European Union (Referendum) Bill

Lord Vinson Excerpts

Friday 10th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Vinson (Con)]

My Lords, I should like briefly to revert to why we need a referendum and why this Bill is thus so important. Our nation has nearly bankrupted itself fighting three wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, all of which aimed to give democracy and self-determination to those three nations. Yet here at home we daily deny self-rule, even to the extent that last week, contrary to the views of our own Health and Safety Executive, the EU issued a diktat controlling the nature of how much spice bakers can put into pastries. This is a perfect example, albeit insignificant in itself, of how Parliament has become a charade, as the EU reaches into every nook and cranny of our nation. Surely, it was never meant to be like that. Things have moved on. Currently, thousands of the decisions that widely affect the lives of voters are taken by anonymous and unaccountable bureaucrats rather than by parliamentarians responsible to those voters. Is it any wonder that there is widespread voter disenchantment?

Noble Lords will recall that the American War of Independence, just over 200 years ago, was triggered on that famous slogan, “No taxation without representation”. We are now back to roughly the same position: we have regulation without rectification. It is virtually impossible to change EU regulations. Most decision-making has been taken away from national Parliaments and for virtually everything that matters, from the economy to immigration, decisions are made elsewhere, many of them extremely damaging to our national efficiency—not least as regards the working time directive; and we were told last night in an excellent speech by the noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, of the harm that that had done to our medical service.

Far from being little Englanders, there are those of us who believe that democracy, however imperfect it may be, is the right for citizens to sack those who rule and regulate them, something we are unable to do today. This democratic deficit lies at the malfunctioning heart of the EU. The people of this country have been promised a referendum and I hope that they will get one as we need our sovereignty back. Meanwhile, of course, every attempt will be made from the Benches opposite to scare people into thinking that we should hold on to the EU nurse for fear of meeting something worse.

Unbalanced projections are given that 3 million jobs in this country depend on our EU trade, conveniently forgetting that 4 million jobs in the EU depend on us. We are advised that the car industry will be in deep distress, overlooking the fact that we import some 800,000 more cars from the EU—450,000 from Germany alone—and that this only partially accounts for our huge trading imbalance with the EU, currently running at £50 billion a year.

Trade crosses all boundaries. Germany exports all round the world. It will continue to export to us, just as we will continue to export to it. Can anybody seriously argue that trade on this scale would come to a standstill? Bilateral trading arrangements would be made, as they have been recently with Turkey, and trade would carry on. They need us more than we need them.

It is high time that the truth of this matter was given to the British people, and the BBC editorial committee, for once, has encouraged a fair and balanced coverage of the alternatives. Frankly, I believe that it is impossible to be a democrat today and to support our continued membership of an unreformed European Union. It is time that this matter was put to the British people—we want our country back.

EU: Reform

Lord Vinson Excerpts

Thursday 9th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Stamford (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, and I am sure that the whole House is grateful to him for giving us the opportunity this afternoon to debate this important matter.

There has been a striking change, at least in the tactics and rhetoric of the Government on this issue over the past year or so; that is of course very welcome. I am sure that noble friends of mine will accuse me of being very naive if I place too much reliance on this, but I speak this afternoon on the basis that that change is genuine, that the Government are acting in good faith and to encourage them along that path. It is not impossible that there is a large element of genuineness about the government rethink. A year or two ago, the Government were adopting an extremely confrontational stance towards our partners in the European Union, vociferously demanding all sorts of concessions, exemptions, derogations and repatriations, and occasionally laying on some histrionics, such as walk-outs and so forth, in order to appease pressure from the Cashites in the Tory party and UKIP. It was a deplorable spectacle.

I have heard the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, say on several occasions that the Government now take the line that they are committed to our membership of the European Union and simply want to be a member of a reformed European Union in the future. Of course, I welcome that very significant change. The change may be a genuine one for two very good reasons. One is that the Government—and the world—have clearly seen that the tactics they were adopting previously were pretty counterproductive and unintelligent, and they have drawn the sensible conclusion from that. The second thing is that they were forced to look into the abyss: into what would actually happen if we left the European Union. I know that they have had some very frank advice on that—franker in private than in public, of course—from bodies such as the CBI, the Corporation of the City of London, the Engineering Employers Federation, and from a number of Japanese and American multinationals and others as well. Therefore they have had to confront the alternative, which has been a salutary process.

