Hungary
Lord Sewel Excerpts(12 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Howell of Guildford
My noble friend is right that there is concern here, and it is a matter that both aspiring and current members of the European Union should closely follow and be engaged in. Hungary is a nation of many virtues and has been through many difficulties. We want it to continue and prosper as a free nation and not to be constrained by undesirable and unsavoury laws. We recognise that, and we have to work very hard on that basis.
Lord Sewel
My Lords, although it is right and proper to be positive and constructive in our relationship with Hungary at this difficult time, ultimately, what sanctions are available to the EU?
Lord Howell of Guildford
The sanctions are those that are available to the European Union as an organisation which requires certain standards that we adhere to very strongly—standards of behaviour, and moral, legal and social standards—throughout the European Union. That is the sanction available on that side. The Council of Europe also has powers to censure, and, indeed, challenge the continued membership of organisations within it. These are powerful pressures that need to be used in a balanced way and with the right approach. That is the situation which we are now grappling with.
European Union Bill
Lord Sewel Excerpts(13 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Pearson of Rannoch
My Lords, to come back to Amendments 16A and 16B, I oppose them because they make it possible for the Government of the day to avoid a referendum if they think that some new EU power grab, whatever it happens to be, is sufficiently urgent or if they think that it is in the national interest. I fear that the supporters of these amendments have not yet grasped the point that the British people do not want any more powers passed to Brussels, period, as the saying goes—full stop. In fact, a growing majority of the British people want all their powers back; they want to be a democracy again with the power to elect and dismiss those who make all their laws.
I am afraid that the amendments do not work in detail, either. Who is to decide the urgency of the decision or whether it is in the national interest? The octopus in Brussels of course, not the British Government or Parliament. To be certain of this, we have only to look at the way in which Brussels has treated both our Government and Parliament over many years. I refer of course to its constant indifference to our scrutiny reserve. I remind your Lordships for the record, and for those outside your Lordships’ House who may not know, what the scrutiny reserve is. It is a promise made to Parliament—to the House of Commons and your Lordships’ House—by Governments of all persuasions over many years that they will not sign up to any new law or initiative in Brussels if the Select Committee of either House is still considering it. If the Select Committees have finished looking at it or have agreed it, or if it has been debated in Parliament, the Government of the day are free to sign up in the Council of Ministers in Brussels to whatever initiative is concerned. That is the promise or scrutiny reserve.
A Written Answer to me from the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford, on 7 February this year reveals that in the past five years alone the scrutiny reserve has been overridden—in other words, the Government’s promise has been broken—no fewer than 267 times in the House of Commons and 248 times in your Lordships’ House. That means that in the past five years more than 500 proposals from Brussels, which the Select Committee of either House thought sufficiently important to examine and to advise the Government on, became law anyway. The juggernaut rolled on regardless. It is worth adding that the situation does not appear to be improving, despite regular complaints from the Select Committees to the Government. In 2010, 151 overrides were notched up between the two Houses—79 in the House of Commons and 72 in your Lordships’ House.
Lord Sewel
Would the noble Lord be good enough to inform us how many of these—I forget the numbers, so could I be reminded?
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.
European Union Bill
Lord Sewel Excerpts(13 years, 8 months ago)
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Baroness Falkner of Margravine
My memory goes back even further to when the Labour Party was itself completely riven on what approach it might take to the European Union, which was rather before the apartheid saga.
The coalition programme looks forward to forthcoming legislation with a view to increasing parliamentary scrutiny of new powers and competences, and looks outwards to ensure that the demands of democratic engagement are upheld. It goes further than before by enshrining in law that for significant changes sovereignty should be ceded by those who own it, the citizens or people of our country. It is therefore a far cry from the wording in the Conservative manifesto, which stated:
“We will work to bring back key powers over legal rights, criminal justice and social and employment legislation to the UK”.
The Bill takes the treaties, as amended most recently by Lisbon, as the starting point. While the coalition agreement gives a commitment to examine the EU's existing competences, and particularly to work to limit the application of the working time directive, this is not in my view a dramatic change. In fact, in an age of austerity, it might seem sensible to review the need for greater labour flexibility. However, it does raise the question of what other competences there will be and when. I wonder whether my noble friend could explain when winding up the debate the timeframe to which the Government are working in their examination of competences, and what role Parliament will play in scrutinising their conclusions.
Let me now turn to the substantive parts of the Bill. Clauses 2 to 5 will no doubt attract considerable scrutiny, as they deal with the procedure to be followed for treaty amendments and changes. They change the current situation in now requiring an Act of Parliament after the Government have signed up in principle to the change. This will no doubt add a considerable time lag to EU decision-making. We had an example of a draft European Council decision only last night on the European stability mechanism, and I wonder what useful purpose might have been achieved by a country that is not in the eurozone holding up those that are in it doing something that tidies up an existing situation and seeks to put it on a permanent footing. The way in which we dealt with that last night would no longer be possible if these changes go through.
