European Union Bill
Lord Willoughby de Broke Excerpts(13 years ago)
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“Repeat referendums
Where a referendum has been held in pursuance of any of section 2, 3 or 6, a further referendum on the same treaty or decision, or treaties or decisions, cannot be held until a period of three years has expired.”
Lord Willoughby de Broke
My Lords, I brought a similar amendment to this in Committee which did not find favour with the Government. That was in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon, and my noble friend Lord Pearson of Rannoch. I listened to the arguments then that the five-year gap that we proposed was perhaps too long, so this amendment proposes simply a mandatory three-year gap between referendums. When he replied to that similar amendment on 23 May, the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, went off on a rather bizarre tangent about the European Gendarmerie Force, which I had not even mentioned in my speech. I do not know quite what that was all about. However, in reply to my amendment he went on to say:
“If the Government were defeated in a referendum, it would be tantamount to a defeat of the Government”,
and they would have to reconsider the matter. He went on to say:
“It would be unusual for the Government then to consider asking the public the same question in short order, having failed to convince them”—[Official Report, 23/5/11; col. 1623-24—]
at the time to change their minds the second time around.
The point of my amendment is that this is what has happened in the EU in the past. It is exactly what happened on the Maastricht treaty and in Ireland with the Nice treaty. It happened on the constitutional treaty. When the French and the Dutch voted that down, it was brought back under the cloak of the Lisbon treaty with a rather unsavoury démarche which allowed the then Government to pretend that it was not the same thing at all as the constitutional treaty. Yet a stinkweed by any other name still smells as foul. This constant backsliding, weaving, dodging and bobbing and ducking are what have given the European Union a bad name. Several speakers made the same point on the amendments that we discussed this afternoon: that there is a very prevalent distrust of the EU in this country, and not only in this country but throughout the European Union now.
In many of his remarks during both Committee and Report, the noble Lord, Lord Howell, has repeatedly underlined that the purpose of this Bill is to reduce the distrust of the British people in the institutions of the EU and in the way that the Government deal with EU matters and directives which have, so far, gone through without any influence by the people of this country. The amendment really should be there to reassure those people that if they vote in a referendum under this Bill, it will not be interfered with again by a Government, who may be more manipulative than this one, for at least three years. That is helpful to the Government and I hope that they will take it in that spirit. I beg to move.
Lord Deben
My Lords, I find this a fascinating amendment because those of us who are opposed to referenda in any case are now presented with somebody who is in favour of a referendum but does not want to have it when it is inconvenient. This is a most peculiar amendment. I think that referenda are always wrong in a parliamentary democracy and I have always stood by that. I have never changed my view from that and I am not changing it now, but if we are to have a referendum, the concept that we must not have one except in three years’ time, irrespective of what the public think, seems a most peculiar argument. To complain about the fact that in a second referendum people made a different choice seems an odd thing. After all, that was the choice the people made. I think that this is proof of why referenda are not an acceptable way forward, because the truth is that a referendum analyses what people think at a particular moment.
I became opposed to referenda at my father’s knee. I remember just after the war he was explaining to his infant son about politics. He said that he remembered the peace pledge. Eleven million people signed the peace pledge and two years later one could not find any of them. Once we got near to the war, they all disappeared. That is the problem with a referendum, because it is an irresponsible act—one is not responsible for the vote that one makes because it is secret and private. Surprisingly enough, I found a number of my constituents who voted one way in the referendum we had about remaining in the European Union and who within two or three years decided they had really voted the other way. I gave them the benefit of the doubt and felt that they had mistaken themselves, but if one is going to have a referendum, one has to have it without strings.
The noble Lord is presenting something that gives the lie to the whole referendum argument. People who want referenda want referenda because they want a particular response. That is why they want them. They want it because they think it will produce a particular answer of which they approve. When they find that there is a possibility that it might not produce that, they want rules to make sure that the public cannot have another go. I beg your Lordships’ House to accept that if we are going to have referenda, we had better have them on a fair deal and not on the basis that we restrict them in case the public possibly take a different view the second time.
Lord Willoughby de Broke
My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken in the debate. The noble Lord, Lord Deben, made his position on referendums perfectly clear, so I do not think there is any point in pursuing that. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, for his support. The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, said that a new treaty might possibly have some advantages for Britain and therefore the Government should not have their hands tied on another referendum. But the whole reason for the Bill—I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Howell, will concede this—is that, so far, all the new treaties have given power away from Parliament and the British people to the European Union. That is the nature of treaties and it is what has happened. That is also why we have the Bill in front of us right now. It is to stop this constant, undemocratic transfer of power from Parliament and the British people to the European Union. It has been one-way traffic all the way, and while this Bill is not perfect, at least it is a step in the right direction.
I am sorry that the Government do not feel that the amendment is helpful. I think it would be helpful because it would persuade the British people that in spite of the protestations of Ministers—no one believes any longer what they have to say—they will not be double dealt yet again. But, having heard the opinion of all those who have spoken and from the Government, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Hamilton of Epsom
My Lords, I have heard my noble friend Lord Dykes say on previous occasions that the only cause of Euroscepticism in this country is the Murdoch press, but I find that very difficult to go along with. I always reckon that to some degree the press has to reflect the national mood and, if it does not, it does not sell any newspapers. I also have a slight problem with the fact that Euroscepticism is growing at a pace in Germany, where I am not aware of the Murdoch press owning any newspapers. Therefore, I think that it is a little too simple to blame the whole thing on the Murdoch press.
However, let us get to the basis of the amendment and, for the sake of argument, start at the beginning, which seems to be a useful place to start. The Government will bring forward a measure to be put to a referendum of the people of this country only if they think they will win it. I do not accept the view of my noble friend Lord Trenchard that the Government might put something forward to be addressed by the country in a referendum if they want to lose, as I think that they can only possibly want to win it. If they do want to win it and if, as I think the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, said, this is an opportunity for UKIP to say, “Ah, we don’t want anything to do with the European Union at all. We must pull out”, then of course the Government will be compelled to argue the virtues of remaining in the European Union, and all his problems will be answered by the referendum. For that reason, the amendment is completely otiose and I shall not support it.
