of this Bill with plentiful support. These situations may not seem not to contradict one another, but I think that they do. For that reason I should like to hear more from my noble friend on this subject. It is not a problem for me personally. I have always been in favour of our active membership of the European Union and convinced that it is only through that active membership that Britain will grow. I should like to think that the Bill goes some way towards supporting that view, but it comes at a slightly odd time.