European Union Referendum Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Wednesday 4th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, that is a very reasonable point to make. As I mentioned earlier, with regard to Amendment 49, it is a matter on which the Gibraltar Government will bring forward legislation —not only in respect of this but on the wider issues of Gibraltar being part of the referendum franchise. I will happily undertake to inform the noble Lord by letter when that legislation goes through, and I shall pop it to other noble Lords who have taken an interest.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I had never realised before this Bill came along how important Gibraltar was, and I am impressed by the number of references to it in our amendments today, as in earlier days. I once spent an entire afternoon in Gibraltar and felt that I had got to know it rather well. There are some 22,000 voters in Gibraltar, so it is very good that we pay so much attention to them.

Amendment 33 agreed.

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All the way through this legislation the Government have gone out of their way to say that they are trying to level the playing field. As we noted earlier, it is not level. If the Government decide to recommend to the country that we stay in—it is still possible that they will not—they have the choice of date when that should happen. That slants the playing field in favour of those who want to stay in anyway. Why are we further slanting this by having a funding formula that gives so much money to the in campaign to the detriment of the out? This is not fair. It will not be seen by the country to be fair. If we have a result that the country votes to stay in, I can tell noble Lords now that all those who wanted to come out will cry foul and not accept the verdict of the referendum.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I am well aware that the political definition of a level playing field is a field in which, when the ball is placed in the centre, it rolls naturally towards your opponent’s goal. That is one of the problems with trying to define a level playing field.

I am fascinated to hear so many Conservative Peers speaking in favour of an expenditure cap to ensure that one side in a campaign does not spend more than another. I look forward to the speeches that will come from those Benches the next time we discuss political party funding. Perhaps they will support a similar principle then. The Conservative Party spent a great deal more than any other party in the recent election. I do not recall any complaints from Conservatives on that—whatever position they take on the European Union—either then or since.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

Is the noble Lord saying that the general election principle is unfair because one party can raise more money than another, and that this unfairness should continue in the referendum?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I am simply remarking that principles should apply across the field. I am strongly in favour of greater control over political parties’ spending, which the Conservative Party has resisted extremely strongly. I just remarked that we need to be a little more consistent than we were being.

I will make one other point relating to this group of amendments and to the next.

[Lord Lamont of Lerwick]

Will the noble Lord give way?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

May I continue? I will give way to the noble Lord in a minute or two.

There is a principle that we have a Government. We are not like the United States, where Congress can stop the Government taking everything through if it wants As we were told with reference to the House of Lords’ vote last week, the principle is that the Government must be allowed to get their business through and must be able to say what they think is in the national interest. At the end of this negotiation, the Prime Minister has to be able to say, on behalf of the Government, what he now considers to be in the national interest. I note that a number of noble Lords think that the Prime Minister should not be able to make that case. That seems to me to be moving towards the sort of deadlock between Congress and the presidency seen in the United States, where what the President says has no impact at all. This is a renegotiation. At the end of the renegotiation, the Government are entitled, under our constitutional arrangements, to say what they think is in the national interest. I trust that they will do so.

[Lord Lamont of Lerwick]

My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. I actually said that I would be perfectly happy with no cap: I was not talking about caps and supporting them in the way that he suggested. However, would the noble Lord be quite content if there were caps in the general election and the Liberal party were capped at less than half the spending allowed to the Conservative and Labour parties because it got less than half the votes of those parties at the previous election?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I have some familiarity with the previous negotiations on political funding and whether there should be a state contribution. The discussions on whether there should be public support for political parties had indeed taken on board the issue of how many votes each party got in the previous election, so the principle might well be taken, but the issue of caps on expenditure is not really one for a referendum which, I think, the out camp fears it may lose. It is a wider issue.

[Lord Collins of Highbury]

My Lords, it has been an interesting debate. One of the problems with referenda is that they assume there are simply two sides to an argument, when actually there are often lots of different opinions and reasons why people may wish, in the case of the European Union, to stay in or to leave. The interesting thing in this debate is that we have heard that UKIP will wish to argue its case strongly as a political party. We have heard the Conservative Party saying no, we are not going to do that. In effect, the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, will limit UKIP to £10,000—it will not be able to spend more than that—while if, for example, Unite registered as a participant, it could spend £700,000, as could any other organisation or individual if they registered properly as a participant.

The real issue here is how we have a fair political debate: how we ensure that all the different views in favour of remaining or leaving are properly expressed. It is clear, as we have heard, that there is a problem among those who want to leave. They do not appear able to reconcile their differences and come together as one—perhaps because they have absolutely different views about why Britain should leave. The Conservative Party has clearly not been very keen to sit on platforms with UKIP to argue its case, and certainly individuals within the party have not been keen to join in. The idea that political parties should absent themselves from this campaign is purely ridiculous.

