Queen’s Speech

Baroness Ludford Excerpts

Monday 23rd May 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, I, too, welcome and congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Jowell, and say au revoir—but, I suspect, not adieu—to the noble Baroness, Lady Perry.

Amid all the sound and fury of this referendum campaign, what has emerged is the consistency and continuity of the arguments for and against UK membership of the EEC, the European Community or the European Union going back 70 years. Everyone has quoted Winston Churchill, and so will I later, but let me for now give you Harold Macmillan, from a Conservative pamphlet in 1962:

“We in Britain are Europeans. That has always been true, but it has now become a reality which we cannot ignore … Are we now to isolate ourselves from Europe, at a time when our own strength is no longer self-sufficient and when the leading European countries are joining together to build a future of peace and progress, instead of wasting themselves in war?”.

The answer—no, we should not isolate ourselves—is just as relevant today.

I recall that Liberal Democrats and our predecessor parties have unitedly, consistently and persistently been pro-European. We are the only force in British politics that has not vacillated, oscillated and self-destructed over the question of whether our country should participate in a united Europe. We believe that being in the EU is both the patriotic choice and the rational choice. Liberal Democrats, in the 2010-15 coalition, kept the European show on the road, while blue-on-blue discord on Europe developed into the distasteful full-scale internal party war that we see today. In the past, the same was true of Labour and its bitter red-on-red feud.

My hope is that after 23 June, when, as I hope, this country settles its future firmly in the EU—or, in the words of the noble Lord, Lord Soley, makes up its mind—we can focus all our efforts on creating the best possible European Union, and here I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Howell. This would be for the sake of ourselves, the whole of Europe and our international partners, setting aside the waste of energy on the distraction of internal party fights.

There are so many vital and urgent challenges in the world today, as my noble friend Lady Williams pointed out in a speech this morning, from climate change to conflict to pollution to nuclear proliferation, not to mention tax evasion and corruption on a grand scale. The noble Lord, Lord Hannay, gave an impressively long list of priorities for EU action, and the noble Lord, Lord Luce, emphasised all the major challenges that we need to address. Yet much of the navel-gazing media focus in this campaign is about whether George Osborne or Boris Johnson might be our future Prime Minister. I have heard about as much from IDS and Jacob Rees-Mogg as I can bear in a lifetime. I exempt the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, who makes me laugh. I still have an appetite to follow the splendidly sensible and robust tweets of Sir Nicholas Soames MP, who is much more qualified than most to talk about what Churchill thought.

It is time to stop treating Europe as a party political football, accept the legitimacy of our EU membership and start concentrating all our efforts on getting the best out of it. I echo some remarks by the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, in that respect. Europe should be mainstreamed in our politics, not treated as some kind of alien body. It was almost amusing to hear some speakers in this debate attack the pro-European elites, echoing the conspiracy thesis of the Brexiteers. It is a bit ironic to hear Members of this House knock the elites.

Far from “mainstreaming” implying an acceptance of everything that comes out of Brussel as a good idea, it means the contrary. Just as you can have lively disagreement in a marriage, even a jolly good row, without risking a divorce, so there is plenty of scope for policy divergences without bringing our actual membership into question. The contribution made by our own EU Select Committee, under the chairmanship of the estimable noble Lord, Lord Boswell, to securing good policy in the EU is admired across the continent. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Garel-Jones, on the need to rigorously apply subsidiarity and to bring a sensible critique to EU matters.

It is time that we properly informed and educated our citizens so that they understand the basic mechanics of the EU, which are not in fact that complicated, and are not hoodwinked by, let us call them, untruths coming out of the Brexit camp, such as “We have no control over our borders”—try telling that to passengers arriving at Heathrow Airport—or the confusion between the single market and external trade agreements. We must not go back to the days when even the quality press mixed up the non-EU Council of Europe with the EU’s European Council of 28 Heads of Government, and BBC political correspondents knew absolutely nothing about the relationship between the European Commission, the Council of Ministers and MEPs. A little more knowledge would prevent the repetition of the charge that the Court of Auditors does not sign off EU accounts. In fact, it has done so every year for the past decade.

A refreshing experience of the past few months has been how much of an input we have heard from people who are not politicians. Not only businesspeople but scientists, academics, artists, actors, environmentalists, lawyers, law enforcement specialists and many others have spoken up about why they want to remain. That contribution must not be lost. A silver lining has been that the press and broadcasters have had to talk about Europe.

What has also come out of this campaign and this debate is the enormously valuable contribution that this country already makes to European and international affairs and the potential for an even greater one. We are the network country par excellence. My Churchill quote of the evening is from a letter that he wrote in 1961:

“I think that the Government are right to apply to join the European Economic Community … We might well play a great part in these developments to the profit of not only ourselves, but of our European friends also”.

The noble Baroness, Lady Jowell, referred to that theme of what we can contribute in stability and reform to the EU. The noble Lord, Lord Low, talked of the importance of our philosophical orientation, not bean-counting. Former Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski had some double-edged words of praise for the UK a few years ago. He expressed frustration at us, but he first stressed the assets that we have put into the European pool:

“Britain … You have given the Union its common language. The Single Market was largely your brilliant idea. A British commissioner runs our diplomacy”—

this was in 2011—

“You could lead Europe on defence. You are an indispensable link across the Atlantic”.

Apart from hiring the guy as our brand ambassador, we should realise what our friends realise and have been saying for months: we need you, we want you, you have so much to give. Stop messing around. As the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, said, being in the EU strengthens our voice in the US, the UN and the Commonwealth.

My last quote is from Roy Jenkins in 1975. He referred to fear as the most vulnerable British emotion on which hostility to the EEC can play. How prescient. We have seen that with the Brexiteers whipping up fear against Turks, EU migrants, President Obama and now Canadians in the person of the Governor of the Bank of England—in fact, against foreigners in general in a really xenophobic fashion. In a month’s time, will it all be over? No, it will only just be beginning—the chance for this country to deploy all its assets, advantages and network strengths towards assuming the leadership role in the EU that is ours to take, without one hand constantly tied behind our back.