I accept that every change of treaty requires an Act of Parliament, and I am in no way opposed to that level of parliamentary approval for significant and substantive treaty changes. Yet I wonder whether raising the test for an Article 48(6) decision—the simplified revision procedure—as set out in Clause 1(5) is necessarily the way to go. Clause 4 sets out a rather long list of criteria whereby a future treaty change will be judged and changes the situation whereby qualified majority voting ensues. I understand that the list is so comprehensive due to our lack of a written constitution in the United Kingdom and therefore to the relatively open-ended possibilities of judicial review. Can my noble friend explain whether that is the rationale behind this prescription and, if it is not, why we are spelling out our parameters in such detail? Does that not reduce the flexibility of the Government of the day to evaluate each decision on its merits and to go forward on that basis?
I turn to that other area of controversy, the so-called use of the referendum lock. The potential use of referendums will cover large numbers of procedures, including ordinary and simplified revisions and passerelles. The Constitution Committee, in its report on the Bill, lists some 50 treaty provisions that might attract a referendum. I accept the Government’s premise that a significant disconnect has developed between the British people and EU institutions. In fact, I wrote a thesis in the early 1990s on British attitudes to European federalist integration, and that disconnect had been there for some decades before. The challenge for succeeding Governments is to improve education about the EU and its institutions rather than just lamenting the lack of support for them, as put out by noble Lords on the opposition Benches a few minutes ago.
As we moved to a federal settlement in the UK in the 1990s with the establishment of a Parliament in Scotland and an Assembly in Wales, one would have expected that we would have also taken the opportunity to talk of our rightful place in Europe. Yet the Opposition became obsessed instead with impregnable tests on the euro and whether the ill-fated constitutional treaty would get through. In the mean time, another generation has grown up knowing the European countries better than ever before but not feeling the common solidarity that should unite us, other than in the most instrumentalist manner.
That distrust of EU institutions now leads us to the logic of the referendum lock. As noble Lords will know, the Constitution Committee defines a limited set of conditions in which, in its opinion, a referendum would be warranted. The committee goes on to say that this Bill is a radical step-change in the adoption of referendum provisions. As a Lib Dem who was privy to several animated discussions in our own party over whether to commit to a referendum before joining the euro, I know how difficult it is to agree what constitutes a fundamental shift in power. I was proud of moving to that promise and am overall a supporter of referendums for significant changes. Other European countries have their own scrutiny and control mechanisms in place. I come from a view that every generation should be able to have a voice on the direction of its country’s stance on sovereignty. At this stage, I am not inordinately concerned about these clauses. As the Constitution Committee reminds us, Parliament could repeal or amend any or all of the control mechanisms established by the Bill, including the referendum lock provisions.
On the significance condition, therein will lie the practical issues of how frequently referendums will be held. First, let us be clear that this condition in the Bill will enable Ministers to judge whether a simplified revision procedure change that gives an EU body the power to impose sanctions, requirements or obligations on the UK would not require a referendum. If this reading is correct, can the Minister give us examples of the sort of changes he has in mind that would then fall under ministerial judgment under this test? In other words, what would he consider insignificant?
On the subject of referendums, my recall is that if a treaty change would have triggered a referendum, we would have had about five in the past 25 years. Does the Minister expect a similar number in future? The other contentious area—
Lord Sewel
I am grateful to the noble Baroness for giving way. She has touched on the difficulty of significance —of what is significant and what is insignificant—and has asked the Minister to give examples. Does that not hint at the real possibility that the difference between significant and insignificant will be before the courts virtually every time this issue comes up?
Baroness Falkner of Margravine
The Constitution Committee made clear in its report that this would not necessarily be a matter for the courts but a matter of political judgment. We will probably hear from the Minister in his closing speech, and I will leave it at that.
The other contentious area in the Bill relates to parliamentary sovereignty and the status of EU law. I know that this has exercised the other place considerably and that its European Scrutiny Committee has commented on this at length. Given the number of speakers in this debate, I will comment on Clause 18 as we deliberate on it in Committee.
I conclude by stating the obvious. Ultimately, the Bill is about a political perspective on how to protect the UK’s interests in the EU. It is not a political Bill, as the noble Baroness, Lady Symons of Vernham Dean, suggests, but it goes to the heart of political judgments about what is right by our country.
There are elements of compromise on which in our coalition, as I suspect there are in parties themselves, there are opinions on all sides. What is essential for us in this House is that in scrutinising this legislation we end up with a product that achieves greater confidence among the public in what their Government will and will not do in their name. We look forward to the Bill in that spirit.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch
—would run a campaign to get us out of the EU? Who would have thought then that 373,000 of its readers would have signed a petition to leave? Most of those people took the trouble to fill in a small form, cut it out and post it to the Express. Does that not reveal quite a bit of energy? Now there is a new campaign, the people’s pledge, launched last week. It is an all-party national campaign, led from the left, which asks people to sign a pledge online that at the next general election they will vote only for a candidate who promises to support an in/out referendum on our EU membership. It includes people who believe we should—
Lord Sewel
Could I renew to the noble Lord the invitation of the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, to get on with the Bill?