European Union Referendum Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Monday 2nd November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard]

I hope I may leave it to the Minister to deal with the allegation that on the last 77 occasions when we have expressed views and wished to change a piece of legislation we have been overruled. I would be completely astonished if there was any truth in that statement.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

I may be able to help. Part of popular opposition to the European Union, particularly in northern Norway, is the belief that it is a Catholic outfit and all part of a Catholic conspiracy. This was the case with much of the anti-European Union efforts when we first applied, but it is slightly below the surface now in Britain and rather more on the surface in Norway.

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard]

I do not think I will follow the noble Lord, although I am grateful to him. The Norwegians are not happy with their relationship with the European Union, and no wonder their Prime Minister told us last week that it would not do for us. I entirely agree with him. Before the electorate are asked to decide whether we should leave the Union, they clearly need to know where we would land if we did, what new relationship with the rest of Europe the Government envisage and how certain they are that it would be obtainable—hence my amendment.

If it is not the Norwegian model, what is it? The Swiss model is clearly worse from our point of view and probably not on offer. The Swiss have individual, sectoral and bilateral agreements with the EU. However, they do not extend to services, our major export, and would take many years to negotiate. Both sides—the EU and Switzerland—agree that the arrangement is unsatisfactory, complex and unwieldy.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

I would be very happy to read it; what I would be interested in is who has written it. I note, for example, that three of my honourable friends from the other end of the corridor were kicked off the Council of Europe recently because their views did not accord with those of the establishment. But I am certainly happy to read what the noble Lord suggests.

I want to put some more figures into the debate that arise from our earlier discussions and are relevant to the amendment. They relate to the number of EU laws that EEA members such as Norway and Iceland have to accept. The Icelandic Government estimate 10%—5,000 legislative Acts in force, divided by 23,078 legislative Acts in consolidated EU acquis.

There seems to be a debate about the extent to which this applies to these countries, but as the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, said, all of this is completely irrelevant. We are not Iceland; we are not Norway; we are Britain. We are a country with a long history and relationships around the globe in a global marketplace in the Far East and elsewhere. It is utterly ridiculous to suggest that we would get into some sort of trade war with the EU and be vetoed by Portugal or Spain. It is a shallow argument that demeans our country, and will be hugely counterproductive if it is deployed, as we discovered when perhaps overenthusiastic unionists tried to deploy the same argument in Scotland when they said that Scotland would not be able to survive on its own.

Iceland has a population that is smaller than that of Edinburgh, for goodness sake, and here we have it on the authority of the Icelandic Prime Minister himself that Iceland is much better off outside the EU. So I do not think that these arguments apply. It has been suggested that the British Government could produce a report on what it would be like if we were outside the EU, and that we should not embark on taking control of our own destiny unless we had such a report, which would by its very nature be speculative and might very well underestimate the opportunities. Thank goodness we did not have this kind of thinking in May 1940.

This United Kingdom has a huge range of relationships and great talent and ability, and it is wrong to suggest that we cannot work with our colleagues in Europe outside the EU. It is not we who are leaving the European Union; it is the European Union that is leaving us. Of course it is. In order to maintain the integrity of the single currency, the euro, which the noble Lord and others would have had us join—what a mess we would be in if we had done that—the EU is having to introduce a more integrated system. Therefore, it is not a matter of whether we are able to have influence and to punch above our weight within this organisation. This organisation is changing; it has to change because countries are so obsessed with maintaining currency union that they are prepared not only to sacrifice the jobs and living standards of young people in the southern European states but to give up their autonomy. We are not prepared to give up our autonomy.

When we joined the EU, we joined the common market, which was a free trade area. That free trade area is being turned into something else. It is being turned into a country with its own currency and the ability to raise taxes and to control its own fiscal issues. The noble Baroness, Lady Smith, said that you cannot join a golf club and then not pay your subscription. We did join the golf club—but they want to play tennis now. They want to play a completely different game, which is not what we joined for.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

The noble Lord is making a long campaign speech, and I hesitate to interrupt him. I merely remind him that Edward Heath, Harold Macmillan, Alec Douglas-Home and others said as we joined the European Community that it had clear political connotations and that our foreign policy would be affected. I will send him tomorrow the speech by Alec Douglas-Home in 1971.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

The noble Lord may very well be correct that Edward Heath said this and Alec Douglas-Home said this, but most people thought that they were voting to join a common market. Certainly, Scottish fishermen thought that they would keep control of their fish stocks and that their industry would survive, and it has been destroyed—and facts are chiels that winna ding, as they say north of the border. The fact is that what we thought we were joining is not what has come to pass.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

I am now having doubts. I am not surprised that the noble Lord supports the amendment, because it is a very sensible one. All that it does is seek to ensure that when the Prime Minister has finished his negotiations we have some kind of government publication that tells us what they were about, what their outcome was and what the implications would be for our continued membership of the European Union with those changes, if he so recommends, or the alternative.