Lord Willoughby de Broke
My Lords, I think that this is rather a sad amendment. It demonstrates the Europhiles’ lack of confidence in their case in trying to put into the Bill a requirement for Ministers, frankly, to propagandise. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Radice, says that it is not propaganda but let us look at the words of the amendment. It says,
“must have regard to the desirability of promoting the United Kingdom’s membership of the EU”.
That sounds exactly like a recipe for propaganda to me. There is no balance there whatever—it requires Ministers to promote our membership of the EU. Like the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, I find it extraordinary that the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, should keep saying that the only reason for Euroscepticism is the Murdoch press or the Barclay press or whatever. They have absolutely nothing to do with the rise of the new Finn party, for example, or of Euroscepticism in France, Germany or Hungary. I am afraid that there is a growing realisation that Europe is going the wrong way and that the desire for more and more integration is not what people in member states want. To put this amendment in the Bill would be absolutely contrary to what people in this country think is right.
The noble Lord, Lord Dykes, said that the noble Lord, Lord Howell, had encouraged him in some of the things that he had said. I have listened to many speeches by the noble Lord, Lord Howell. He is extremely balanced in his view of the EU. He takes a critical but on the whole positive approach, which is right; Ministers in the Government will always do that. There is absolutely no need to put this sort of demand for propaganda in the Bill, and I hope that the Government will reject the amendment.
Baroness Williams of Crosby
The noble Lord, Lord Willoughby de Broke, has perhaps underestimated some of the forces out there that make it difficult to explain what the European Union is doing. I shall speak briefly. Despite the fact that we have been, as my noble friend Lord Trenchard said, citizens of the European Union for 50 years, we have never spoken about it or taught it in our schools in any adequate way. We are almost unique in Europe in the fact that our syllabuses carry very little information about the common market and very little understanding of this additional citizenship, which is part of the law of the land.
This is an issue now with a new Education Bill that is considering what should be in the syllabus for English children. Ministers should encourage the idea that if we are part of the European Union—and we still are—there should be at least a limited level of education about Europe in our schools so that our children know what we are talking about and are capable of making critical judgments about statements made in the press and deciding whether or not they agree with them.
I will give a second example. There was a good deal of discussion in the House today and on previous occasions about the level of distrust in the European Union. The noble Lord, Lord Liddle, made powerful points about the level of distrust in Parliament and in the whole democratic process. The distrust is part of the atmosphere of the present time; it is not specific to the European Union but much wider and in many ways more disturbing.
My final point is that we have some of the responsibility in this Parliament for the level of distrust. I will give just one example; I will not go into the expenditure crisis and so on. We heard much earlier in the debate about the number of occasions on which the scrutiny reserve imposed by Members of this House in the European Scrutiny Committee on the mandate given to Ministers in the European institutions has simply been brushed aside and disregarded. That has not been the act of the Commission or even of the Council of Ministers; it has been the act of our own Government in our own Parliament, despite the efforts of Parliament to persuade them to show caution or not to go ahead with a particular measure in Brussels.
We have to accept that our own Governments—I am not pointing at any particular one—have been part of the level of distrust created by a consistent disregard of Parliament expressing doubts and concerns about pieces of European policy pursued by those Governments. We have many times disregarded Parliament's doubts. That is not a way to build trust or to build a sense that Parliament has real power over what happens in Brussels, because often we have let that power disappear by failing to recognise what Parliament has urged us to take very seriously.
This is an important amendment. I do not terribly like some of its drafting; it should be much wider and, rather than referring simply to a referendum campaign, should concern the whole attitude of British citizens toward Europe. However, I commend the noble Lord for moving it.
European Union Bill
Lord Willoughby de Broke Excerpts(13 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Kerr of Kinlochard
It is a pleasure to speak after the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe of Aberavon. He speaks with great authority on a number of subjects, but particularly on the 1972 Act, of which he was the father.
The noble and learned Lord causes me a little difficulty. I welcome his support for the amendment in my name and that of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern—which is not surprising, as I am rather in favour of my amendment, and I am glad that he should be rather in favour of it, too. My position is slightly different from that of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, who said that Clause 18 was unnecessarily vague. I believe that it is unnecessary and vague, and I would go for the amendment of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe of Aberavon, calling for the elimination of Clause 18 —the Armstrong-Howe amendment.
I am against the clause because I am against declaratory provisions in principle; it seems to me that they are actively undesirable. I quote, as an authority on the subject, the then Sir Geoffrey Howe, Solicitor-General in 1972, who rejected a declaratory provision of this kind in his Bill because it would be,
“futile … and … a hollow sham ... the position is that the ultimate supremacy of Parliament will not be affected”—
by the Bill—
“and it will not be affected because it cannot be affected”.—[Official Report, Commons, 5/6/1972; col. 627.]
I agree with the noble and learned Lord. I think that that is absolutely correct.
My preference is for there to be no Clause 18. However, I strongly agree with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, that the vagueness of the version of Clause 18 which is in the Bill is undesirable and, I would say, dangerous. I argued on Second Reading that it was potentially sinister. I hope that I was wrong about that but I have not yet heard an answer to it.
The Explanatory Notes are not much help. They attracted the particular ire of Jean-Claude Piris, the then head of the Council Legal Service, in the memorandum from which the Minister made a perhaps selective quotation. Piris said that the intention behind paragraph 104 of our Explanatory Notes “is not crystal clear”, which is a very elegant way of putting it. The Explanatory Notes say:
“The words ‘by virtue of an Act of Parliament’”—
not the 1972 Act—
“cover UK subordinate legislation made under Acts, and because of the particular context of this clause, also cover Acts and Measures of devolved legislatures in exercise of the powers conferred on them by the relevant UK primary legislation”.
