European Union Bill

Lord Stoddart of Swindon Excerpts

Tuesday 26th April 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dykes]

My Lords, I think that the Committee generally will very much welcome the Government’s suggestion.

[Lord Stoddart of Swindon]

My Lords, on the point that the noble Baroness raised, I do not think that I heard a loud voice saying that we should not debate Clause 3 stand part. So if anybody wishes to debate Clause 3 stand part, when the Question is put to the Committee, any Member can get up and speak to it. Is that not right?

[Noble Lords]

Yes.

[Lord Stoddart of Swindon]

Good. Thank you.

[Lord Dykes]

The Committee can now benefit from the correction provided by the Independent Labour Member on the Cross Benches. It enables us to make progress because, in a way, the linkage between Clauses 3 and 4 is dangerous, to use the word of the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, and the more we think about it the more dangerous it becomes. It is quite astonishing to reflect on the fact that Clause 4—even if it was included and referred to the Article 48(6) differences—would have been better as a brief clause of perhaps five lines at the most, without the long and lethal list of possibilities for passerelles and other areas of quite routine procedure within the European institutions which have to be automatically referendable in this system.

We forgive the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, for the length of his speech on 5 April, because on that occasion he said some very pertinent and welcome things that will help us to improve this Bill if the Government accept that improvements are necessary, as I hope they will. Perhaps the noble Lord will forgive me for quoting his own material, but towards the end of the last but one paragraph in col. 1634, he put a question on which there has, as I understand it, been total silence despite a two and a half week Recess and time for the Government to give at least a provisional indication. I am ready to be corrected if it is not true that no answer has been given. Briefly, in that last but one paragraph, the noble Lord said:

“Therefore, it seems to me that the references to Article 48(6) and simplified revision procedure in the Bill are otiose. The only other explanation for them could be that the Government envisage referenda on EU issues where no transfer of powers or sovereignty is envisaged”.—[Official Report, 5/4/11; col. 1634.]

If that is so, are they doing it because of a small number of active anti-Europeans in this country who hate the European Union? There is no indication that the public in general are very excited except by the concept of the remoteness of Brussels. That is certainly an issue, but it is an issue that the European Union is trying to address through various measures such as the Lisbon treaty and other means which are gaining ground.

The number of visitors to the European Parliament is massive compared with the numbers visiting even those national parliaments, such as this one and the German Bundestag, which get the most visitors. The number of people visiting the European Parliament has increased massively over the past 10 years, and especially over the past 20 years, and the vast majority of responses from those visiting the European Parliament —from people of all political persuasions and orientations and from people of none, who visit for all sorts of reasons—show that people are gaining a greater understanding of how the institutions of the Union work in a complicated matrix. There are now 27 member states of the Union, as opposed to six when it first started, and complicated machinery is inevitably needed to deal with all the possibilities and ramifications.

It seems to me to be a pity that the Government are persisting obstinately in not entertaining the idea of any substantial or far-reaching amendments, particularly to Clause 4 and the end of Clause 3. I share what I perceive to be the general approbation for the amendments, including the two new additions at the beginning of this cluster proposed by the Labour Front Bench today. We need to spend some time on this, aware as I am that there is a Statement coming along about a very important subject—Libya and the Middle East.

There are three conditions: the referendum condition, the exemption condition and the significance condition. The end of Clause 3 deals really with the significance condition but partly with the exemption one and Clause 4 gives an exhaustive and dangerous list of referendable items. By reversing the whole process and putting back into the list deliberately virtually all the Clause 4 list the Labour Front Bench and others who are in favour of these amendments, and Amendment 28 as well, can show the full absurdity by widening out fully ministerial discretion on everything so eventually nothing in Clause 4 would need to be subject to referendum apart from the very significant matters mentioned in one or two of those paragraphs—not very many of them, I hasten to add.

The clause does direct damage to the existing competences under the treaties and prevents any member state even responding within the powers already granted by treaty. That is the most extraordinary thing, hence the anxieties of the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, and of my noble friend in front of me who expressed fears about an Act of Parliament then being overturned by a referendum. My noble friend Lord Goodhart emphasised that in the first Committee sitting, and I hope that he will have a chance to emphasise it again as this one proceeds.

Such treaty competences or powers surely have the reverse effect of what the Tory antis, UKIP and the Independent Labour Cross-Bencher say. In my estimation they enhance the intrinsic sovereignty of both an individual member country and the union. These provisions emasculate this country in these crucial areas but not the other member states. A British Government would have an automatic and hugely burdensome disadvantage built in. A huge ball and chain would be attached to the Minister’s leg every time he or she appeared in the Council chamber, whatever ministerial Council it might be—not just the European Council and the Council of Ministers. It would be the beginning of us being marginalised in the European Union, with the other member states saying, “The United Kingdom already has more grumbling and whining about Europe, more derogations, offsets, excuses, opt-outs, exemptions than any other member state and now it is inflicting this absurd and, indeed, crazy Bill on the body politic of its own country and inflicting it on the Council of Ministers as well”.

The Government are therefore, I suggest, effectively abrogating existing treaty duties even by interposing a new interruption or cancellation procedure which directly damages the capacity of a sovereign member Government to deal with routine treaty additions or changes. Many items in the Clause 4 long list are capable of further rational development in coming years. If we exclude defence, which some people would want to do, and particularly because of the recent bilateral deal with France, then the loss of sovereignty of us doing a bilateral deal with France is axiomatic. It is bound to be, yet there is no objection from the anti-Europeans on that matter. There is no objection from them to us losing our sovereignty seemingly by being ordered by an American general to carry out bombing raids in Libya or a NATO senior commander giving us orders. Why is just the European Union singled out for these absurd and self-imagined fantasies about the loss of sovereignty? What does sovereignty mean in the interdependent modern European Union and the world community at large?

[Lord Stoddart of Swindon]

To assert that those of us who are a bit sceptical about the European Union are quite happy to accept defence arrangements with France and are prepared to take orders from the United States is simply not true. I do not want to take orders from the United States. We take far too many orders from the United States but certainly not with my consent as a European sceptic. There are and would be dangers of having too close an association with the French in matters of defence. What I want and what most Eurosceptics want is for this country to be free to make its own decisions.

[Lord Dykes]

I thank the noble Lord for intervening. I took a chance on including Independent Labour in these grumblings of mine and I should not have done so; he has a noble tradition of wanting us to be a solitary country on our own, making our own “sovereignty” decisions. That is a perfectly respectable view and I respect it. If people want to hark back to the past, however many hundred years ago it might be—maybe even only 50 or 100 years—they are entitled to do so.

[Lord Stoddart of Swindon]

I—

[Lord Dykes]

It would be a bit unfair to repeat the same subject.

[Lord Stoddart of Swindon]

I would not want the noble Lord to misrepresent me. I do not believe that this country should be on its own. I want it to be worldly and to make bilateral agreements; indeed, I want it to exploit the great Commonwealth of nations that we have built up over so many years.

[Lord Dykes]

That is an improvement, then. The noble Lord is now saying that this country should sign lots of treaties with other countries for all sorts of arrangements. Why can they not include the most sensible treaties of all—the treaties of European union and the two treaties listed in the Bill, which enable us to increase our own intrinsic sovereignty rather than reduce it?