In that spirit, therefore, I will not attack the Government this afternoon but will try to be helpful and suggest ways in which we can make a success of those discussions. We on this side of the House, and I think the whole country, want to see reform in a positive sense. Any human institution can always be improved and reformed, and the more important that institution, the more important it is that it is improved and reformed by each generation. Therefore we should be committed to that process in principle. I will suggest one or two bases on which the Government might decide what are the sensible initiatives to take and what the less productive course to take might be in the months and years ahead, as discussions continue with our partners.

The first thing I urge on the Government is always to focus on the substance, not on the symbolism. Always go for the content, not the colour of the wrapping on the package. We should have absolutely no more farces such as those we had with the Justice and Home Affairs opt-out, where the Government opted out of a whole series of measures and then wanted to opt right back into them, because on the substance they were very necessary and in the national interest. That was a deplorable and ludicrous exercise, and it was quite obvious that the Government were pirouetting around in order to appease their own extremists and to head off pressure from UKIP. That was not a very edifying episode at all. I hope that the Government will learn the right lessons from that in future and that they will always focus on the reality and the substance, and be pragmatic.

Being pragmatic, my second point is that it would be sensible to take up issues where we have a particular credibility and, obviously, where our national interest is directly engaged. The obvious selection is the single market. We have a natural credibility on the single market as after all, we took the decisive initiatives to push it through in the 1992 programme and so forth, which we should not allow our partners to forget. We have not completed the single market—there is some important work to be done. I hope that as a result of this discussion on the reform of the EU we will be able to make some concrete progress there.

One thing that cries out to be resolved is the services issue—we must have a proper services directive. Of course, we have a services directive, but we all know that that is inadequate. It was much better than what we had before and was a considerable achievement in itself, and we all know that you can only move human institutions along at a certain pace. However, now is the time to try to achieve a real services directive so that we have a single market in services that is comparable to the one that we have had successfully for a long time in goods.

Last time round we found that the French and the Germans were the greatest obstacle to that, but it is possible that the Germans will now be less opposed. That is partially because their economy is doing so well and unemployment is falling in Germany, so they are less frightened perhaps by the prospect of Polish plumbers coming across the frontier to work in Berlin—that was one of the many issues that arose last time—and also because the Germans have got into the habit of lecturing everybody else about deregulation, so they may be more open to deregulatory arguments themselves. Therefore I put it to the Government that a good proposal would be to invest a certain amount of capital in services and to develop, I hope, a certain amount of momentum for that.

Secondly, on energy, I am never quite sure whether I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Howell, or not, because he says one thing at one moment, and something that sounds slightly contradictory in the next sentence. However I agree with some of what he said about energy policy. Energy policy is an area where we need to complete the single market—there is no question about that at all. We do not have a single market in the retail sector in energy, and that, after 20 years of the single market, is quite disgraceful. We should do something about that. We have had partially state-owned monopolies in France—they are not entirely nationalised, of course—and “monopolies” is the word. In the terms of the domestic market, they are holding up progress on this, very much to the detriment of the interests of French consumers, as much as anyone else. We should deal with that, and now is the time to do it. I think that we would have a lot of support in taking up that issue.

My third piece of advice to the Government is the kind of advice that I would give to anyone who felt that they wanted to slightly change their image in a particular context—that is, to surprise people positively, and come up with something that results in the continentals saying, “Good Lord, the British really have changed”, which would establish a certain credibility for what we say about being pragmatic. If we are genuinely pragmatic and open-minded and believe in European reform, clearly there will be cases when the competences of the Union should be extended to resolve a particular problem, because that is the right way in which to do it. There may be other cases, of course, which I would recognise, whereby under the subsidiarity rule it would make pragmatic sense to repatriate certain functions.

[Lord Vinson (Con)]

What powers have ever been repatriated under the subsidiarity rules?

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

I have yet to be convinced, to be honest, that any powers need to be repatriated—and I have looked at the suggestions that have been made on fish and overseas aid, and so forth. It has always seemed to me that there was a very good argument for not repatriating; in fact, in many cases, we might want to go further into integration. But we can have that discussion another time. I am certainly open-minded and could be persuaded that there are situations in which we should repatriate powers, and I hope that the Government and the noble Lord are open-minded and could be persuaded that there are cases when, in fact, the European Union is in the best position in the interests of all its members to have the necessary jurisdiction to resolve the problem.