I do not understand that. That all derives from the 1972 Act, which is all you need to cite. Because of the 1972 Act directly applicable law applies in this country. It applies even in areas where the authority has been devolved. The 1972 Act is still the fundamental basis for all this. If we have to have a Clause 18, it should refer clearly and precisely to the 1972 Act. I thought it potentially sinister because the loose phrase “an Act” could be construed as referring to future as well as past Acts. The reference to the 1972 Act is only implicit and not explicit as the clause stands.
On Second Reading I wondered whether it was some kind of a dog-whistle or signal to those who would like us to be able pick and choose, to apply or disapply particular pieces of EU law depending on whether we like them. Of course, the Government know that that is not possible. Their notes say that nothing affects the primacy of EU law. The addition to the text suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, would say that explicitly in the Act. Why go for such vague wording? Why have something that is open to the interpretation that it might cover future Acts? I withdraw the word “sinister” as that goes too far, but I will settle for the words of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay—“unnecessarily vague”, and add unnecessary. I believe that Clause 18 is unnecessary and unnecessarily and dangerously vague.
Lord Willoughby de Broke
My Lords, I hesitate to introduce an inquiring note to this love-in. I do not know whether noble Lords have read the Commons European Scrutiny Committee report on this Bill, which has some interesting things to say on the principle of parliamentary sovereignty, having listened to a lot of legal evidence.
I draw the Minister’s attention to what that report says in paragraph 76, as it might help him. The committee states:
“We think it right that, should an Act of Parliament instruct the courts to disapply an aspect of European Union law, the courts should do so: this is not only consistent with the case law of the courts, but also with the doctrine of the legislative supremacy of Parliament; and also with the rule of law.
As I said on Second Reading:
“Encouragingly, the committee goes on to conclude that it is entirely within bounds for Parliament to ask judges to disapply any aspect of European Union law if that is the will of a democratically elected Parliament, even if—this is important—that were to lead to infringement proceedings in the EU Court of Justice”.—[Official Report, 22/3/11; Col. 699.]
There seems to be a divergence of opinion. Who is right—those who say EU law is supreme and should be within the Bill as the amendments suggest; or is the Commons European Union Scrutiny Committee right? It presumably has had legal advisers to instruct them as well. I suppose that we ought to take account of the fact that the French Government threw out the Romanian Gypsies, which must have been contrary to EU law. However, as far as I know, no infringement proceedings were taken. Even now, the French and Danes are ignoring the provisions of the Schengen agreement, which they signed, and are putting in place border posts. As is well known, the French stopped a train from Italy that contained Tunisian emigrants who were given some sort of EU passe-partout and were supposed to be allowed into France. The French police stopped the train and would not let them in. Denmark has reinstated full border controls to stop immigration. Therefore, the argument about the complete supremacy of EU law does not any longer hold. I will be interested to hear what the noble Lord or his advisers say about this in response to the amendments.
Lord Hannay of Chiswick
The debate that we have had over the past hour and a half has been valuable. I imagine that it has not escaped the Minister that not one person has spoken in support of the Government’s draft—not one. There have been different points of view about what is wrong with it and how to remedy it but there has been no support apart from that from the Members of UKIP, whose embrace I suspect would be mildly toxic to the Government since their sole objective is to operate the provision that would withdraw us from the European Union.
The noble Lord, Lord Willoughby de Broke, produced a lot of totally irrelevant analogies with the action taken by the French last year on the Roma, with the Danes and so on. They were all taken by executive action, not by legislation. He was proposing that Parliament should actually disallow a ruling by the European Court. If we did that, it would not be infraction proceedings that we would be getting; we would be on to the road out, which is exactly what he would like to achieve.
Lord Willoughby de Broke
I was not the one proposing those Acts of Parliament. I was simply quoting directly what the European Scrutiny Committee in the Commons stated at paragraph 76. If the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, would care to read that paragraph, he would be better informed.
Lord Hannay of Chiswick
I have read that report, though it gave me a pain between the ears to do so. The noble Lord will understand that if he quotes in an approving manner from a report from another place, it is assumed that he shares that view. I am merely pointing out that the parallels that he made with the Danes and the French are very inexact and that the sort of action proposed in the quotation he gave would in fact lead to us leaving the EU, which is a perfectly possible eventuality, one that I know he and his colleague in UKIP strongly desire. I am merely suggesting that that is not the desire of the government Front Bench—they have made that clear—and that, apart from those two interventions, the Government’s draft of Clause 18 has had no support at all.
What remains is a rich banquet of alternatives to which I hope the Government will give serious consideration between now and Report and will choose the one most likely to gain a majority in this House and in another place. As far as the first is concerned, that looks unlikely to be the one that is on the table in the name of the Government at the moment. Since the noble Lord has clarified the Government’s intentions very helpfully, the Government could easily accept any of the following three options: losing Clause 18; accepting the clause that has been drafted by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern; or making the addition that I have proposed but which leaves their own draft intact. I hope that the Government will give serious consideration to this.
European Union Bill
Lord Willoughby de Broke Excerpts(13 years, 1 month ago)
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“Repeat referendums
Where a referendum has been held in pursuance of any of section 2, 3 or 6, a further referendum on the same treaty or decision, or treaties or decisions, cannot be held until a period of 5 years has expired.”
Lord Willoughby de Broke
Unlike the majority of amendments that we have discussed at some length so far, this amendment is intended to be helpful to the Government, and I hope that they will take it in that spirit. It is in my name as well as that of my noble friend Lord Pearson and the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, and it is simplicity itself. It would ensure that a future Government, who may be even more Euro-enthusiastic than this one, will not be able to reverse the effect of referendums held under Clause 6 by immediately calling another referendum to try to get a different result.