The amendment is drafted in neutral terms and I hope that my noble friend might be able to accept the principle. I do not think that it is too much to ask. In my noble friend’s Second Reading speech, he hinted as much. The Chancellor of the Exchequer said in the early part of the summer that there would have to be some sort of paper. There are none of the issues that we have had to discuss earlier this evening arising from the debates that we had on publications of the benefits of being in and out. This is completely straightforward. What did the Prime Minister want? What did he get? What will be the effect on our relationship with the EU and what is the outcome? I beg to move.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I, too, agree with this amendment. I anticipate that when the negotiations are complete, the Prime Minister will publish a paper and I think it highly likely that the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, will disagree fundamentally with what the Prime Minister says.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

My Lords, I went to the Public Bill Office and said that I wanted to put down an amendment very similar to this. It would have called for a White Paper, which this amendment does not. When it was pointed out to me that my noble friend Lord Forsyth’s amendment was already tabled, I added my name to it. This smacks very much of Amendment 1, which I put my name to and which was supported very early on by the noble Lord, Lord Kerr. The Liberal Democrats supported it, too, and I suspect that the Front Bench of the Labour Party is going to support it. This amendment ties in with everything that the Government have said already. The only worry I have is that my noble friend the Minister may say that the Government have given an undertaking to this and that it does not need to be in the Bill. I have to say that we will all be very reassured if it is.

Zhang Kai

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 22nd October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for making reference to the fact that the Government are being consistent in their relationship with China and to the fact that we have pressed the importance of human rights upon our interlocutors there, because human rights underpin a stable and prosperous society.

On the noble Lord’s first question, with regard to the case, I am not in a position to give further information at the moment. What I can say is that it is the usual occurrence for diplomats in post in Beijing to keep a very close watch on any cases that are under way, to make attempts to visit people in detention and, when they are brought to trial, to ensure that they make every attempt to attend those trials. I am advised that, if denied access, they will remain in place in the court during the day to make the point that we are trying to see that there is proper judicial process. We have assistance in that from our EU colleagues.

In his second question, the noble Lord asked about the matter of imprisonment and the details of whether or not this issue has been raised, either before or during the course of the state visit. I cannot say further than I have at present because, as I mentioned very briefly in the Statement, there are continuing discussions this afternoon at Chequers and I would not wish to try to pre-empt what they may cover.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, first, will the Minister reassure us on one point? The other day, we heard worrying comments from the new Permanent Secretary to a Commons committee that the issue of human rights is now a lower priority in the FCO than the prosperity agenda. It would be very good, in the context of issues such as this, to have some reassurance. Secondly, could she explain how we have got into such a contradiction about our approach to countries such as China? We are extremely relaxed about sovereignty and Chinese foreign investment and anything else coming in, although human rights is, nevertheless, something that we talk about. However, in our relations with our European partners we are totally neuralgic, even sometimes hysterical, about invasions of sovereignty, and do not think that they should have the right to talk about human rights at all. How do we handle that sort of intense contradiction between our approach to democratic countries such as our European partners and authoritarian countries such as China?

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, we are consistent throughout in our approach to human rights and in discussing these matters with countries around the world. Fortunately, I do not have neuralgia, either mental or physical, and have not detected any sign of it yet among my colleagues—I will keep watching, though.

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, for giving me the opportunity to set out clearly the position of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office with regard to human rights. What the Permanent Under-Secretary made clear in his exchange in the Select Committee is that the issue of human rights underpins everything that we do at the Foreign Office. It is embedded across the Foreign Office. I was concerned that the previous way, in which we set out a list of priorities, meant that there were categories of people in this country who could look at those priorities and think, “I am not there; they don’t care about me”. There were people on that list who might think, “Why am I fourth on the list?”—freedom of religion and belief or of no religion was fourth. So in seeking to redraft the way in which we present our commitment to human rights, I was driven by the belief that those in the LGBT community or those who are disabled should realise that we are for all people. As I mentioned at the PinkNews event last night at the Foreign Office, no one person is more valuable than another; we are all valuable. That is what our redrafted approach to human rights makes clear, and it is embedded across all departments in the Foreign Office.

European Union Referendum Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Tuesday 13th October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lamont of Lerwick (Con)]

My Lords, I wholeheartedly support this Bill. It fills a democratic deficit. As the Minister said, people have not had a direct say on a European issue for more than 40 years. No one under the age of 58 has been able to have such a direct say on our relationship with the European Union. I am pleased that the Opposition are not opposing this Bill, although in the Commons they opposed the previous Private Member’s Bill by Mr James Wharton. Nevertheless, I welcome their support for the Bill today.

