European Union Referendum Bill

Lord Willoughby de Broke Excerpts

Tuesday 13th October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Willoughby de Broke (UKIP)]

My Lords, I am the 51st speaker on the list, and I note that no speaker has mentioned the role of UKIP in obtaining this referendum. It is true that the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, who sometimes has his uses, mentioned Nigel Farage in an entirely different context, but the fact is that, however unpalatable it is to all the other parties, it is largely because of UKIP’s pressure—UKIP’s showing in the European elections and the recent national elections—that we have this referendum. The noble Baroness, Lady Crawley, mentioned that. UKIP has galvanised the country into understanding exactly what we have given away over the years—how much our Parliament and our Governments of all parties and every stripe have given away over a succession of treaties. Parliament has given away powers that were not its to give away. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, called it the freehold, and he was quite right. I did not agree with anything else he said in his speech, but the freehold of the British people has been given away by politicians who had no right to do that.

Who needs reminding about the—I do not want to use an unparliamentary expression but I shall borrow a phrase—terminological inexactitudes of Mr Edward Heath, who told us that joining the Common Market would entail no loss of national essential sovereignty? That was back in 1975, which was the last time the people of this country were given any say on our relationship with the EU.

Where are we now, 40 years on, after the give-aways in the Single European Act, the Maastricht treaty, the Nice treaty, the Amsterdam treaty and the Lisbon treaty? Forty years on, the EU has a flag, an anthem, a Parliament, a diplomatic service, a border force and its own Court of Justice to which English law is subservient. Who decides our energy policy? Brussels. Who decides our trade policy? Brussels. Who decides our agricultural policy? Brussels. Who decides our fisheries policy? Brussels. Who regulates our financial institutions? Brussels. Who decides what sorts of light bulbs and vacuum cleaners we can use in our own homes? Brussels. Who decides who we allow into our own country? Who decides our immigration policy? Again, it is Brussels. All this has happened in the past 40 years without the people of this country ever being consulted or asked whether they wanted to give away the freehold that was theirs to the unelected, unsackable Commission in Brussels. They were never asked if they wished to transfer those powers to a ramshackle organisation whose accounts have not been passed for the past 19 years.

I am delighted that finally we are going to have this referendum. We have the chance to ask and reply to the fundamental question. It is an easy one: out or not? Do we want to regain the powers to govern ourselves or do we want to continue to contract out the powers to Brussels? That is what the referendum is going to be about. It will be about whether we will be able to decide our own policies in this country, run our own policies and decide our own future. This referendum is going to be about whether in the end we want to decide how to spend the £20 billion a year which our membership of the EU costs us—an annual fee to join that ramshackle club. That is a positive.

The Prime Minister seems to think that if he skilfully asks the right questions and asks little enough of Brussels he will be able to come back and say to the country that he has a wonderful deal so it should back the Government and stay in the EU. As noble Lords have already said, the Sunday Telegraph published his four key demands. One is to ask the Commission to make an explicit statement that Britain will be exempted from the EU founding principle of ever-closer union, but we do not want to be exempted from any further closer union; we want to get back the powers we have already given away. Another demand is an explicit statement that the euro is not the official currency of the EU. That is completely irrelevant. The third demand is a new red card system to bring back powers to Britain by allowing groups of national parliaments the power to stop unwanted legislation proposed by the Commission. The only red card system that is really going to work is if we get out of the EU. That is the best red card system so that we do not have unwanted legislation foisted upon us by an organisation to which we do not belong. The fourth demand is a new structure for the EU itself. This is like a letter to Father Christmas saying, “Dear Santa, what I would like for Christmas is a new structure for the EU”. I suppose that maybe Mr Cameron believes in the Euro-Santa, but I do not think he is going to find that one in his Christmas stocking this year.

I have my own explicit statement for the Government: this sadly unambitious wish list will simply not cut the mustard. There is now an increasing groundswell in the country, largely because of UKIP, that the EU game is not worth the candle and that we would be better off out. This cuts across political parties, businesses which find themselves shackled by EU regulation and individuals who find that their everyday lives are adversely affected by EU rules.

The ice is cracking under the EU. The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, is quite right that the euro has been an engine for mass unemployment and social unrest. The EU’s immigration policy has been wholly misconceived, both for its member states and for the luckless immigrants who put their trust in the EU and find that they have been misled.

The Britain Stronger in Europe campaign is wheeling out the tired old arguments we have heard so often before. We heard them this afternoon from the Europhiles who told us that we would be marginalised if we did not join the euro and that millions of jobs would be lost. We have heard that before. I have to tell the Europhiles that the fact is—the noble Lord, Lord Davies wants facts and here is one for him—that countries in the eurozone are suffering from crippling 20% unemployment and youth unemployment is 40% in some countries. It is also a fact that this country has created more jobs in the past two years than the whole of the eurozone put together. Those are the facts.

I shall finish by joining the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, in saying how odd I find it that the “stay in” campaign chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Rose—I find it rather odd that he has not participated in the debate—says that it would be unpatriotic to wish to regain our independence, to make our own laws and to decide our own destiny. That really is very sad indeed.

Let us remember—and I remind the Europhiles—that the United Nations has 193 members and 165 of them seem to get along very well without being members of the European Union. We can do the same. I end by offering noble Lords one thought: if we were not members of the European Union now, would we vote to join?