Noble Lords may say that this is completely unnecessary and that a referendum is a referendum and the result must stand, but we must bear in mind the unsavoury precedents set by the EU when referendums that give the so-called wrong answer are deemed inoperative by the Euro-elite. In 1993, Denmark voted against the Maastricht treaty, for example. It was tossed a few concessions and told to vote again and do better this time. In 2001, Ireland voted against the Nice treaty; similarly, there were more concessions and another referendum. In May 2005, France voted by a large majority against the constitutional treaty, followed three days later by an equally emphatic rejection by the Dutch electorate of that constitutional treaty. So what happened then? Let us bring on the Euro-clowns. First up is President of Luxembourg, Jean-Claude Juncker, who said after the two referendums:
“I really believe the French and Dutch did not vote no to the Constitutional Treaty. Unfortunately the electorate did not realise that the Constitutional Treaty was specifically aimed at meeting their concerns and that’s why we need to have a period of explanation”—
or perhaps now a period of reprofiling.
Next in the ring is Monsieur Giscard d'Estaing, the ex-President of France, one of the hapless fathers of the constitutional treaty, who said:
“It is not France that has said no. It is 55 per cent of the French people”.
Work that one out. He went on to say:
“The rejection of the Constitution was a mistake which will have to be corrected ... It was a mistake to use the referendum process, but when you make a mistake you can correct it”.
In other words, do not use the referendum process and do not ask people what they think—just tell them what is good for them.
Clown number three was the Italian Foreign Minister at the time, Giuliano Amato, whose considered opinion was that the no votes were,
“a request for more Europe not less”.
In the words of one of the most respected correspondents, or columnists, “You couldn’t make it up, could you?”.
Lord Liddle
For the sake of accuracy about what happened, is the noble Lord not aware of the fact that in France a major part of the no vote on the constitutional treaty was because of the argument that that treaty was not sufficiently social? People like Laurent Fabius made it part of their campaign that, “It’s not that we’re against Europe, it’s that this isn’t for a sufficiently social Europe”. In that sense, the argument was right; this was a vote not against Europe but against a particular view of Europe.
Lord Willoughby de Broke
My Lords, I am very familiar with that argument, which was wheeled out after the constitutional referendum by numerous pro-Europe commentators—they said that it was about the colour of Monsieur Chirac’s socks or something; it was not about the constitution at all—but I know, because I was in France at the time of the referendum, that people were very engaged in the debate. So whatever the noble Lord on the Front Bench may say, there was a rejection by the French people by a 55 per cent majority of the constitutional treaty. I do not think that his arguments hold water.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon
I remind the noble Lord that every French voter received a copy of the Lisbon treaty, so they were perfectly well aware of what they were doing—unless they are stupid, which of course they are not.
Lord Willoughby de Broke
That is right. It is history now, but I believe that they were voting on the constitution and they voted against it. The noble Lord, Lord Dykes, is not in his place so perhaps it is not worth saying this, but these are not the ravings of a swivel-eyed Europhobe or the poisonous meanderings of the Murdochite press. These are simple facts—it is what people said after the votes on the constitution and on the previous treaty, as I mentioned.
On the dubious basis that a no vote was a request for more Europe, not less, after a period of reflection the constitution was wheeled out again, this time badly disguised as the Lisbon treaty. Monsieur Giscard d’Estaing himself had the decency to admit that the treaty was,
“purely a legal rewriting—incidentally unreadable—of the draft Constitutional Treaty”.
The reason, he admitted, was above all to avoid having referendums.
Yet again, that ungrateful bunch the Irish threw a shillelagh in the works by voting against the Lisbon treaty. What an unnecessary obstacle these referendums are to the furtherance of the great project. For their pains, the Irish were roundly vilified. A leading German politician said that a no vote was real cheek, while a British Labour MP said that the Irish had voted no because they had become entirely too arrogant. True to form, Ireland was shamelessly vilified by the Eurocracy and told to hold another referendum, which duly gave the so-called “right answer”. Not that this has done the Irish any good, of course; their reward has been to be sacrificed on the altar of the solidarity of the euro, to be loaded with debt that they will probably never be able to pay back and to be told by the French that they must raise their corporation tax. So much for EU solidarity.
Noble Lords can see that the European elite have form when it comes to reversing the results of referendums that do not suit them. The amendment will reassure the people of this country at least that when they vote no in a referendum on any of the items in Section 6 against a transfer of further powers to the EU, their vote will not be nullified by an immediate demand for another referendum and to think again. The Bill has a referendum lock in it.
Baroness Williams of Crosby
The noble Lord has made a very good case for the weakness of referenda. However, I ask him to consider a little further back in history. He may recall that in 1975 there was a referendum in this country, which was carried by a substantial majority, on whether we should stay in the European Economic Community, as it then was. Less than five years later the Labour Party, then in opposition, voted at its conference to leave the European Community. This is not quite as clearly somebody else’s problem as the noble Lord suggests.
Lord Willoughby de Broke
I do not think I suggested that it was somebody else’s problem. This deals particularly with this country and the Bill in front of us. I simply want to make sure, as far as possible, that we do not have the situation that has arisen so lamentably and so frequently in the European Union, whereby the results of referenda are immediately reversed because the EU elect do not like the result. The Bill contains the referendum lock. This amendment will add unpickability to that lock. I hope the Government will consider it in that spirit. I beg to move.
Lord Waddington
My Lords, few things have done more harm to the reputation of the European Union than the telling of countries that have voted against new treaties or treaty changes that they should carry on voting until they come up with what the other members or the Commission consider the right answer. Behaviour of that sort is a denial of the right to say, “Change cannot take place unless we all agree and, as we don’t all agree, you and I must put up with the status quo”. That is what signing a treaty is all about. I submit that what happened over Denmark in the early 1990s, after the Danish people voted no to Maastricht in June 1992, was an abuse of power. It was also a terrible lost opportunity, which was responsible for much of the trouble and strife that hit the Major Government.