However, some, like the noble Lord, Lord Liddle—he and I have often debated this—are quite unhappy. Even if they do not oppose the Bill, they think, as the noble Lord made quite explicit, that it is wrong to gamble with something as big and significant as our membership of the EU, since so much time and capital have been invested in it. To my mind, such an attitude reveals a distrust of democracy. That is and has been one of the weaknesses of the European Union. If there is any blame to be attached to why we are having a referendum, I suggest that it lies with those who promised a referendum on the Lisbon treaty and then went along with converting the constitution into a constitutional treaty, for the obvious reason that they wanted to avoid a referendum. That created enormous cynicism. It was a blatant manoeuvre to avoid democratic accountability and it confirmed the suspicion that Europe is about building a political project regardless of political opinion in the member states. Of course, Europe today is very different from the Europe that was put to the British people when we last had a referendum—and, indeed, when we joined the EU in the first place.

No doubt we will have intensive discussions in Committee. It has already been clearly signalled from the Benches opposite that there will be amendments about the franchise. I wholly support what the Minister said. If we are going to alter the qualification for voting, we should decide to do that for general elections first; that is when we should consider it. If we want to encourage more participation of young people in politics, let us concentrate on getting the 18 to 24 year-olds involved in the first place before we lower the voting age.

I do think that Clause 6 needs looking at. It is not at all clear why the Government have to disapply any part of Section 125 of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000. I read what Mr David Lidington said in the House of Commons and it is not at all clear what he was worried about and why we cannot have a full purdah during the period of the referendum. Perhaps my noble friend the Minister could give an example of exactly what the Minister and the Government are so worried about that they have to have this only partial application of Section 125. I remind the House that Section 125 is about material that is put out to the whole public. It is not about circulating documents to people who may be affected by some negotiation.

My position on the referendum is that I will wait to see the results of the renegotiation before I finally make up my mind. A renegotiated settlement for Britain that changed our relationship significantly would have much to commend it. I know this will offend some enthusiasts on the other side but, because of our opt-outs from Schengen and the single currency, we are already semi-detached, country club members—associate members. Sometimes I wonder whether Europe, as it goes forward, is not going to leave us rather than us leaving it—in many ways I think that would be a preferable way to proceed. But Europe goes on.

I am somewhat underwhelmed by what appeared in the Sunday Telegraph about the Government’s apparent negotiating objectives. I know you must not show your hand in negotiations and that an element of bluff is involved, but I thought that you had to bluff your opponents rather than your supporters. That is what worries me a little. I do not think that removing the phrase “ever closer union” will be of great legal significance. It is largely symbolic. I believe strongly that the red card system for national parliaments is not coming out of the negotiations at all. As the committee chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, has demonstrated, it has been on the table for a very long time already. It is just qualified majority voting by a different route. I do not think that it is enough just to buttress the wall between the eurozone and ourselves. I believe that Britain could survive perfectly well outside the European Union.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

Does the noble Lord consider that we should opt out of, for example, foreign policy and security policy discussions in the European Union? That is a very important issue.

European Union Referendum Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Tuesday 13th October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, we have had a very interesting and constructive debate.

I will just comment on the “ever closer union” issue, having first studied how the European Union treaties were negotiated as a graduate student. Originally in the treaty it was,

“ever closer union among the peoples of Europe”,

because those who had come through the war, often spending the war in London while their states were occupied, wanted to go beyond the nation state. They left the nation states out because Belgium had failed under occupation, as had France, Germany and Italy. The reinsertion of “states” into “ever closer union” was a later recognition that actually you needed to retain the nation state. It was a shift back, away from the original emotional, enthusiastic, idealistic federalism of those who came through the resistance and the war to a recognition that legitimacy depends on states as well and that there are limits as to how far one can go beyond the state. So while we are looking at the history of the evolution of all of this, that is part of this very wonderful phrase “ever closer union”, which means so many different things to so many different people. That is why it is an ideal phrase; we can interpret it in so many different ways and perhaps we should not get quite so hung up on it.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

I am most grateful to the noble Lord. It is a very interesting theory about this development of the “ever closer union”. Why did the original draft of the Maastricht treaty, before it was amended at the request of John Major, talk about “towards a federal union”?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

It is not a theory; I am actually giving the noble Lord some history. I have great admiration for him and his wonderful interventions —he is the best Commons debater in the Lords, I have to say. There were those of the original generation who really did want to build a United States of Europe and they followed the American lead in this. After the war, the Americans had wanted to press on Europe the idea that the Europeans should follow the American lead and build our own United States on their model, as the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, has hinted. All of us resisted American pressure because we did not want to go anywhere near that degree of integration.