One area where that is certainly true is with banking union. I have heard no good reason at all why we should not be members of the banking union, and it is extremely dangerous that we are not. We think that we are being very clever in negotiating the double lock, but that works only if there are four member states remaining outside the banking union. If you look at the matter purely objectively, you can see that there is every interest in our being a part of it, and it is extremely dangerous to fragment a supervisory regime or bank resolution regime. It is not something that can possibly be in the country’s interest.

Since time is short, I shall make a final suggestion, which is one that I made before to the noble Lord, Lord Newby. The Government—and I congratulate them on this—have come round to the arguments of many of us over quite a long time that we need to do something about the scandal of payday loans and loan sharks. I see that the Minister is nodding to me, and I understand that the Government have instructed the FCA to come up with an interest rate or cost limit on those payday loans. I congratulate them on doing that. When that has been done in the United States and individual states of the Union—and the Minister will be familiar with this argument, because those opposed to it have always come up with it—it has always been ineffective, because lenders have come in from other states. This is an obvious area in which, if we are to have effective regulation, we need to have it on an EU-wide basis. I put it to the Minister a few weeks ago that it would be worth taking the matter up with Brussels to see if the Commission might be minded to produce a regulation or directive, and whether our partners would agree that this would be a sensible move to take. Now that I have put the issue in public to both the Treasury and the Foreign Office, I would be grateful to the Minister when she responds to this debate, or subsequently in writing, leaving a copy in the Library of the House, if she would let me know whether my arguments have been considered and what the Government’s conclusions are.

European Union Bill

Lord Vinson Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean]

My Lords, I thank the Minister very much for the way in which he introduced the Bill, particularly for the painstaking explanations and the courtesy that he showed to the House in the way in which he gave them. However, as an Opposition we want to make our view clear from the start: this is a poor Bill; it is an unnecessary Bill; it is a political Bill; it is a Bill which is primarily about the politics of the coalition Government, not a Bill about Britain or about Europe. We believe that this is a bad Bill, and we shall do everything we can to improve it.

Britain’s relationship with Europe is important. It is an issue which this House has repeatedly considered in various ways over the years and on which the Members of this House have focused many times. The quality and number of speakers on today’s list indicates that it is an issue on which the House wants to focus again today. On these Benches, the hope is that the Minister has come with an open mind and is prepared to listen to this House, and that the Government will be open to the improvements that we hope your Lordships will make to the Bill as it moves through the House. These are our hopes, but whether they will be realised is another matter.

The Bill is primarily a political Bill trying to solve a political problem. Our concern is that, despite the best efforts of the Minister, whom this House holds personally in great respect and affection, politics and in particular the politics of the coalition will get in the way. That this is primarily a political Bill is made particularly clear by the context in which the Bill was generated. The manifestos from the three major political parties in last year’s general election set out that context clearly. The Labour policy on Europe said:

“We are proud that Britain is once again a leading player in Europe. Our belief is that Britain is stronger in the world when the European Union is strong, and that Britain succeeds when it leads in Europe and sets the agenda for change”.

At the election, the Liberal Democrats largely agreed with us and promised to,

“put Britain at the heart of Europe, to ensure we use our influence to achieve prosperity, security and opportunity for Britain”.

The Conservatives took a different, largely Eurosceptic approach: they promised a series of referendum locks based on the central governing notion that,

“the steady and unaccountable intrusion of the European Union into almost every aspect of our lives has gone too far”.

As we all know, the election result was inconclusive. On Europe, neither party with pro-European views—that is ourselves and the Liberal Democrats—won the mandate of the people. We on these Benches lost the election—that is plain and incontrovertible—but so did the Liberal Democrats and, despite the propitious circumstances favouring their party, the Conservatives also lost. The result was a coalition Government formed between the losing Conservatives and the losing Liberal Democrats. Neither party had a mandate from the electorate in terms of the people’s approval of their manifestos. The coalition document that was published on 20 May 2010, The Coalition: our programme for government, has no mandate either from the British people. In some areas—AV, for instance, or nuclear power—trying to join the two parties has proved too much but the effort in other areas, such as Europe, has been almost as impossible.

From the start of the document’s proposals on Europe and the EU, the parties were trying to bridge the unbridgeable. They said:

“The Government believes that Britain should play a leading role in an enlarged European Union, but that no further powers should be transferred to Brussels without a referendum”.

