European Union Bill

Lord Triesman Excerpts

Tuesday 17th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Triesman]

My Lords, I, too, start by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch. He has provided me with an object lesson about looking at amendments in Committee. I confess that I have been wasting my time poring over figures and the economic prospects of the EU, looking very carefully through the Treasury figures. I now appreciate that I should have been looking at fish, at pollution of the sea bed, at the visual image of 40-ton lorries in this Chamber, at various issues of climate change, renewable energy, the desirability of pumping carbon into the atmosphere from coal-fired power stations and so on. I have to tell the House that I have not looked at any of those things. I have been focusing on the EU budget, so I hope noble Lords will forgive me if I return to that and to the amendment itself.

May I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Nicholson, I realise that some of the figures may have appeared daunting? Incidentally, I am not going to join her in saying anything disobliging about the Burkina Faso economy or its exchange rate; I leave that to one side. However, looking at the financial details, I am confounded by some of the figures produced by the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, not because they are complicated or big or there were a lot of them but because fairly elementary mathematics leads to rather different conclusions to those that he presented. For example, he suggested that the £10 billion that is being spent on trying to induce some stability in other economies is 50 per cent of the spending cuts, which run at £80 billion. In short, it is not 50 per cent but 12.5 per cent; but he is only 400 per cent wrong. I guess that is within the levels of tolerance that anybody should allow in a debate of this kind.

I, too, went over the Treasury figures and I do not know that there is very much alternative but to look through the detailed figures that it produces, which are cross-referenced to other studies that have been done not only in the EU but in the World Bank and so on. They are not regarded as peculiar or anomalous in that sense but are well cross-referenced. The fact of the matter is that at 2004 prices, the contribution to the EU budget was £3 billion. I shall work in pounds, not euros, so that there is no question about what I am saying. It was £3 billion in 2008-09 and is expected to be £4.7 billion in 2009-10. These contributions, particularly in 2009, were relatively low—particularly low, the Treasury said. The contributions would rise in future years and it is not the Treasury but the Office for Budget Responsibility that is forecasting a net contribution of £7.7 billion in 2010-11—but that is at 2004 prices.

That is why I come back to the point that the noble Baroness, Lady Nicholson, made because it is extremely important to find out whether we are talking about anything in these figures that is indexed. Because of movements in these indices, you can so easily end up with a completely fictional figure when you look at it in relation to the original baseline calculation. The date mentioned by my noble friend Lord Tomlinson, 2004, is particularly relevant as that figure has been used to deal with the whole of the financial perspective from 2007 to 2013. When the Committee looks at how this Bill has been framed, the idea that there is to be a change during the course of this perspective—particularly as there is no strong belief that we are in fact going to have referenda on anything—seems to me to make the proposal all the more fanciful.

It is absolutely true, as a couple of noble Lords have said, that this is nothing to do with competences. I went back and read Article 311 again, in the rather fanciful way that one does when trying to address the amendment, and it is completely clear that the competences are already there. They are set out absolutely and plainly. The Council is acting in accordance with the special legislative procedure and it would require a unanimous decision in relation to changes across a financial perspective. There is no change at all in the competences covered by this amendment. The amendment is not about whether the EU is spendthrift, as some noble Lords including the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, have suggested. It is not to do with failures about timely or robust reports on budgets. It has nothing to do with any of those things but is about whether the EU has the competence in this area. It plainly does, so that is a straightforward matter.

I have also been looking at other referenda, particularly Californian referenda, where they have touched on budgets. What you can guarantee, because the populist character of this is so plain—I do not mean popular; I mean populist—is that if you put any increase in any budget to anybody in a referendum, or even spending the same budget, the odds are that the people who do not want to spend it will win that referendum. That is a fairly straightforward matter. On the basis of what we have heard this evening, it would be sensible to put any proposals in the Budget of the United Kingdom to a referendum, whichever Government were in power and whatever their majority might be, to see whether they would get warm acclaim through a referendum for any changes they made which took a penny piece out of people's pockets. Maybe on occasions they might, but I doubt that it would be frequent. If California and some other referenda are anything to go by, I suspect that nobody in general will vote for increases—whatever the data on the proportionality of the sum or in any other matter.

[Lord Stoddart of Swindon]

The noble Lord quotes California but the Californians had referendums about their internal taxation and expenditure. What we are talking about in this amendment is taxpayers’ money not being used within the taxpaying area but being exported outside that area, so I hope he will agree that there is a difference.

[Lord Triesman]

My Lords, I entirely understand the difference. I truly had appreciated it. My point is that in a popular sense, putting to people the opportunity to vote on whether more money should be taken from them will almost invariably lead to them saying no. I do not think there is much doubt about that. It is precisely why, for example, in the run-up to general elections—which are a vote on policies, including future financial policies—most of the serious parties will say that they are going to do absolutely nothing to anybody’s taxation or financial well-being. They will make a point either of saying nothing or pledging to do only what the last Government had put in train. This whole proposition is a significant distortion of the character of the debate that we should have.

At the end of the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, having said most of the things that I have already tried to cover, he dealt with what his amendment asks in one sentence. We have no objection to a wider discussion on money or greater clarity, particularly in relation to the European Union. That can only benefit us and our democratic practice. However, the notion that we should embark on a process of this kind in this, or any other Bill, is a recipe for trying to make sure that there is no progress whatever in a European context.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I start with an apology to the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, and other noble Lords that we have started much later than we had hoped today. There were two Statements, one of which was a good deal longer than intended and that pushed us back. I assure noble Lords that on Monday this will be the first and only business for that day. If we require more time, I remind the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, that the House will meet at 10 o’clock on Wednesday and that will allow us a good deal of time during the morning. The purpose of a Committee stage on a Bill is to discuss the amendments—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Stoddart of Swindon]

The noble Lord has misunderstood what I am trying to say. The Lisbon treaty is in operation, and I am not suggesting that that can be reversed. I am trying to explain why this Bill has come about. It is because people have lost trust in the leadership. I think the reason why it is so detailed is probably because this coalition Government—it is not a Tory Government, but a coalition Government—have been trying to set out their red lines that can be crossed only if the people of this country agree to it. I hope people will reflect on that and realise that, out there, ordinary people are very unhappy about the way the European Union is proceeding. I think they have already said, “So far and no further”. This Bill is complicated because the red lines that have previously been put forward have not been kept to, and perhaps this Government are trying to put them into an order where they cannot lightly be set aside.

[Lord Triesman]

My Lords, I want to express very real appreciation for what the noble Lord, Lord Taverne, and the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, said and to say how strongly we agree with that. We greatly appreciated the comments about what we were attempting to do yesterday. The aim was not to make life impossible in the terms of the Bill but to try to inject some rationality and proportionality so that it would have a genuine sense of balance about giving people the opportunity to deal with major issues in the way that the Bill describes and not to mix into that so much detail that it could not conceivably achieve that objective.

I want to add one further thought because I think it bears very strongly on the style of work that we try to achieve in the House. The noble Lord, Lord Hannay—and I am going to be very cautious about putting words into his mouth—said, I think it was yesterday, although the days begin to blur into one after a while, that when he is making a proposition he prefers it to be in his own words rather than in words that are put into his mouth.

I felt very strongly that that was absolutely the right and correct way of dealing with things that were being put to him. Some of the things that we are supposed to believe—or rights of the people of the United Kingdom we are alleged to be prepared to give up—have been a travesty. In no circumstances were we making propositions of that kind.