[Lord Dobbs]

Forgive me for interrupting, but I would also remind the noble Lord that the United States, in order to achieve a single currency, actually required a civil war to do it, which is scarcely a model that one wishes to follow.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I should remind the noble Lord that, when I have given talks in Washington and elsewhere on European integration, I have often said—sometimes years ago—that, if we ever achieved a United States of Europe, I had no doubt that the policy process would work almost as well as the policy process in Washington. I hope that the noble Lord understands the point.

We have teased out of this debate what issues we have to deal with in Committee and on Report. We are now agreed that there is to be a referendum; the question is now settled; and the date is beyond Parliament’s control, except when the negotiations have been agreed and the Government come back to us. Therefore, we are left with a number of manageable issues.

On the question of purdah, clearly, if we have a long campaign, the Government have to go on negotiating with their partners in the European Union, and Ministers will have to say some things. In that area we will need to explore what the correct outcome is.

On the franchise, on which a great deal has been said, it is quite clear that the current British franchise is a mess. It is a historical, imperial legacy which means that someone who was born in Rwanda or Mozambique and moved to London last year can vote on whether we stay in the European Union. When we are in London, we stay in Wandsworth, where you hear French spoken extensively in the streets, which has been the case for 20 to 30 years. However, French people who have been working and living in London for 20 or 30 years, paying taxes here, contributing in every sense to our economy, cannot vote. There are a whole set of issues there which we need to explore in detail. This is not an ordinary vote. As has been said during this debate and elsewhere, this is a vote about the future of this country, and therefore we need to look at the franchise for this exceptional vote in exceptional ways.

The noble Lord, Lord Norton, and other noble Lords raised the question of threshold, which clearly we will have to explore a little, although it is a very difficult issue. Whatever happens at the end of it, if we have a narrow majority, either with a low or a high turnout, it will not settle the issue. However, we all know that referendums do not settle the issue. Six months after the 1975 referendum, the Labour Party was still arguing against staying in the European Union, and look at what happened in Scotland, where the referendum did not settle the future of that country.

The issue of the provision of information is extremely important and very difficult, and again we need to spend some time on it. We have to ask for a White Paper; certainly we need to look at the implications of leaving and, if possible, the prospect of staying. However, I bear hard scars from the problems of having to try to create dispassionate evidence on Britain’s relations with Europe. I spent two years in government negotiating 32 reports on the balance of competences between Britain and the European Union. Some 2,500 pieces of evidence came in; the Conservatives put that in the coalition agreement because they were convinced that this would provide the evidential basis for knowing what sort of powers we would want to repatriate from Brussels back to Britain. The overwhelming evidence submitted to the balance of competences review—from business, universities, financial and legal services—was that they think the current balance of competences is pretty good, thank you. The evidence submitted by easyJet began: easyJet would not exist if it were not for the single market in the European Union.

How did the press and No. 10 react to this? They did their best to bury the balance of competences reports in full. They were usually published at the beginning of the Christmas or the July Recess, just to make sure that the press were looking somewhere else instead. That is part of the problem in trying to get dispassionate evidence into our debate: myths float by us, undisturbed by reality.

I saw in a Church of England blog, which the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London referred to yesterday, that a lay member of the synod of Canterbury said that one of the reasons why the BBC is so biased in favour of Europe is because it receives so much significant funding from the European Union. I look at that with amazement. That is clearly going round in some circles as part of this wonderful phantasmagoria of the EU as a monster, reaching across the Channel to seduce honest Englishmen, strangle our free institutions and reduce us to serfdom under German—and perhaps also French—domination. Therefore, we will struggle between evidence and myth as we go on through this debate.

I will remark on one of the myths, which I have heard several times in this debate: “We thought we were joining a Common Market, and no one ever told us that this was a political project”. Indeed, the Prime Minister himself, in his speech to the Conservative Party conference last week, said:

“When we joined the European Union we were told that it was about going into a common market, rather than the goal that some had for ‘ever closer union’”.

Last night, therefore, again I dug out Sir Alec Douglas -Home’s speech on 21 October 1971, on the first day of the Commons debate on the issue of principle of joining the European Economic Community. He said that,

“when Germany, France, Italy and the rest sit down to talk about their problems of security, and their attitude to world problems … it is vital that we should be in their councils. During the last year I have … been in the councils of the Ten, because they have anticipated the larger Community. Matters are talked about there which concern the defence of Europe and the defence of Britain. Matters are talked about—for example, the Middle East—which have the greatest implications for our country. It is essential that we should be in the councils when these questions are discussed, and that a decision should not be taken without us”.—[Official Report, Commons, 21/10/71; col. 922.]