This Dr Dolittle’s pushmi-pullyu act is at the heart of today’s Bill. Not surprisingly perhaps, given its genesis, the Bill is, I am afraid, not the most distinguished that this House has had before it. Many aspects of the Bill are overly complex; many simply repeat the status quo. For example, Clauses 2, 3, 6 and 7 state that a treaty or treaty amendment is not to be ratified unless, among other things, the treaty or amendment is approved by an Act of Parliament. That is already the case. Indeed, it is a clear principle of international law, and our involvement in the European Union in particular, that a treaty or treaty change cannot be ratified or have force in this country until it is first recognised by an Act of the UK Parliament.

There are two issues in the Bill on which we as an Opposition wish to concentrate: namely, sovereignty and the referendum mechanism proposed by the Government. For the Eurosceptic right in the Conservative Party and beyond, sovereignty in relation to Europe is indeed a talismanic issue. Accordingly, the coalition document tries to look specific on the issue of sovereignty by stating:

“We will examine the case for a United Kingdom Sovereignty Bill to make it clear that ultimate authority remains with Parliament”.

Clearly, the proposed UK sovereignty Bill did not pass that examination because the measures in front of your Lordships today are a long way from a stand-alone UK sovereignty Bill. The Government apparently believe that many people in Britain feel disconnected from how the EU has developed and from decisions being taken in their name. We know this, of course, from the helpful fact-sheet on the Bill that the Government have produced. The fact-sheet claims that, by rolling out control on these decisions to the people of Britain by means of a referendum, the Government will be reconnecting the people to the European Union.

The reality is that this Bill is not about disconnection from Europe but about politics—the internal politics of the coalition and the internal politics of the Conservative Party. Moreover, the reality is that the Liberal Democrats have an unblemished and impressive track record on Europe, which they have been required to undermine through their participation in the coalition. In contrast, the Conservative Party, when dealing with Europe, is and remains a party which has a fault-line between the pro-Europeans and the prominent Eurosceptics. That fault-line helped to bring down John Major’s Government and the party has tried again and again to paper over it. The resulting reality in the Bill before us is what the coalition leadership judges to be a necessary move to appease the right-wing Eurosceptics in the Conservative Party through the transparently unnecessary Clause 18 on sovereignty, which the Minister has been attempting to explain, while also attempting to keep the Europhiles in the Liberal Democrat Party at least moderately happy—who, I am bound to say, are very, very moderately happy.

The Government claim that there is confusion in this area, but such claims are not borne out by the facts. Let us take the celebrated court case of Thoburn v Sunderland City Council, from which the Minister quoted a few moments ago. That case made it clear that there was no threat to the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty. Moreover, the European Scrutiny Committee concluded that the legislative supremacy of Parliament was not under threat from EU law. The Constitution Committee of your Lordships’ House has said:

“Clause 18 is self-evident: it restates, but does not change, the law”.

So the major reason we can see for restating these principles is to appease the few Eurosceptics on the Tory Benches who genuinely fear that the influence of the Liberal Democrats on the coalition will be decisive.

[Lord Vinson]

Does the noble Baroness accept that there are more than a few Eurosceptics? Does she realise that all the polls in this country now show that over 50 per cent of the population of the British Isles are highly Eurosceptic and want to see changes?

[Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean]

My Lords, what I am trying to do here is talk about what is going on in the House and in Parliament at the moment. There is widespread Euroscepticism. Different polls produce different results, but I fully acknowledge that there is Euroscepticism, and I thought that the Minister made those points clearly in his remarks. But I am addressing what is happening in Parliament.

Surely reciting the law on parliamentary sovereignty is a more appropriate activity for first-year law students than for Parliament itself. It is basic civics. It is already the law. It is just about the most basic constitutional point in British law. Parliament and the British legislative process should not be used as a piece of Conservative Party sticking plaster which the party opposite judges necessary to keep its own Eurosceptics at bay.

I turn now to the referendum issues. Part 1 proposes restrictions on amendments to the Treaty on European Union and to the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. It is envisaged that there will be a referendum restriction in the long list of cases in Clauses 4 and 6. These lengthy lists do not include the controversial issue of enlargement. For example, where a country wishes to join the EU, Clause 4(4) explicitly removes that subject from deliberation by the UK public unless the decision otherwise fulfils one of the listed criteria. Surely a decision which will bind our fate with the people of another sovereign country—where we will share borders, enforcement and, potentially, as the Irish experience demonstrated, even the financial fate of that country—needs greater consideration.