My noble friend Lord Spicer wrote a very perceptive article on this in Total Politics in March of this year. I hope Governments have learnt from what then happened. The Conservative Government were not happy about many aspects of Maastricht, particularly the removal from sovereign states of the power to manage their own economies. While we had opted out of the euro, there was a nagging fear that the European Court might even find that our opt-out was illegal.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I will refer back to the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act.
Lord Willoughby de Broke
I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken, particularly to those noble Lords who supported this amendment, and even for the qualified support of the noble Lord, Lord Flight. I say to him that this is entirely to do with this Bill and is not to do with a Bill on an “in or out” referendum, when it may well be appropriate to shorten the term between referendums. However, that is a matter for another day and is certainly not part of this debate, which has ranged a little more widely than I wished. I pick up what the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, said. I certainly did not insult anybody. I was simply quoting what some of the European elite said about their own electorates. They were the people who were insulting them, not me. For the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment, but I will probably bring it back on Report.
Lord Clinton-Davis
It is a speech. Many years ago, I shared the view of many members of the Labour Party when I expressed the opinion that our membership of the EU was wrong. My noble friend Lord Radice took a different view. He was right and I was wrong. Having been a commissioner of the EU for some time, and having been in charge of transport, the environment and the nuclear industry, I formed the view that on all those issues, the voice of Europe should be positive and heard. I never came to the conclusion that we should somehow shilly-shally on those issues.
My noble friend Lord Liddle was in Europe as well. I think that he would share my view that it is imperative that members of the Commission should be heard. At the moment, their views are drowned out by people who take a contrary view, such as the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, who is a great friend of mine despite our differences of opinion on this issue. When the then President of the Commission, Jacques Delors, spoke to the TUC in Bournemouth, it was a remarkable event. I wish that more members of the Labour Party and of this House had been present. It was remarkable because many people in the TUC did not share that view. But he was rather positive about the virtues of the European Union and he convinced most of those present that that was right.
Unfortunately, in recent times Ministers from both parties have been less than forthcoming with their views on the European Union. I wish that that was not the case. Therefore I support the views expressed by my noble friend Lord Radice on this point. It is incumbent on members of this Administration to speak out about the virtues of the European Union. It is quite impossible for us to withdraw from the EU or play a lesser part in it, although some people here would like us to do so. It is absolutely vital that the case for the European Union should be advanced by Ministers at all times, and that is singularly lacking at the present moment.
Lord Willoughby de Broke
I am sorry, was that an intervention or not? The idea that Government Ministers should be under a legal requirement to propagandise for the European Union really is too odd for words. It is absurd. On the one hand we have the noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis, saying rather sadly that no one speaks up for the EU so nobody knows how wonderful it is, while only a few moments earlier the noble Lord, Lord Radice, observed how often the noble Lord, Lord Sassoon, has said how wonderful our membership is. The noble Lord, Lord Howell, has frequently reminded us of the manifold benefits of paying £15 billion a year for the EU and running a £20 billion trade deficit. He is quite right to do so.
To make Ministers legally responsible for what is frankly propaganda is absurd. Surely the arguments have been made. People have now grown up and there are all sorts of means of communication. We have the internet, the hated Murdoch press which, of course, is balanced by the BBC and other spokesmen for the EU. I do not see how the Government have any role to play in this whatever. I hope that the Committee rejects the amendment without further debate.
Lord Lea of Crondall
My Lords, perhaps I may add just one dimension to the idea that referendums are neutral so far as the press and broadcasting are concerned. The BBC is not the other side of Murdoch. If you look at your BlackBerry each morning, you can see that what the papers and all the BBC programmes do is report what the Daily Mail says, followed by what the Daily Express says, followed by what the Times says and followed by what the Sun says; and so it goes on.
My noble friend Lord Radice is absolutely right to say that in the populist environment of the red tops, along with a lot of money from the foreign exchange markets and people with a particular interest in the City of London, it is difficult to see how a referendum could be conducted on a level playing field unless we do something. I am reminded of what the then Labour Government did in about 1967, which by common consent was quite useful. We had a counterinflation campaign. There was indeed government information, which could be called propaganda, which explained the economic necessity for doing what the country needed through social partners—a term much derided by people who did not know trading from an elephant. We were able to win the support of the majority of the people of Burton-on-Trent precisely because factual information was put forward.
We can go back to the referendum in 1975, but as a shot across the bows of those people who think that all the referendums will be a doddle because we have the Murdoch press going wild all the time, it is in fact because the Government are running scared of their own Back-Benchers. That is what it is all about.
European Union Bill
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Lord Willoughby de Broke
My Lords, I support my noble friend’s amendment. Perhaps I may disagree rather gently with the noble Baroness, Lady Nicholson, who said that a transfer of money is not a transfer of power or competence. The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, said something similar, I think, at Second Reading—I have rather lost track of whether it was Second Reading or the first, second, third, fourth or fifth day of Committee. I disagree. The noble Lord has taken net figures. I prefer to deal with gross figures—our gross contribution is something like £15 billion. After all, if you are a taxpayer, you do not say, “I am only paying 10 per cent tax” if you are paying 50 per cent, 40 per cent or 20 per cent tax just because you are getting roads or police services; you are paying the headline tax.
We pay a lot of money to the European Union. We get some of it back in the rebate, which was halved by Tony Blair, and we get some of it back as contributions to the CAP and the cohesion funds. All those funds come back with an EU label on them. I give an example as a farmer. I am in the Highland stewardship scheme and I continually get letters from Defra saying that it is going to change the timing of the payments because it conflicts with EU rules or that I cannot plant this or that because the Commission has told us that we cannot. That demonstrates to me very clearly that a transfer of money to Europe gives that amount of money’s worth of power to Europe to tell us what we should do with it. It sends it back to us with an EU label on it telling us how we may spend that money. That seems to me an incontrovertible demonstration that a transfer of money is a transfer of power.
People deserve a referendum on whether all this money should continue to be given away. I am not sure why we have set the limit at £10 billion. It sounds very high to me; I would put it much lower than that. The British people should surely be given a say in this vital matter of supply, because, after all, it is their money that is being supplied. Therefore, I strongly support my noble friend’s amendment.
