European Union Bill

Lord Triesman Excerpts

Monday 16th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stoddart of Swindon]

My Lords, I oppose the Motion on the basis that it is completely unfair to bring on a major Bill at 8.05 pm, when, presumably, the House is to rise at 10 pm tonight. This is supposed to be the fifth day of consideration on the Bill. It is certainly not the fifth day, although it is a fifth of a day. That is unseemly and unfair to all noble Lords who have taken part in discussion on the Bill so far and who wish to do so at a proper hour in future.

We were given notice that the Bill would be considered again today only on Thursday. Until then, I think that everyone who was interested in the Bill had the impression that the next consideration would be tomorrow, instead of which it is coming on at 8.05, after Report of a major Bill and the previous debate. Frankly, that is not good enough. It is treating this House with contempt.

That is exacerbated because, as I understand it, there has been virtually no consultation with those who have been concerned with the Bill. The usual channels have just said, “Oh well, we'll give it a run on Monday. Never mind the arrangements that people might have made to do other things. We will put it on. No one will object”. I am objecting now, and objecting strongly.

I was unable to be here on Thursday. When I saw this appear on the business, I made inquiries about what time it was likely to come on. I was told that it would be at 6 pm. Even on the basis of information available on Thursday, we have lost a further two hours. To embark on a Bill now with major amendments is unbecoming to the Government and the usual channels. As I said, there has been complete disregard of the convenience of noble Lords who wish to speak to the Bill.

It is not as if there is an urgency about the Bill. We do not need the Bill tomorrow or next month; we do not need it next year. The Government have said that we do not need it in this Parliament, because none of its provisions will be operative in this Parliament. What on earth are we doing here at 8.10 pm embarking on the so-called fifth day of an important Bill? It is completely wrong and the Government ought to be ashamed of themselves.

Of course, the situation is even worse than that. Tomorrow, when we will embark on the Bill again, another major Bill will be debated before it—the Postal Services Bill, and God knows how long that will go on for. I shall almost be tempted to speak on it myself so that we talk out tomorrow’s discussion on this Bill.

Therefore, tomorrow we will have only half a day, if that, to spend on the Bill. The Committee is being cheated of the time that it was promised, which I believe was six days. Bearing in mind the time that we lost on previous days, we will certainly not have anything like six days. In any event, as this Session goes on until next May, why on earth do we want to start debating a Bill at this time of night? I hope that the Government will reconsider their decision to take the Bill into Committee tonight and agree to oppose the Motion before us.

[Lord Triesman]

My Lords, I cannot recall an occasion yet when the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon, and I have been in complete accord but we are this evening. I share the view that it is absolutely extraordinary that most of us should have stood by ready to start debating this Bill at 6 pm only to find that it has started, even with a few minutes’ intervention from the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, way past 8 pm. I do not believe that that is helpful to the government Front Bench, let alone to both parties opposite or, indeed, to us. I shall not repeat what the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, said at any length, because he made the point very forcefully. It is extremely hard to understand what is so pressing as to mean that we should discuss absolutely critical issues about constitutional arrangements between our Parliament and Europe on this type of timescale. We are shoe-horning it—that is the only way that I can describe it—into tiny pockets of time very late in the day with the prospect of holding debates extremely late at night, when we all know that proper justice is not done to the matters that we need to discuss.

I take the Bill very seriously, just as the House took the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill seriously this afternoon. They are big constitutional issues by any standard. As I said, I take this Bill very seriously, although I have a very different view from that of the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, for example, on a number of its provisions. However, that is neither here nor there. We either take it seriously or we do not. I think that we are being asked to perform a serious job in a trivialised way and I cannot believe that the House will find that acceptable. I hope that the Front Bench opposite will have a credible answer and a credible timetable.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine]

My Lords, perhaps I may detain the House for a minute or two to comment on the speeches that noble Lords have just made. As we understand it, it is the operations of the usual channels that have resulted in such peculiar anomalies—if I may call them that—in the conduct of the Bill. On the previous two days in Committee, we had extraordinary groupings. I know that Members on the Cross Benches were as perplexed as we were about how those groupings had been determined, and there was consensus across the House that they had not worked very well.

We were then told last Thursday that there was going to be an additional day in Committee—today. In other words, if the House had not sat on Friday, we would not even have had one working day’s notice. It was simply a coincidence that the House sat on Friday and that we therefore had one working day’s notice. We were led to believe that that was agreed among the usual channels and that in fact the opposition Benches of the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, had requested the extra day today. However, from the tone of the debate, it sounds as though that may not have been the case.

I hope that my noble friends on the government Front Bench will bear in mind that, if we are to have serious scrutiny on the Bill, as we all want, and time to prepare seriously for that serious scrutiny, we require slightly more notice than we were given on this occasion, and we require slightly more attention to be paid to the way in which the Bill has been conducted to date.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

Those are interesting and important points. The noble Lord, Lord Liddle, who was the father of the amendments, or one of the fathers—anyway, he has some paternity—will no doubt comment on them after me, but I thought that I should address some of the serious points. Not everyone has been sharply focused, but we have heard some extremely interesting observations and responses to them. I would like to express the Government's view.

