European Union Bill

Baroness Williams of Crosby Excerpts

Tuesday 17th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Crosby]

My Lords, I support what my noble friend has said, and I promise to keep entirely within order. My speech will be directed to why Clause 6 should not stand part of the Bill.

As my noble friend said, we have had a string of amendments trying to limit the scope of Clause 6. I shall not go through them all. We all know them and they have been tabled by various Members of the Committee. We now have another group of such amendments relating to Schedule 1. Again, they cover a very wide range of issues which at least some Members of the Committee feel should not be subject to the referendum lock procedure. I want to draw the Committee’s attention for a moment or two to one particular aspect of this, as it goes far to show how difficult the Bill will be to carry out in practice.

Earlier today, we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Marland, about a carbon emissions programme. At the very beginning of his Statement, he said—I wrote it down—that we would need to keep in line with the targets of the European Union. Why, some Eurosceptic might ask? I am not currently addressing the noble Lords, Lord Pearson of Rannoch or Lord Stoddart of Swindon, because I do not have the eloquence of a Pericles and, even if I had, I do not suppose that I would persuade them. However, the reasons why we want to stay aligned with the European Union environment targets are quite straightforward: if we do not, others will compete with us and override us by cheating on those targets. Therefore, we have a profound national interest in ensuring that the targets are maintained by all our European Union partners. The UK is trying—and I think that most of us feel very pleased that she is—to be the greenest state in Europe. If there were no such EU understanding, the UK, instead of carrying others with her, would simply be competed into the ground by other countries which decided that they would not be bound by such targets, and, not being bound by them, they would be more competitive in energy-intensive industries. This is the most central national interest. If we are to address the single most troubling problem that confronts us—that of climate change and greenhouse gases—we desperately need to have agreed targets that the whole EU will buy into.

However, what do we find when we look at the list of Schedule 1 proposals? We find the amazing proposal under Clause 6(5)(g) that a decision that would replace the ordinary legislative procedure with a special legislative procedure would be subject to the referendum lock. I ask Members of the Committee to consider for a moment a referendum question which asked, “Do you agree that if the special legislative procedure replaces the ordinary legislative procedure, there should be a veto on this?”. Frankly, I do not think that one person in a thousand, however intelligent or thoughtful they might be, would have the faintest idea about the difference between the ordinary and the special legislative procedures. However, in Clause 6(5)(g) we find that that is subject to the lock. It would not be in our interests if that were agreed because, as I have already explained, on issues such as the environment we have a profound interest in finding common ground for the basis of our targets and practice.

I will not speak much longer in Committee, in which, if I might say so, some Members have spoken at very considerable length, except to draw the attention of the Committee to two things. First, I commend the noble Lords, Lord Triesman and Liddle, for attempting in our discussions yesterday to put forward a genuine compromise that might enable both sides, probably excluding the more extreme Eurosceptics but including most people of a middle and moderate position, to find common ground. That proposal was for a special legislative committee of the two Houses of Parliaments, which was a serious attempt to narrow down the scope of the referendum and to do it entirely within the spirit of the involvement of Parliament. It received no response of an understanding kind from the Government so that one begins to wonder whether there is any room at all for a meeting of minds over this Bill or whether we are simply wasting time because nobody was persuaded of anything.

This is not good for the United Kingdom. The more that we have a common position in the European Union, the more notable our influence is bound to be. The last election showed that this country is not united on this issue or even on the issue of who should be the majority Government. We do not want to weaken our position in Europe by exemplifying divisions that are not absolutely necessary. I fully understand the Government’s commitment to the referendum lock on the treaty issues. The noble Lord, Lord Hannay, and his colleagues have conceded the need for a referendum on the euro as a currency as a gesture to show that they understand the necessity for some tougher turns before agreements are reached. However, it is high time that the Government began to think about whether they could not meet at least part of the way the Members who put this position in Committee. That would mean limiting and narrowing down the number of the issues on which the referendum lock applies, to make sure that it goes in relationship to the most serious issues and to move toward the idea of a stronger parliamentary contribution to what is done over the rest of the exercise.