Piracy: Operation Atalanta (EUC Report)
Lord Sewel Excerpts(14 years ago)
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Lord Sewel
My Lords, I think that we have heard enough during this debate to realise that, in relation to Somali pirates and Somalia generally, there are very few grounds for optimism. That is made even more worrying by the fact that we are dealing with a failed state—an almost ideal, typical failed state—in what is emerging as the most dangerous part of the world. That is a real and pressing problem. One difficulty is that so few people have heard about Operation Atalanta, which, with limited resources, is none the less making a significant contribution to tackling one of the key problems that we face. That must be recognised.
On a lighter note, when we were collecting evidence and preparing our report, I was tempted—fleetingly, and I resisted—to suggest that the report ought to be entitled, “Tough on piracy and tough on the causes of piracy”. I am glad that I resisted, but there is a truth in that, because we need a pretty tough and robust military operation going hand in hand with a tough capacity-building and development strategy in parts of Somalia. The two must march together if we are to have any hope of confronting this problem successfully.
Other noble Lords can speak with much greater authority on the military aspects of the report. I underline what has been said about the need to have in place tanker refuelling facilities. There is a danger of a heck of a lot of time being wasted as our ships steam backwards and forwards to refuel when they could be doing the job for longer if they could be refuelled at sea by tankers. Others have mentioned airborne surveillance, which is clearly of great importance.
I want to say something about the World Food Programme. I am a great supporter of the World Food Programme and think that it is one of the best international organisations operating at the moment, but it is short-sighted of it almost to insist on chartering at the lowest price. I can understand the pressures on it to do that, as it wants to spend its money on food delivery and humanitarian aid. However, if it is chartering at that low price, while it is saving itself some direct costs, it does so at the disadvantage of transferring the indirect costs on to the Atalanta operation. I hope that the World Food Programme can respond to the requests that I know have been made. The Minister might be able to help in this. I read that it had agreed to modify its policy, but I am not sure that this has been implemented.
There is also the issue of the role of the insurance companies. I was enormously disappointed when we took evidence from the insurance companies. They adopted an indifference and a detachment and failed to see any sort of contribution that they could make in ensuring that best practice was observed by those trans-shipping in the Indian Ocean and the Gulf. However, if offshore activities are to be met with a greater degree of success, that essentially depends, as many noble Lords have indicated, on changing the reward to risk ratio. I understand and share the frustration of many noble Lords that the constraints of operating within the confines of international law seem to put our people in the position where the greatest sanction that they can give out is something slightly more than a slap on the wrist. Have the Government looked at this and made absolutely sure that, when our military personnel are in a position to be able to identify someone who is going about ready for piracy, they can administer something more robust than at the moment?
The other great weakness is the relative lack of successful prosecutions. I can well understand why some countries do not want to find themselves looking after hundreds of Somali pirates in their own prisons, but it would be useful to know from the Minister the latest figures on successful prosecutions—not just those who are being held—and which states are now fully signed up, because it seems that from time to time some states come in and then subsequently move out of co-operation in this area. Also, what efforts are being made to trace the money? We hear stories of the money being used to finance major retail investments throughout Africa and large houses in Africa and parts of Europe. There is also the central question of the relationship between the ransom money and the financing of terrorism. That must be a fundamental concern. I do not know whether the Minister is in a position to give us any information on that, but clearly it would be very helpful if he could.
If there is a solution, it must in large measure lie onshore rather than offshore. Here, we come to the security and development dimension of the response. That must be in the form of trying to create a secure environment within which development can take place. Given the nature of Somalia, I am the first to recognise that we should not underestimate the scale of the challenge. These things are easy to say, but I think that it is going to be exceedingly difficult to deliver. The only heartening information that I have picked up recently came when I was in Ethiopia, talking to a group of ambassadors from EU member states. They all agreed that even now there is a real possibility of investment in parts of Somaliland and possibly Puntland in order almost to establish areas of security within which development can take place and then gradually to build out from there. That is not much, but it is most likely our best bet. I wonder whether the Minister would like to comment on the type of development strategy that he sees as being at all possible to implement in that part of the world, because it cannot depend on using the institutions of a state that basically does not exist.
My noble friend Lord Williams of Elvel made the point that the livelihoods of fishermen in the area have been adversely affected by illegal fishing for tuna by both European and Asian fleets, as well as by the dumping of large quantities of toxic waste in the waters around Somalia. Have the Government any information on this? Has an assessment been made of whether a viable fisheries industry could be established again? If you have a development-based approach, that is going to be an important part of it.
Despite all the efforts of the Atalanta operation—along with others, I pay due credit to the work that has been done—in the longer term we cannot rest on Atalanta as the solution. The solution must come from a combination of capacity building and development, because otherwise we will be left with a limited military containment strategy that will most likely come under resource pressure and be subject to questions about whether it can be sustained indefinitely. I do not speak with any great sense of optimism about this issue, but it is one where we would underestimate its importance in terms of global security in the medium term at our peril.