Lord Risby
My Lords, I apologise for arriving in your Lordships’ Chamber a few minutes late; I was unavoidably detained. I think that the Committee should be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, who has underscored something which causes huge concern to the people of this country; that is, the spending patterns within the European Union and the lack of accountability. In that sense, he is entirely correct.
The Bill sets out that a referendum would be necessary if there was a proposal for the veto which covers the multiannual budget—the seven-year budget—to be removed. That financial perspective is crucially important given all the various spending envelopes contained in it. Of course, the previous Government gave up the veto on the annual budget.
It is right that people have been concerned about the proposal recently for a 4.9 per cent increase by the Commission, which is absurd. It has got nothing to do with irrational newspaper headlines; it is a fact that there is austerity in all parts of the European Union and this has to be reflected in what is proposed by the European Commission. It has led the Prime Minister of our country to make this point clearly and I hope that, in due course, as it is further examined by the Commission and the European Parliament, it will be dealt with.
We can all be grateful for underscoring the importance of the necessity for frugality. However, the Bill deals with transfers of power and competence, a point made by my noble friend Lady Nicholson. Funding of the EU is not part of the Bill and therefore the amendment is irrelevant.
On the point about fixing the sum of £10 billion, the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, asked what the benefits were from membership of the European Union. Over the years, the Commission has been able to drive reform in many member countries which, for domestic reasons, found it very difficult to improve competition and undertake privatisation of their nationalised industries, and it has done so very effectively. It has been useful for national Governments to have that force available to enable them to do so and the Commission has driven forward the single market in that respect effectively—not perfectly but effectively. For us, as a trading nation, that has been a significant contribution to our own prosperity.
For many reasons the European Commission needs a budget—frugal and sensible, but a budget it certainly needs to carry out its functions.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I start with an apology to the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, and other noble Lords that we have started much later than we had hoped today. There were two Statements, one of which was a good deal longer than intended and that pushed us back. I assure noble Lords that on Monday this will be the first and only business for that day. If we require more time, I remind the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, that the House will meet at 10 o’clock on Wednesday and that will allow us a good deal of time during the morning. The purpose of a Committee stage on a Bill is to discuss the amendments—
Lord Willoughby de Broke
Briefly, and on a point of order: will there be an adjournment for those Members who have been lucky enough to secure places to listen to President Obama’s address in Westminster Hall?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
If needed and if we are still discussing the Bill, there will of course be an adjournment. Some of us hope that we might possibly—if we manage to stick to the subject of the amendments—have finished the Committee stage by then. I want to address the amendments, I do not wish to divert into fish and—
European Union Bill
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Lord Lamont of Lerwick
My Lords, I do not want to follow my noble friend Lord Dykes too far as I am not sure that his remarks were strictly in order. We have tended to have rather a lot of general remarks. I am sure that the Daily Express is highly flattered by the amount of time that has been devoted to it in these debates. Listening to my noble friend Lord Dykes, I remembered Enoch Powell’s remark that politicians who complain about the newspapers are rather like fishermen complaining about the weather. It is not the Daily Express that has caused the rise of the True Finns party. It is not the Daily Express that has caused the Germans to become more sceptical about the euro. It is not the Daily Express that has caused a very considerable dramatic change in opinion in Holland about the European Union generally. If my noble friend wishes to understand why the Daily Express manages to get people to sign these petitions, he ought to read his own speech because it is exactly remarks such as his, abusing the feelings of ordinary people, which increase the number of people supporting these petitions. To seek to deny that there is concern among ordinary people about overcentralisation in the European Union is to neglect public opinion in a rather cavalier way, if I may dare say so.
I want to ask about two points that the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, made in his extremely interesting speech. The first concerns the point about Clause 6(5)(j). If what the noble Lord said was right, this was not about powers but about a policy. He instanced a policy decision and the hypothesis whereby, under enhanced co-operation, the Germans, while not participating in it, might wish to make a financial contribution to it. That is rather an important point because one of the fears one would have in Britain, as a country unlikely to participate in some of the enhanced co-operation projects, is that we might end up paying the bill. That would be one of our natural instinctive reactions. It would be extraordinary if, in fact, Germany wanted to pay part of the bill and that was not allowed without a referendum in this country. I cannot believe that the situation is quite like that, but I very much hope that my noble friend can clarify that point.
Secondly, I wanted my noble friend to comment on the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, about whether one would have to have a referendum on the exchange rate as well as the decision to join the euro. Normally, when I was a Minister, distinguished civil servants such as the noble Lord and his noble friend Lord Hannay, and people of their ability, talent and knowledge, had ingenious ways of solving problems and they could always refer to some obscure part of the treaty to enable us to decide what to do. On this occasion, I regret to say that the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, seemed to be using his ingenuity to make things more difficult, rather than to consider this matter more seriously, which is what he normally does.
I do not believe that it would be possible to put the rate and the decision in principle to join the euro together. I certainly do not believe that the referendum would be about the rate. No one would be remotely interested in that. The referendum would be about whether or not we joined the euro. I do not see, as the noble Lord seems to do, some tremendous market problem because the rate announced on one day would be implemented on another. There was no such problem when the rates for all the individual currencies that formed the euro were announced well in advance—a year or more in advance—of the date on which the currency was set up. It was announced that there would be a date on which the currencies would be irrevocably linked together in a grid. Naturally, the market adjusted to the decision that had been made, rather than the other way round. I do not see the problem that the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, outlined, but I should be grateful if the Minister could reassure me that my understanding and conclusions on that matter are correct.
More generally, I obviously could not support the amendment because in essence, under a disguise, it tries to get rid of the lock imposed by the Bill. While we hear a lot of criticism of the vetoes that will be subject to the referendum provisions, we never hear anything about the 50 vetoes that are left intact, in the sense that they can be abolished without a referendum. There are 50 areas under the Bill where unanimity is still required, and a referendum will not be required if they are removed by whatever procedure. A degree of judgment and selectivity has thereby been exercised by the Government.