Just to be clear, I say that the two amendments would make the question of whether to seek the consent of the British people in respect of the big 12 decisions in Clause 6—that is the big five or six decisions and then the whole section in Clause 6 which governs the surrender of the veto—subject to a small committee of either both Houses of Parliament or an independent review committee. The assessment of the committee, via the composition, would then be validated by a short debate and a single vote of each House of Parliament. That is what the amendment states.

That design—which, as the noble Lord said, was proposed only as a probe—would frustrate the whole purpose of the Bill. Why would it do that? I will make the general point; I will come to the detailed ones in a moment. The amendments would, in effect, replay the history to which my noble friend Lord Waddington referred, because they would hint at referendums being held with the prospect that people would once again be denied their say because, in this case, some small committee of experts—or a committee of two Houses of Parliament—had made decisions. That undermines the whole intent and thrust underlying the Bill, which is designed to rebuild trust by ensuring that the British people can decide on the key decisions affecting the future course or expansion, if that is what is required, of the competences and powers of the European Union. By going into the detail—and I can see that the detail is considerable, because the legislative patterns of the European Union are very complex and detailed—the Bill makes clear the transfers of power and competence on which the British electorate would have the right to be consulted. However, the amendments would seek to unpick that by making recommendations in small committees.

Therefore, in effect, the British people would be denied the say that they want when EU powers are to be expanded. Very few seem to want that anyway and I am very puzzled by the sudden passion of the Front Bench opposite for an expansion of powers. The British people would miss yet another opportunity to regain trust, further exacerbating the electorate’s disconnection with, and cynicism towards, the European Union. That is what the amendments would do and that is why I am glad they are only probing amendments and not a serious intention to undermine the whole purpose and spirit of the Bill.

[Lord Triesman]

Can the noble Lord give me one or two examples of the extensions that he believes this Front Bench supports and is enthusiastic about? I ask that because, certainly during the previous day in Committee, and I think that he is also inferring it tonight, it was suggested that we were in favour of the possible production of a European army—something to which I was explicitly opposed as a Minister, as I am tonight—and the abandonment of Schengen, to which I have been explicitly opposed, as we were in government. What are the examples? These are either straw men or there is substance to them.

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

My difficulty in answering that question is due to the difficulty that the Opposition have in stating why they want particular treaty amendments and expansions of the powers and competences of the European Union. When we have pressed on this matter, it has been a bit like “King Lear”: the Opposition seem to want to do “such things” and there will be uncertain futures in which new powers will somehow be needed for the European Union. Therefore, they want to amend the Bill by removing areas where the Bill would prevent the surrender of the veto. That would not prevent activity, because a huge range of competences accorded to the European Union allow it to be highly active in all these areas. However, the Opposition want to remove the vetoes on the big decisions. I think that they want a referendum on the euro, although I am not at all sure about the others and I want to go through them as we discuss these matters. The Opposition have not answered that. Why do they want these huge treaty changes, and why do they want the vetoes removed? It seems to me beyond understanding that they should want vetoes removed when so many powers and competences are now accorded to the European Union, and they can do all sorts of things to achieve the kind of Europe that we want in the future. If the Opposition have some new ideas for expanding the powers of the European Union, let them state them, otherwise we are left with a kind of “King Lear” situation—they will do “such things” as it is too difficult to mention at this time.

I want to turn to the 12 decisions in Clause 6, which cover highly sensitive areas. When I heard the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, call some of them trivial, it made me, in the words of Hilaire Belloc, gasp and stretch my eyes. When one looks at the reality of them—their real-world implications—they are anything but trivial. The big five decisions under Clause 6 include joining the eurozone, and there seems to be a general consensus that there should be a referendum on that. Incidentally, I reassure my noble friend Lord Lamont that there is not really a problem there at all. The referendum would take place before the UK took the decision, and the exchange rate would then be struck at a certain point in the middle of the night or whenever it was technically advisable to do so. I think that my noble friend put that in perfect perspective.

On the provisions relating to EU common defence, I think I heard the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, say such decisions could not necessarily lead to anything too serious—I do not want to parody him—because it was a complex issue and it might be desirable, I suppose he was saying, to give up the veto or decide to join without a referendum because not too much harm could come from it. That is miles from reality. In fact, under an EU common defence policy—on which we would urge there should be a referendum—we would no longer be able to decide independently which situations and developments we should respond to and which situations represented a threat to our national security, we would lose our ability to decide unilaterally which operations we would mount and it would no longer be our choice alone whether we should act independently or with whom we should act in concert. Of course, in this modern world we will always be acting in concert, but we decide. To say that is in the trivial category seems to me to be taking off to another planet.