I say this with due feeling. I do not think that, if what comes out of this Committee is a failure to agree on anything, we will do ourselves or the cause of our position in Europe any good at all.

Lord Pearson of Rannoch: My Lords, there are a growing number of us who know that the planet’s climate has been changing for millions of years—and will doubtless go on changing for as long as the planet has left—but have the very gravest doubts as to whether it is changing as a result of man-made emissions or activity. In view of the noble Baroness’s powerful peroration that we have to be in the European Union seriously fighting for these environmental targets and so on, what chance does she think there is of our European partners meeting these targets? Are they not already quite a long way behind? Are they not likely to slip even further behind as time goes on?

[Baroness Williams of Crosby]

I will not be lured very far by the noble Lord, who is always very polite in the way that he attempts to broaden out the debate in Committee. I do not think that is what most people want to do. I will simply say that we have clean beaches in Britain. We have clean rivers. We have cleaner air. The first two of these owe a very great deal to the European Union’s requirements, which we should meet.

[Lord Stoddart of Swindon]

I understand exactly what the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, is saying and I can understand the reasons why she is saying it. However, the reason we have this Bill is because of the betrayal—if I might use that strong word—of promises which have been made and not kept.

I refer first to the promises that were made by the Government and, indeed, by the Opposition about having a referendum on the constitution, later to be known as the Lisbon treaty. There is very little difference. Even Giscard d’Estaing says that there is very little difference. However, I do not want to get into that argument. I want to try to explain why I believe we have reached this point where such detail has been put into a Bill. It is because people join political parties and have an influence on them. So many times promises have been made, such as on the five red lines that were all crossed, and not kept. Increasingly, people in this country have lost trust in the Government’s promises that we are not, ratchet by ratchet, going into a federal European state.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Flight]

I thank the noble Lord for his, as ever, instructive intervention. The noble Lord, Lord Kerr, who is sadly not here today, was very involved in the convention on the constitutional treaty and therefore, I believe, is the best informed Member of this House about how these issues were left as exemptions qualifying for unanimity in the Lisbon negotiations.

Secondly, with regard to the position of past UK Governments, those were the positions at that time. The point that I am seeking to make is that we have three areas that, whatever the position of past Governments, could result in transfers of power from the UK to the EU. The point of my amendment is, as I said at the beginning, to illustrate that the Bill does not cover every potential transfer of power; it has been limited to that which the Government consider to be the major issues. However, I believe that the noble Lord, having educated us in the history of this, would not deny that the situation is such that, in these three areas, there could be transfers of power without any treaty so requiring them. As I have already said, this amendment is illustrative and I am sure that there are many other areas where this Bill does not put forward requirements for a referendum on matters that potentially transfer powers because those matters are not deemed to be of prime importance.

[Baroness Williams of Crosby]

My Lords, I want to address briefly—

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

My Lords, I have the greatest regard for the noble Baroness, but I think no one has spoken from this side of the Committee recently. The noble Lord, Lord Flight, will not be surprised to learn that I rise to speak on the other side of the argument and do not support his Amendment 47A. However, I rise in support or Amendments 45 and 46 and against Schedule 1 standing part. Before I do that, perhaps I could give a word of personal explanation to the noble Lord, Lord Howell. I did say to him that I would not be able to take part in today’s proceedings and I regretted that. I assure him that I made that comment entirely in good faith because, as I explained to him, at the time I had an engagement that I thought I ought to attend but I have managed to extricate myself from it. I hope he is not too disappointed to find that I have returned to the fray here.

I shall speak directly to these amendments, particularly Amendment 46, but before I do I must repeat that the whole progress of this Committee has thoroughly reinforced the conviction which I expressed at Second Reading: that the effect of this Bill, if it becomes law, will be twofold. First, there will not be any referenda. The idea that we are going to have referenda asking the British public to decide on moving from the ordinary to the special legislative procedure in relation to something involving the procurator-general is absurd. It was never going to happen and still less do I think it likely to happen that we are going to have 10, 20 or 30 referenda. The Government, in response to my Second Reading speech, said in desperation that these referenda would be grouped but you cannot possibly ask the British public to answer 10 questions of that kind in the course of one referendum, so there is no doubt about it: there is no intention to have any referenda and there will not be any.

