European Union Bill

Baroness Falkner of Margravine Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd May 2011 Lords Chamber

The problem with the Bill and this particular bit of it—and why these amendments seek to change it—is that we are denying the European Union the ability to evolve. We are saying that these things can be decided only by some massive change and that we must have a vote of the British people on subjects as limited as those that we are talking about. We should be doing the opposite. We ought to be encouraging this great European Union—the most important thing that has happened in peacetime to anywhere in the world for 100 years. This great European Union must develop by evolution, not by having this confrontational system whereby, once you feel it has gone too far, you must have a referendum, even if it is on a totally unsuitable subject.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine]

I wanted to make a point about his example and did not want him to lose his train of thought. If the superhighway had to go through France’s territory—leaving aside the parody of the need for a referendum there, because it is a policy question, not necessarily a competence question—and the French did not wish to sign up to that because they felt that one of their strategic industries, nuclear power, would be at a loss, would it be right, in the spirit of European Union co-operation, to use qualified majority voting or some other passerelle or clause to force the French to allow their territorial sovereignty to be infringed by others? That would seem to be curiously anti-European and against the spirit of European co-operation.

[Lord Deben]

That would mean that we had no common trade policy. Every country could say that this decision was contrary to their national interest. The French have managed to make the sale of Orangina contrary to their national interest. What the noble Baroness suggests would destroy any possibility of the scheme. It would not touch their sovereignty. They would not have to use the electricity. All that they would have to do was not prevent someone else using the electricity. It is otherwise a curious definition of national sovereignty.

Secondly, if we do not do that, my national sovereignty is being infringed, because my climate is being changed. Unless we find ways of using non-fossil fuels, my climate will be changed. This is a question on which we have to accept that our national sovereignties are all imperilled—but I do not want to go further down that road, or someone will suggest that I am not keeping to the amendments.

There is a whole series of issues here where the Government are making it more difficult to stand up for Britain's interests within the European Union by setting this entirely unnecessary and manufactured way to enable them to say to the rest of the world, “We are not going to be pushed around”. I think that the Government are perfectly capable of not being pushed around without the Bill. I think that my noble friend is quite wrong to apply Canute to a bit of the Bill. The whole Bill is a Canute Bill. It suggests that you can in some way stop the necessity of the nations of Europe working together by setting in train a system which makes Britain uniquely unable to play its part in the European Union. It is all right saying that other people have all sorts of methods, and the rest of it, but they have been much more careful in writing their legislation, and they do not have a situation where even the simplified system is called into question, which is the way that this legislation operates.

I want to say just two more things. The first is that if ever there were a policy that needs change, it is the common fisheries policy. It is hugely important, and it is based on a European competence, but there are some things on which the European Union does not have competence. For example, it does not have competence to enter member states’ ports with European inspectors, but there is no way to have a sensible common fisheries policy without that. Who has been against that? We do not want people entering our ports. I cannot understand why, because we try to keep the law, but evidently we will not allow that. If we were to do that, we might do something about the very policy which is, for most of us, the least satisfactory of European policies. That is why, given the environment, it will be very important. Evidently, we are not going to do that unless we have a referendum asking people whether they are prepared for French inspectors to come into English ports. Of course, they will say no to that, because the question does not say what I want it to say: are we prepared for British inspectors to go into French ports? They would say yes to that. It depends what the question is. That again comes back to the danger of having referendums.

My last point is that the trouble with this bit of the Bill, unless it is amended as we suggest, is that, as the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, rightly said, it gives the opportunity for anybody who does not like the European Union, who has an obsessive belief that somehow it is the epitome of evil instead of being our most exciting and remarkable peacetime achievement, to find any change, any aspect that is altered, any suspicion or scintilla of alteration proof positive that there should have been a referendum. Therefore, instead of doing what the Government think will happen under the Bill, instead of ensuring that people feel happier about the European Union, it will give endless opportunities for the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, and others to suspect that there is something much deeper, much worse, much more wicked. Frankly, it is like the Jehovah's Witnesses. It is a perversion of the realities and the truths. Once you have caught it, you cannot see the realities and the truth except through that prism. The Bill helps that. The bit which does not allow the European Union to take proper steps to strengthen its effectiveness in mitigating the effects of climate change and pollution is particularly damaging, and it is especially damaging for the nation that leads in these matters—Britain. I want Britain to lead in these things and not to say to the rest of Europe, “Frightfully sorry, old boy, we can’t manage this because it means a referendum and we’re within two years of an election”.