I say that for all those who think that we would be better off as a sort of Switzerland with nuclear weapons, which I think is what—

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

NATO.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

The noble Lord intervenes on NATO. If you go to Washington now, you will discover that they think that NATO is a European organisation, and they argue very strongly that NATO and the European Union should work more closely together, because they see them as parts of the same outfit. There is not a sharp difference between the EU and NATO, and the overwhelming majority of members of NATO are also members of the EU. It is not a contradiction. The two go together; they complement each other.

The argument has also been made throughout this debate that the EU has changed beyond all recognition since 1975. That is partly because of British initiatives and efforts: Margaret Thatcher’s initiative on the single market; national deregulation and European reregulation, which of course meant different regulations as we negotiated some of them, but not an overall increase in regulation; and eastern enlargement, which Margaret Thatcher pushed for, with the unintended effect that of course when Poland came in, as she wanted it to, a large number of Poles decided that they wanted to move here, which was one of the interesting unintended consequences.

The world has also changed enormously since 1975. We are in a different global economy; the national companies that used to exist have become multinational; we have integrated production models in which every Airbus sold by the French has over 30% of British parts in it, and every car built in Britain and Germany has parts from other countries throughout Europe; and similarly, we have cross-border financial services, legal services and the like.

Britain has also changed. The noble Viscount, Lord Ridley, said, powerfully, “We want our independence back”. I would like to have back our regional economies. I spent much of my life in the north of England; in Yorkshire you used to have textile mills and building societies. He is from the north-east; we had ICI and Northern Rock. He will remember Northern Rock—it was quite a good building society in his time and did quite a lot for the regional economy. However, these things have all changed. Now Nissan keeps the north-eastern economy going, and I much regret that we no longer have regional banks. The bank that my father used to work for, Barclays, which used to do a lot of useful regional investment, has just chosen an American investment banker as its chief executive. That is rather different from the sort of national economy in which I grew up.

Therefore, we all have to adjust to a global world in which independence and sovereignty have gone. After all, sovereignty goes most easily with protection. Free trade requires international co-operation. Globalisation means global regulation, or regulation by the world’s leading economy, which so far, of course, has been the United States. If we wish to co-operate with others in managing a global economy, we should surely start by co-operating most closely with our neighbours, and if we cannot do that, we should not hold to the illusion that we would find the Chinese, the Russians, the Saudis and the Indians easier partners than the French or the Germans.

Burma

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Tuesday 15th September 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, the noble Baroness is right: fine words from politicians need to be backed up with practical work. The UK is a leading member of the Peace Support Group. We are supporting the dialogue towards a national ceasefire agreement by funding experts who have direct experience of these matters to assist the process. We are putting our money where our mouth is: we are the largest bilateral donor to Kachin State and we announced a further £13.5 million for humanitarian work there in 2013. In addition, we have earmarked £3 million of flexible funding to support the peace process. It is practical work, but one has to have a long-term view and not give up in difficult circumstances.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, we are well aware that the British Army has close relations with the Burmese army, and is currently providing training. The Burmese army has been running the country for too long, and factions within it are clearly not prepared to give up. That is part of the problem that we face. Will the Minister tell us how we and other defence representatives in Burma are working with the Burmese army to persuade it that civilian control is what it also should observe?

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

The noble Lord is right to raise that matter. Clearly, our engagement has been nothing to do with combat training. As the noble Lord is aware, we discussed these matters when I worked with him. The Burmese military remains a clear political force in Burma. It is right that we should encourage and support reforms so that there is a completely civilian Government in future. Our defence engagement with the Tatmadaw is aimed at encouraging it to support the reform process through a programme of defence education work that is limited to non-combat education courses focused on the core principles of democratic accountability, international law and human rights.

Turkey

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Tuesday 15th September 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

I agree with every word that my noble friend said. I listened, and I will make sure that his message is amplified through our EU partners.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, Turkey is one of our key allies in the fight against ISIS across the border. As we all know, Kurdish forces in Syria and Iraq have been providing some of the most vigorous and effective opposition to ISIS. I was told the other day that, of the air strikes that the Turks have so far conducted over the border in Syria and Iraq, one has been against ISIS and the rest have been against Kurdish forces. Can we also make it clear to the Turks that what happens inside Turkey—in particular, relations with their Kurdish minority—matters to all of us when considering the future stability of the Middle East?

Iran: Nuclear Deal

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Wednesday 15th July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, we on the Liberal Democrat Benches welcome this Statement and welcome enormously the successful conclusion of the negotiations, although we have some reservations about aspects of the Statement and its tone. Within the coalition Government, the Liberal Democrats pressed from the outset for an active exploration of a changed relationship with Iran. It has a very complex political system in which there are some very nasty and hardline elements, but also some elements of civil society and a desperate desire, particularly among the urban population, for a reopening of its relationship with the rest of the world.

