European Union Bill

Lord Rowlands Excerpts

Monday 13th June 2011 Lords Chamber

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, immensely for putting forward such interesting amendments. Unfortunately I cannot give him and his fellow supporters my support.

[Lord Rowlands]

My Lords, over the whole of my parliamentary lifetime I have always had a Eurosceptic disposition. Indeed, looking back at or listening to the deliberations in Committee, and now on Report, brings back floods of memories of the debates in 1972 and the various devices that were then thought up to try to make the system more accountable. I recall, for example, an amendment that there should be a general election before we entered the European Union, while there were of course numerous debates on referendums both in 1972 and particularly at Maastricht. I would therefore have had a natural sense of empathy for this Bill.

I have supported referendums and greater accountability on European decision-making right throughout my parliamentary lifetime. Having listened to much of the Committee and read as much as I can of our deliberations, I must say that this is now becoming a hugely overcomplicated process of accountability. Just look at Clause 6(5) and the list of issues that will, through its paragraphs (a) to (k), be subject to a referendum. It is not unreasonable for anyone reading this clause to believe that, as a result, there will be a potential plethora of referendums.

I support the objective, the principle, and the idea behind the Bill, but the Government have overcomplicated the issue. Reflecting on my own experience, I now rather regret that we did not in an earlier time invest greater interest and press the business of ensuring greater parliamentary accountability—a much tougher regime of accountability. That is why I find parts of the Bill, particularly Clause 6, if it were shorn of the referendum provisions as these amendments suggest, very important and attractive.

I was on the Constitution Committee in the previous Parliament when it brought forward an amendment during debate on the Lisbon treaty that all opt-ins should be the subject of particular parliamentary processes, approval and accountability, and the House subsequently devised the procedures to do just that. That is now the best route that we can take to make these European decisions more accountable. Some fundamental issues should be the subject of a referendum, and the three listed in the amendment clearly qualify. Indeed, our own Constitution Committee suggested in its report on referendums that they are best confined to the big, fundamental issues. Those should be subject to a referendum, but not the plethora of some of those listed in Clause 6. Given one’s own experience, and having listened to the debate, I certainly support these amendments, because they would reinforce the role of parliamentary accountability and do not go down the confusing route to the possibility of a plethora of referendums.

[Lord Waddington]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Rowlands, was very eloquent, and I can well understand how he has reached the position that he has. Looking at just one of the amendments that we are considering, I must say that I find the wording of Amendment 15 really rather odd. It seems that, taken at its face value, all sorts of decisions could be made on a common European defence and no referendum would be required unless the intention was to permit a single, integrated military force. We could integrate our Navy with every other country’s navy and still be well short of creating a single, integrated military force, so there would not have to be a referendum. That seems very odd if you are going down the route of having referendums at all.

The noble Lord, Lord Hannay, was again rather beguiling. At one stage he said that he was putting forward these amendments in a spirit of compromise. It might look like an exercise in compromise to some people, but to others it might well look like part of a general strategy to whittle down the protection that the Bill is designed to afford. That is what I find so terribly depressing: that having gone all through Committee, and now on Report, not a word is spoken by the opponents of the Bill to suggest that they have a clue as to how disillusioned people feel and how necessary it is to give them some reassurance, or how necessary it is to show them that their views are not going to continue to be overridden and that we are not going to go on continually conceding powers so that eventually we finish up being no longer a sovereign, independent state. Never a word comes from opponents of the Bill to show that they have any realisation of the difficulties that we face at the present time.

In these debates we are constantly told that the right to a referendum can be safely whittled down here, there and everywhere. We are constantly told that referendums are an affront to parliamentary democracy, but I am bound to say that people are asking me what Parliament has done so far to guarantee our independence and to protect our fundamental freedoms. They point to what happened over the Lisbon and all the rest of it, and, as I say, they are thoroughly disillusioned. I think that they, like me, will not be at all impressed by the suggestion that somehow or other we can meet most of these problems by making sure that Parliament does its work properly.

I remind my noble friends and noble Lords of some of the history. The noble Baroness, Lady Quin, said in a speech the other day that it was made clear in the 1975 referendum that we were joining not just a common market but an EEC. Let us leave aside for a moment the fact that the question on the ballot paper was:

“Do you think the UK should stay in the European Community (Common Market)?”.

Let us leave aside for a moment the fact that there was no mention of the EEC at all. In fact, Harold Wilson, as he then was, made a great speech in which he recommended a yes vote because the threat of monetary union had gone away. I distinctly remember him saying that. That is all part of the dismal history. “Stop worrying, it is not going to happen”. Then it happens. “Well, it is not so important after all and it certainly will not happen again. This is the end of the road”.

I came back from Bermuda in 1997 having looked somewhat askance at some of the developments during the years when I was away. The first thing that happened to me was that I was invited to a rather grand dinner party at which every other guest was a Whitehall mandarin. There were three ambassadors and one or two permanent officials from the Foreign Office, and they said, “Oh, what are you banging on about, David? Stop worrying”. These are the exact words that were used to me that night: “The high-water mark of European integration has been reached”. That is what they told me. Well, the next day the tide continued to come in and it has been coming in ever since.

We are constantly told that it is safe to leave all these matters in the hands of our elected politicians. We might not have much to thank Mr Gordon Brown for, but let us give credit when credit is due; but for Brown, Tony Blair might well have used his vast majority to take us into the euro at the end of the 1990s, and a fine mess we would be in now. Remember, he dreamt up the idea of a referendum only to get him through the 2001 election. There was no question of the need for a referendum on the euro prior to that.