European Union (Referendum) Bill

Debate between Lord Triesman and Baroness Royall of Blaisdon

Friday 24th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Triesman]

My Lords, I start by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, my noble friend Lord Grenfell, and the noble Lords, Lord Roper and Lord Bowness, for tabling this amendment. As things stand today, I think that the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, and others know that I believe the amendment is absolutely right.

During the earlier debate, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, made what I thought to be a very significant speech. He said that, in determining the date, the reality of politics was that it ought to be shaped by the circumstances that obtain at the time. I did not agree with his conclusion, as he will be aware, but the case that he put was very strong and I suspect that it will be understood much more widely than perhaps some in the House have suggested.

Your Lordships’ House has said that the general public will not understand it if we do not move with electrifying speed to a conclusion. I think that people understand that there is a significant job to be done, that it has to be done, that corners will not be cut—they will not thank us for cutting corners—and that it will not happen overnight. If we are really serious about the relationships that we have in Europe in relation to our economy and so on, there will be serious work to be done. That can be said very reasonably to people. My experience is that, although some people will feel that it is irritating to have to wait, broadly speaking the people of the United Kingdom understand the seriousness of the issue and will provide the time for proper work to be done. I think that we should start from that point.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, said that this issue will be shaped by real circumstances. We know some of the circumstances quite well but we know almost nothing of others. I should like to set out the balance of the two, but because a number of other noble Lords have done so and it does not need a lot of repetition, I shall do so quickly. These two sets of circumstances need some analysis. Over time, and perhaps at subsequent stages of the Bill, working out what those balances are may very well lead us to further conclusions about the timing, but I started by saying that this is a good and sensible resolution and I repeat that.

What do we know? First, as a number of noble Lords have said, we will hold the presidency in 2017. That is precisely when we would want the United Kingdom to lead European Union debates, and I think that we will be in a very difficult position in trying to do that. There will be any number of significant debates at that time: debates about the completion of the market provisions in services; debates about the EU budget; and debates about what I hope will emerge as the agreements on trade with North America and with the MINT countries—Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey. All those will be in play.

There will be a significant series of debates. Anybody who has been a Minister and has had to handle the relationship with Europe during a presidency will know that those are occasions when you want the deepest and most genuine support from your colleagues in carrying things forward. I do not want to plead any special link because there are many around this Chamber with much more experience but they will also know that you have not only to talk to others but to talk for others, and they must trust you. That was the case in the discussions that Europe had on some of the worst internal wars in Africa, on the aid programme, on the difficulties with Iran and on the stimulus to new trade agreements with South America, which ended up with President Lula’s state visit and a significant change in the trading relationships with a number of South American countries. In all those areas, the European nations need to feel that the nation holding the presidency is with them, not conflicted with them, and that it is eager to deliver some of the fundamental outcomes.

Secondly—I shall not repeat this point at any length—there will be major elections in the core European nations of Germany and France. There are probably elections in other countries as well but those in Germany and France will be very significant. It is unlikely that either will focus on the issues that we are raising with the attention that we would want—the French most certainly will not. The objective circumstances in France and the character of the French economy at this time will tell you what that election is going to be about and how it is going to be fought. I am not saying anything that reveals an unusual political point: we know what the French election will be fought over and what it will be like, and it will not be about its negotiations with us.

We are about half way through the process of reforming the Central Bank: gathering core sums to sustain it and making arrangements on sovereign debt, which still remains a significant problem. These are monumental tasks and their outcomes may well provide circumstances in which our own Referendum Act 2011 will require us to take decisions about those outcomes. That possibility may not be avoided. We cannot run all these processes at the same time.

We are not in the euro and have no wish to join it, but the Chancellor has been right to say that we do not and should not take a split second of comfort from any continuing fragility in the currency used by many of our major trading partners—and, indeed, on the island of Ireland, by one which has a common land border with us and with which we have significant trade.

There is no way around the known fact that more and more businesses thinking of investing in the United Kingdom are asking due diligence questions about it. That pressure is building up in business. People have told me about the inward flows of capital denying it, but I am not talking about capital inflows to take over large volumes of super prime property in the centre of London or some of its trophy assets—that is not the point. There is of course a big inflow because London is so attractive for those reasons, but we are talking about people who are investing in or starting up operational businesses, which is what we will need if we are to sustain the economy, see it grow and see more people in employment, and that looks like it has been moving in a helpful direction.