We should pay tribute in particular to the Americans who led this negotiation and to the enormous efforts which Wendy Sherman, the American negotiator, put in. We should also recognise the enormous efforts which Cathy Ashton made as the EU negotiator. I would welcome the Minister marking the fact that this has been a triumph for European co-operation in foreign policy rather than simply a British effort. I noted in the last Statement made on the European Council that the Prime Minister said that we wanted to return the European Union to its original fundamentals as a customs union. The EU, in its original fundamentals, was never just a customs union; it was always about foreign policy, co-operation and security. The Government need to make that clear as they negotiate for EU reform.

We have some reservations about the suggestion that the origins of these negotiations lie in the revelation in 2003 that Iran was considering nuclear activities. In 2003, the year of the invasion of Iraq, the Iranians offered to reopen negotiations with the United States and the European countries on a closer relationship, which the Americans blocked off. The then Labour Government, to their shame, simply followed the American lead, as so often they did in that period of an American Republican Administration, and we missed what seemed to many of us to be an opportunity for an earlier transformation of the relationship.

It being a principle in good international relations, we have to recognise that you need to understand how your opponent sees the world. At that point, the Iranians had seen, first, American and European support for Iraq in the Iraq-Iran war, which was a very bloody war, and, secondly, the western invasion and occupation of Iraq just next door to them. Not surprisingly, the Iranian regime—nasty though it was in many ways—felt threatened. Therefore, after 10 years of very difficult negotiations, we come to a position where we have not entirely secured the abolition of a nuclear weapons programme in Iran.

We recognise that this is a compromise on which there are things still to be done. However, there is now the opportunity for a gradual change in the climate. We should like to hear from the Minister how far the Government recognise that this offers the opportunity for a transformation of our relationship with the complexities of the various Middle East conflicts and the Iranian role in them.

I thought that it was extremely unwise of the Israeli Prime Minister to suggest that this was a disaster and that Iran represented an existential threat. The other week I heard an Israeli Minister refer to Saudi Arabia as a moderate state and the Iranians as evil. That seems enormously mistaken. Clearly, Iran does meddle well beyond its borders, but there are many other states in the Middle East which also meddle beyond their borders, supporting other terrorist, Sunni organisations. We need to be concerned about that as well.

As Liberal Democrats within the coalition, one of our concerns was that the Government risked being caught on the hardline Sunni side of a developing Sunni/Shia conflict. I hope the Minister will reassure us that the Government are determined not to be caught there and that our interests are in promoting an easier relationship between Iran and the Sunni autocracies to which we are so close. We still sell too many weapons to those heavily armed states. I hope she will say that we will now be pushing for a transformation as we deal with the multiple threats from ISIS and from other terrorist groups across the Middle East.

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, I thank both Her Majesty’s Opposition and the Liberal Democrats, with whom I was very privileged to work in coalition—particularly the noble Lord, Lord Wallace. I thank them for their support throughout this process. It has been an extremely long process and it has been difficult for political parties to remain united over that period. The seriousness with which all parties and their leaders have continued their commitment to it shows the major role that the UK plays, not only in the world but in trying to ensure that the world remains at peace without nuclear intervention.

It is with great pleasure that I recognise the remarkable role and patience of the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton, as high representative of the External Action Service of the European Union. One watched her attend meetings month after month, year after year and through the night. She always looked commendably and diplomatically in charge of events. We have much to thank her for.

I turn to specific questions from noble Lords. The noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, asked whether I was concerned about the role of the United States Congress. Clearly, there is now a period in which Congress has to consider the matter, at the end of which it can express its view. It is a matter for the United States Congress. I would not interfere in its events, just as I would not wish it to interfere here. We await the outcome with interest. All these matters can proceed only once a United Nations resolution has been achieved.

I was also asked whether I agreed that what had been achieved were thorough, independent inspections and verifications, and that those were at the core of everything. I absolutely agree with the noble Baroness. She also had a degree of realism—it may be painful, but we have to keep our eyes wide open for at least 10 years. This agreement has been won after such a hard struggle; we must not let any of it slip.

With regard to snap-back, am I assured that it is tough enough to block the way to obtaining nuclear weapons? Yes, I am. The process of snap-back is robust because it is structured in such a way that it reserves the powers of all the P5 of the UNSC to snap back to the original sanctions in the event of any violation by Iran. Of course, in any event, if either the EU or the US thought that there had been a violation, they could impose their own sanctions as well.

Iran’s wider ambitions were referred to by both the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, and the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire. It is crucial that we consider the wider interests of the region. Throughout this process, I have always said that it is important that we are able to welcome Iran back into the international community, but that welcome has to be tempered by a realism that Iran has ambitions. I agree with the implication behind the question of the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, that it is important that all parts of the international community work with Iran so that we can work towards an easier relationship between Sunni and Shia, as I believe he put it. That is what we should all aim to achieve.