We tend to forget in these debates that after Maastricht, Lisbon and Nice unanimity remains on certain articles. They remain there for a very good reason. Many countries, not just Britain, have wanted unanimity to remain and they do not want easily to surrender it, which is one reason why the idea that you will get a multiplicity of referenda on what the Opposition consider to be minor subjects will not actually happen.
Lord Willoughby de Broke
My Lords, I should like briefly to return to what the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, said when he saw fit to expatiate on the Daily Express’s anti-euro campaign. At an earlier stage in our debates, he said that he had examples of 125 anti-euro headlines in the hated, Murdoch-ite, Barclay-ite and Desmond-ite press that some eminent think tank had proved to be wrong in every respect. He promised to let us have those figures and the factual debunking of those 125 stories. I wrote to the noble Lord about 10 days ago and asked for those figures, and still I have not received them. Can he provide them to the House or just to UKIP Members?
European Union Bill
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Lord Hannay of Chiswick
I am afraid to say that I believe that the noble Lord is wrong on this. He has used a particular example of which he has very great experience. It is extremely interesting for the House to hear that example, but it is not very typical. It does not deal at all with the issue, for example, of whether it might be in the interests of the European Union in the not distant future to give a negotiating mandate to a body—whether it is the Commission or the presidency or whatever it is—to negotiate for energy supplies from outside the European Union, particularly gas, and to negotiate as a single unit. That would require new powers. It is as simple as that, and is, I am afraid to say, nothing whatever to do with building a pipeline between Ireland and Northern Ireland, interesting and important though that was.
I think there is serious matter in the energy field, the climate change field and the pollution field to reflect on here and a need for greater flexibility. I plead with the Government that we do not have the preprandial/postprandial schizophrenia that we have had in recent Committee stages in which in one session we are told that we need not worry about this enormous number of referendums because none of them will ever take place and we will stop anything happening in Brussels that will cause them to take place and then immediately afterwards we are told that we need not worry because the European Union does not work that way, and there will be a big package and we will all be able to find some nice sugar-plums in it for ourselves. I thought that was where we came in and decided that that was nothing that we wished to encourage in future. I think the Government need to make up their mind whether they are trying to lock the door and throw the key away, which is what this Bill does, and the consequences of that are pretty damaging for this country, or whether they are trying to propel the European Union towards another big institutional package, which I do not believe to be in the interests of this country. I would like to hear a response on Amendments 23C, 23D and 23E.
Lord Willoughby de Broke
My Lords, on the issue of climate change, the subject of the amendment that we are supposed to be talking about, several hours ago the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, said that Amendment 21 was the most useless, superfluous amendment that he had come across during the hours of Committee stage. I believe that Amendment 23C actually takes the palm as the most useless and redundant amendment we have had. The idea that the European Union is effective in climate change is frankly laughable. Let me remind your Lordships that our policy on emissions is guided entirely by the EU and we have to have 20 per cent of our energy from renewables by 2020. Of course, there is not the remotest chance of achieving that, and in the past couple of years, that aspiration—that dream—has begun to collide with reality.
Just to give your Lordships a little information on that, I shall repeat what was said in two sets of figures from two separate reports over the degree of delusion that surrounds the wish of our Government in Brussels and their subsidiary here in Westminster that the centrepiece of our energy policy should be to build ever more windmills. The report that drew most attention was from a Scottish environmental charity that focused on the fact that last year, despite our building ever more wind farms, the lack of wind meant that they operated on average at only 21 per cent of capacity, and that was during the period of highest demand. Several times when demand was at its highest the contribution of wind to our electricity supply was virtually zero.
I do not know why, but less attention was given to an interesting report put out by our Department of Energy and Climate Change showing that the 3,168 turbines that we have built at a cost of billions of pounds contributed on average less than the output of one large coal-fired power station. From the DECC figure, it is possible to work out that for this derisory contribution we paid through our electricity bills a subsidy of nearly £1.2 billion on top of the price of electricity itself. In return for getting 3 per cent, roughly, of our energy, nearly 7 per cent of our bills are paid in subsidies for these completely useless wind farms, and that will go up as years go on because we have committed to this 20 per cent from renewables by 2020. That report dealt with last year.
Lord Deben
Might the noble Lord not suggest that there could be a better question: do the people of Britain want to have their climate changed and their health impaired by the continuation of extremely dirty power stations, which happily we are going to close down?
Lord Willoughby de Broke
The noble Lord says, “happily we are going to close down”. I hope that he has got a generator in his house so that he can watch his television and read his books because with wind power that simply will not happen. Nuclear of course is a different matter, but let us not get into that debate right now.
Lord Hannay of Chiswick
I merely want to congratulate the noble Lord on having raised the issue of gas storage, which is a subject close to my heart. I ask him to recognise that the best way to improve the level of gas storage in Europe would be to impose a minimum gas storage obligation through the European Union.
Lord Willoughby de Broke
Surely it could be up to the nation member states to impose their own minimum gas storage obligation. Why do we have to do it through the European Union? It is perfectly ridiculous. This unhealthy EU obsession, which is what it is—I am very sorry that the previous Government and this Government seem to have signed up to it—of using wind power to keep our lights on is one of the most damaging fantasies of our time. I oppose the amendment and I hope that it will be dealt with accordingly.
Lord Lamont of Lerwick
My Lords, I want to make one simple and brief point, but before I do that perhaps I may respond partly to what the noble Lord, Lord Taverne, said because I was a little puzzled by it. He is a former Treasury Minister and chairman of a think tank in the City. He was referring to the two aspects of the banking system in crisis being capital and liquidity, with which I totally agree. But he was, I think, arguing that perhaps we need more European attention to capital. That was quite a surprising thing to suggest because, as he will remember, not long before the Irish banking crisis struck and the Irish banks were revealed as hopelessly undercapitalised, we had stress tests carried out on the European banks—a separate exercise in the European Union and in Britain. The European Union banking tests revealed that no bank had a problem with capital other than one bank in Germany. That was shortly before the crisis was fully revealed in all its horror in Ireland.