At the heart of this issue is what the Government call the “referendum lock”. This would ensure that when new competencies or powers pass from the UK to the EU there would be a requirement for a UK-wide referendum and primary legislation before a Minister can agree to the new powers going to the EU. It is a very powerful mechanism. Put succinctly, the Government have to hold a referendum only if they support the change. If they do not, they can block the change during negotiations with EU partners because, of course, all treaty changes of this nature can be agreed only by unanimity in the European Union. So by withholding UK agreement, the treaty changes are blocked—and blocked for everyone. This applies to treaty revisions, as we have discussed, to some bridging or passerelle clauses and other specific decisions under EU treaties.

Clause 4 specifies 13 different kinds of decisions which would trigger a referendum; otherwise, exemption from the referendum lock requires primary legislation to approve the decision that the issue under consideration is not covered by Clause 4—at least that is how I understand it. However, where a Minister decides the referendum lock is not appropriate under Clause 4, the fact-sheet states that,

“Parliament would have the opportunity to scrutinise the Minister’s assessment during the progress of the Act”,

and could add a referendum requirement at that stage. This is a very complicated procedure. There are many specifications and many treaty provisions and, as our own Constitution Committee has rightly said, the highly technical nature of the lock mechanism,

“hinders rather than helps transparency and accessibility in the law”.

This is indeed fertile ground for legal wrangling and judicial review and gives scope for many lengthy parliamentary battles between Europhiles and Eurosceptics about what amounts to competence. Is this really the way to rebuild the trust of the British people and to reconnect them with EU decisions? Will the British public really thank us for asking them to consider the extended application of a passerelle clause in a referendum, rather than doing our job in Parliament through scrutiny and decision?

The implications of the use of referendums in this Bill are unprecedented in terms of UK constitutional practices and the implications for Parliament. By means of the Bill, which is meant to enhance the relationship of the British public with the EU, the Government are in reality changing the terms of engagement between Parliament and the electorate. As the Constitution Committee made clear in its 2010 report on referendums, there are of course issues on which it must be right to hold a referendum—for example, leaving the EU, adopting a written constitution and abolishing the Monarchy or either House of Parliament—but there must be serious doubts about what the Government are proposing in the Bill. These are not fundamental constitutional issues which are appropriate for a nationwide referendum. Moreover, these provisions are contradictory to the Government’s own stated belief that referendums are most appropriate to issues of fundamental constitutional importance.

Many commentators—and, I suspect, some in this House—do not believe that there will be referendums and that a far more likely outcome is that the Government will recognise the problem early on and simply block more and more EU proposals at the negotiation stage. Some of your Lordships may welcome that, but others will see that there are real dangers involved in this country becoming increasingly isolated and pushed to the margins of the EU debate, pretty much as we were before the 1997 election. I have heard Ministers argue that the referendum lock will strengthen our negotiating position in Europe. It is possible that it may, initially, but after the negotiation point ploy has been used some three, four, five or six times, I doubt that it will be anything like as effective. Our partners will move on, leaving us shouting ineffectively from the touch-line. There is a real risk in all this of voter fatigue and low turnout which will detract from the important decisions such as the ones that this country is being asked to make on 5 May. For our part, we on these Benches will certainly seek improvements to the Bill, including a sunset provision and a limitation on the types of matter that would trigger a referendum. We shall also consider the nature of any referendums.

[Lord Vinson]

My Lords, could I remind the noble Baroness that her party promised a referendum on the Lisbon treaty and then failed to give it. Is that not a perfect example of how people lose confidence in the governance of their country?

[Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean]

We did not promise that. We promised that we would have a referendum if there were a written constitution. The noble Lord may not have sat through those debates, but I am afraid that the House agreed with me and not with him on that point.

Finding compromises and striking balances is at the heart of what this House does both as part of the British legislative process and in its role as one of the key checks and balances in the British constitution. The House knows a compromise and a balance when it sees them but this Bill is a confusion not a compromise, a botch not a balance. Britain deserves better than this Bill. Europe deserves better. Liberal Democrat Members of this House who have a proud record on Europe—including those who, 30 years ago this week, left the party on the Benches behind me largely on this issue—certainly deserve better. We shall try to give that to them.