I am already reassured to some extent by the measured tone that we have heard from Saudi Arabia in its reactions to the signing of this agreement. That is, indeed, promising. My right honourable friend the Prime Minister has made it clear that we hope this may lead to our undertaking further work with Iran in encouraging it to act responsibly as part of the work that the coalition does, not necessarily as part of the coalition but working towards the same end, in dealing with the threat of ISIL—or, as some prefer to call it, Daesh.

Both the noble Baroness and the noble Lord asked me whether this agreement makes it easier for us to have relationships with Iran. I very much hope that it does, but again with our eyes wide open. As I mentioned in the Statement, this will not stop us speaking out against human rights abuses in Iran, but our current work and the fact that we will have a base eventually, when the embassy reopens, give us a much better opportunity to interact with the people in Iran and to make sure that information is more readily available. With regard to the opening of the embassy, there are still technical problems with regard not to re-equipping but actually to equipping the embassy after it was emptied. However, we are hoping that will be achieved by the end of this year.

The noble Lord, Lord Wallace, asked me whether the UK had an interest in not only promoting the easier relationship between Sunni and Shia, but also ensuring that we are able to work with countries in the wider community in the region in order to allay their concerns. I hear the concerns that President Netanyahu of Israel has already expressed and my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary will travel there tomorrow to discuss the implications with him.

The noble Lord, Lord Wallace, teased me a little about the position of the Conservative Party vis-à-vis the European Union. I have always made it very clear that I find it very helpful to work through the European Union both with regard to negotiations such as these and certainly with regard to work in the United Nations. The E3—the UK, France and Germany—have been at the heart of these negotiations since the Foreign Ministers visited Tehran in October 2003, launching the process that culminated in yesterday’s agreement. That says it all.

Gaza

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Monday 6th July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, we all understand how passionate everyone gets on the question of Israel-Palestine and what is happening in Gaza. We also recognise that on Gaza, as on the West Bank, there are two competing narratives, both of which have deep senses of grievance and historical wrongs which are incompatible. I think we also recognise from recent reports that there have been unacceptable activities on both sides, some of which count as atrocities and some of which might perhaps be classified as war crimes. As far as possible, I do not want to take one side or the other but I simply say that the current situation cannot last. It will not last and will eventually break down, and when it does it will be worse for Israel and the region. That is why we have to engage.

For Israel, the costs of a further attack on Gaza would be enormous, above all for Israel’s already battered repetition in the democratic world. The costs in terms of Hamas’s control of Gaza, as we have seen, are that it would begin to lose control to more radical groups. There are already reports of not only Islamic jihad but groups affiliated to ISIL infiltrating Gaza, so the prognosis is poor. That is why we cannot leave the situation as it is. The role of Egypt in the last few years has not been helpful. One recognises why the Egyptians also feel that this is not their concern but they clearly have to play a more constructive role.

The instability of the region is increasing. There is the extent to which Jordan, unavoidably a player in the whole Palestine issue, is being destabilised by the refugees coming across the border from Syria. There is also the extent to which the Syrian civil war, as it staggers into its fifth year, is already becoming a generator of violent Salafism across the Middle East and a driver of radical Islam—here, as there. We all have to recognise that the situation in Gaza, and in Palestine and the West Bank as a whole, is one of the recruiting sergeants for ISIL.

I am conscious that in Bradford we are affected by what happens in Gaza and the Middle East, and that more recently in Bradford we have had some disputes between Shia and Sunni. These things come home to us. It is not just a matter of what happens there, so again we have no choice but to engage. There are reports of the role of Qatar in providing funds for reconstruction. Indeed, there are some encouraging suggestions of attempts to get Israel and Hamas together to talk about a five-year truce. Everything that can be done by the United Kingdom Government to promote that, together with our European partners and others, seem immensely worth doing. If we are, as our Prime Minister has just said, in a generational conflict with ISIL, this is the theatre with which the British must engage. It is connected to and cannot be separated from the broader conflict. Her Majesty’s Government must therefore be fully engaged in pushing all parties to the conflict together to try to avoid the situation getting worse.

Burma: Ethnic Minorities

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 18th June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, with regard to freedoms—or lack of freedoms—in Burma, we have made it clear that it is essential for Burma to address the dire situation not only of the Rohingya community, but of other persecuted communities, regardless of the region. We want to see improved humanitarian access, greater security and accountability and a sustainable solution on citizenship applying country-wide.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, can the noble Baroness say something about the critical engagement we have with the current Burmese Government? For example, I understand that we are training Burmese military. How much leverage does the closeness of our relationship with the Burmese Government give us to make constructive criticism of this sort?