I agree with the noble Lord that there is a separate aspect of liquidity which the European Central Bank has, in a skilful and constructive way, provided to the European banking system. Equally, the Bank of England has also exercised its national function well. He did not make the case for further European competence or the transfer of power or competence from this country to Europe by merit of that alone.
The noble Lord went on to make the familiar point about the eurozone and whether we were marginalised by not being in it. It is of course true that eurozone Ministers may make certain decisions affecting themselves in which we do not participate. We do not participate in meetings of the Federal Reserve Bank, although its decisions affect us. However, anything that eurozone Ministers decide to do that is governed by the rules of the single market or competition law continues to be governed by the rules of the single market and competition policy. He was careful to say that issues would arise if we were proposing to join the euro but the implication of his argument was that in order to gain influence we should join the euro, which I am sure he does not really subscribe to. Very few people will own up to arguing that we should join the euro today.
European Union Bill
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Baroness Williams of Crosby
I am grateful for that, which is exactly my view. Perhaps I might refer to what the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, said. I also associate those concepts with some of the later amendments. I will not keep the House for long. The noble Lord’s good argument was made strongly on the basis of the need in some cases for urgent decisions to be made. He pointed out that the formal procedures are long-winded and slow and that therefore in some cases it would be irrelevant to the issue that had come up because it would take so long to deal with the procedures.
I now refer to a second group of amendments, which is what I might call the Canute group. What is the Canute group? Those of us who remember the early history of Britain will remember that the king at the time ordered the tide to turn back. In other words, he insisted on not seeing the world as it is. The amendments in this group are about insisting—
Baroness Williams of Crosby
Perhaps I may finish my sentence before I give way. The amendments in this group insist, to some extent, that the urgent and very troubling issues that confront us now can somehow be put off and not dealt with at the present time.
Lord Willoughby de Broke
All I want to say is that King Canute did not order the sea to go back. He was demonstrating to his courtiers that he did not have the power to turn the sea back, so the analogy that the noble Baroness was making is incorrect.
Baroness Williams of Crosby
I defer to the noble Lord’s deep knowledge of history, but he will accept that metaphors and similes are sometimes rather broader than a deep knowledge of history would insist on them being. I insist on keeping my metaphor going for a few more minutes. The point that I want to make strongly is that issues are coming up that clearly will require a degree of competence on the part of the European Union that is not embraced in the present treaties. Unless we exclude some of these issues from the elaborate procedure of the referendum lock, we will find ourselves hobbled in trying to deal with them.
I shall give two illustrations. I particularly urge my noble friends in the Conservative Party to consider one of them very carefully. In the past couple of months we have seen some of the consequences of the Arab spring. One of those consequences has been the placing of substantial sums of money within the structures of the European Union because there is very little control over how the European Union at present deals with inflows of money from other quarters. Members of the European Parliament have shown a great deal of sense about this and have urged the European Union to take additional action, which, as I understand the Bill, will probably require the referendum lock procedure to be met.
One of the most vociferous and articulate Members of the European Parliament on this issue of how one deals with what one might believe to be illegitimate funds—funds that have been stolen from a nation by its leader or funds that have been deliberately laundered through Europe—was the spokesman of legal affairs in the European Parliament. Mr Karim is a Conservative Member of the European Parliament, and I will quote what he said because it is extremely relevant to this debate. He said:
“I would … invite Baroness Ashton, as a key architect of the EU’s new plan for north Africa, to implement strong anti-money laundering provisions as an important part of the future EU strategy in the region. More broadly, the … Commission must act to urgently address the deficiencies in the current arrangements regarding funds originating overseas. The EU cannot continue to be a savings account in which leaders of developing countries deposit their ill-gotten funds”.
Mr Karim went on to call for urgent action by the European Union, which under this Bill will of course be caught by the referendum lock.
I think that my second example will stir a number of Members of this Committee as it certainly stirs me: namely, the relative unwillingness of the United Kingdom to address the issue of human trafficking. According to the International Labour Organisation, human trafficking has now become the third largest common illicit business in the world. It is valued by the ILO at approximately €32 billion in the past year. It is third after the drug trade and the arms trade. It has burgeoned and mushroomed in the past few years.
The United Kingdom was unwilling to sign and agree to an EU directive on the trafficking of children. It refused to do so on the grounds that the United Kingdom had its own measures and did not require a European Union directive on the issue. As many will know, the argument went on month after month, with only Denmark and the United Kingdom refusing to agree to the proposed directive. In this country, the official figures are said by the Home Office, the Metropolitan Police and the UK Border Agency to be far higher than the official figures that are given. Recently, the Home Office said that the official figure for child and human trafficking was around 250 cases a year. One area of the borough of Westminster alone has found something like 1,120 children who are being trafficked. It has announced that it is having to strengthen its own steps strongly to try to deal with the issues.
I will not bore the House with telling it—
EU: Hungarian Presidency
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Lord Howell of Guildford
Yes, it is certainly one of our priorities and one of the priorities of the European Union. We all share a concern about the illegal settlements and the blockage that they are placing on the prospective progress between Israel and the Palestinians. I totally agree with the sentiments behind the noble Lord’s questions. These are matters that will have a high priority with us.
Lord Willoughby de Broke
My Lords, will the Minister, on behalf of the Government, inform the Hungarian presidency that they will now stop trying to push water uphill and will no longer bail out failing European economies with British taxpayers’ money?
Lord Howell of Guildford
As for bailout provisions, after 2013 we will be under no obligation to do that sort of thing unless we voluntarily wish to do so or it makes sense from our national interest to do so. Before 2013, it is, of course, a fact that we are bound by decisions of the previous Government and are bound to be involved to some extent.