Those are the things we know but there are a number of things we cannot and do not know. We do not know at what stage the repair of the United Kingdom economy and its banks and their balance sheets will be in 2017 and it will alarm people with a wide variety of political perspectives to understand where we will be at that point. Many people will feel that it is a lottery, and they are probably right objectively.

We will not know at that stage how negotiations have gone. As noble Lords have said, the process started late and there is no clarity at the moment on our objectives. Of course, the objectives could be listed: I tried to list some of them at Second Reading because they include a number of serious matters, and many people, including my noble friend Lord Kinnock, have made that point. It has been said in the debate, and it is true, that the four-part process towards a treaty means that everyone must agree, and everyone else must agree everything. We do not know how the process will play out on these significant matters.

Any agreements are unlikely to have been ratified elsewhere, another point that has been made. A promise of change is not the same as having made a change, and if there is a treaty—and it is almost inevitable that the negotiations, if they are successful, will end up in a treaty—it will provide for referenda in a number of other countries such as France, Ireland and elsewhere. A multilateral outcome with 27 starting positions will have to be brought to one on all substantive questions, and that proposition cannot be entertained on the timescale suggested.

We will not know the outcome of the election in France; Germany has a coalition Government and there may or may not be a continuing coalition or a different coalition. We will be asked, therefore, before we know the outcomes—as the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, hinted—what we should do. I do not think that the people of the United Kingdom will readily consent to being asked for a conditional decision which, if everything goes pear-shaped, they will be asked to reverse.

Even if a treaty is negotiated in time, it is not clear that there will be no movement forwards and backwards on competences because, after all, it is a negotiation. People will be asking us for things in the same way that we will be asking them for things. In those circumstances, we come back to the fundamental point about the 2011 Act. The Labour Party supported that Act. On a point of clarity for the House: we supported it, we continue to support it and, should those provisions be needed, which I think is very likely, we would continue to do so.

On balance, if you had to pick the optimal bad date, you would pick 2017. If you looked at two decades and tried really hard, you would pick 2017. It is not a date that commends itself on any grounds. For a negotiator for the United Kingdom, it is the equivalent of what is known in football, where I have spent a little of my life, as a hospital pass. Everyone knows you are not going to get the ball, you have lost the initiative, and you will probably get your leg broken. It really is not in any circumstances an approach that makes sense. As my noble friend Lord Kinnock said, it is a weapon in the negotiation, but we have to ask this: who is the weapon pointed at and where will the munitions strike? The answer is: probably us.

At Second Reading the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, asked, “If not now, when?” It is a fair question, as I thought on the day. But in the interests of the United Kingdom, whatever the outcome—in or out of the European Union—one answer is clear. Whatever the date is, it really ought not to be 2017. It is a “leave the EU” date. That, I am afraid, is all it is.

I want to tidy up very briefly on one or two amendments in the group. I do not think that Amendments 13 and 14 are possible because they are simply testing provisions, but I want to comment on Amendment 17. I do not think that it can be a Secretary of State. If this is a decision that has to be taken for the whole of the United Kingdom, it must be taken by the Prime Minister as the Minister with supreme authority for the whole country. But what if there is another coalition? By 31 December 2016—it is important to reflect on that date—it may be that the Prime Minister is the leader of the largest party in the House of Commons, but is not the leader of a Government that altogether are prepared to consent to the date. That is another really large unknown which cannot be resolved in this House today. I do not know who will win that election. Of course it has to be possible that we will not, but I do not concede that point today. It may well be that no one wins it outright and that there is another coalition. I could then assume—I am sure I am quite wrong in doing so—that a Conservative Government would find themselves saying the same things that the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, has been saying today: that they cannot get their way because the party with which they are in coalition, for some reason or other although it seems perfectly intelligible to me, will not co-operate.

In all of this, the reality is that the wrong date has been picked. I do not play the lottery, but when I watch people playing it they look in despair at the numbers they chose which do not turn out to be the winning numbers. That is how we will look at 2017.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

My Lords, before the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, gets up to speak, perhaps I may say one thing. I will be brief. The noble Baroness knows that I have the highest possible regard for her, but she is playing a very sticky wicket today. I do not want to make her life more difficult, but I say for future amendments that it is extremely difficult for there to be a Government position on this Bill. If there is a Conservative position, the Conservative Benches are behind the government Front Bench—unless, as in the Leveson debate, we might have two views on every group of amendments. That is what coalition is all about. If there are not two views, I think it is more appropriate for the views of the Conservatives to be given from the Conservative Back Benches. However, that has nothing to do with the noble Baroness.