The intention must therefore be, as I have said before, to adopt what I call a frozen policy in the EU. It is quite frightening that this country should adopt a frozen policy in any international organisation of which it is a part. It is not only deeply destructive of the national interest but not at all in accordance with public opinion in this country. Public opinion may well be sceptical in many ways about the European Union but it expects the Government to respond flexibly, pragmatically and intelligently to the challenges of the hour, not to adopt frozen policies.

This schedule has a whole list of absurdities in it. If I dealt with them all, although I should be delighted to do so in many ways, I would take up much too much of the Committee's time. Perhaps I might focus on two, because I want to illustrate how misconceived the approach encapsulated in the Bill is. The first item in Part 2 of Schedule 1 is:

“Article 19(1) (measures to combat discrimination based on sex, racial or ethnic origin, religion or belief, age or sexual orientation)”.

If one looks up the relevant reference, Article 19 goes as follows:

“Without prejudice to the other provisions of the Treaties and within the limits of the powers conferred by them upon the Union, the Council, acting unanimously in accordance with a special legislative procedure and after obtaining the consent of the European Parliament, may take appropriate action to combat discrimination based on sex, racial or ethnic origin, religion or belief, disability, age or sexual orientation”.

It is, unfortunately, not impossible that there should be problems with discrimination in the European Union, particularly racial or religious discrimination. Racial discrimination is, sadly, not absent from any part of the human race and we have had some disturbing incidents and tendencies in the European Union, for example in Romania and Hungary—and, surprisingly and rather shockingly, in France—in relation to the Roma. We have had racialist remarks made by members of the current ruling party in Hungary and by prominent members of parties in Poland and Latvia who are now partners of the British Conservative Party in the European Parliament.

It seems to me that there would be a great advantage in moving from the special to the ordinary legislative procedure in this area of discrimination, so that once we had done that it would not be possible for one member state to hold out against a clear declaration, legal statement or piece of legislation that made it impossible to discriminate against people on those grounds. There was horror when the French Government suggested that it was a greater priority to get illegal immigrants out of France if they were Roma than if they were anything else. That is exactly the kind of problem that all of us, surely, have an interest in ensuring does not arise and does not disgrace or besmirch the European Union, to which many of us are committed. Therefore, if one had a problem involving a country there would be a real danger of a veto under the special legislative procedure.

I cannot for the life of me think why a British Government who are composed of a Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition should want to exclude the use of qualified majority voting without the block, which we know will never be overcome, of a threatened referendum. So it seems a thoroughly perverse consequence of the Government’s policy in this area.

Let me take another, very different, example, which shows how we are shooting ourselves in the foot if we pass this Bill. It is an area which I know a bit about, having been Minister for defence procurement for a while before the general election. The penultimate item in the list under Part 2 in Schedule 1 is:

“Article 346(2) (changes to list of military products exempt from internal market provisions)”.

In the relevant governing article in the Lisbon treaty, Article 346 states that,

“any Member State may take such measures as it considers necessary for the protection of the essential interests of its security which are connected with the production of or trade in arms, munitions and war material; such measures shall not adversely affect the conditions of competition in the internal market regarding products which are not intended for specifically military purposes … The Council may, acting unanimously on a proposal from the Commission, make changes to the list, which it drew up on 15 April 1958”.

What the Government are saying is that they cannot change that and move from unanimity to qualified majority voting without a referendum. Let me explain what this clause does. It is a derogation from the single market in relation to military goods. It is a protectionist measure, which I believe was insisted upon by France at the time the original treaty of Rome was signed. For many years it was Article 46 of the treaty, but it has been overtaken by events. It is contrary to the interests of the British defence industry, which is the largest—that is not a value judgment but a fact—by volume of any defence industry in the European Union and, I think, the most competitive. It therefore suffers from this protectionist measure, which in my experience and to my own knowledge has often been abused.

Member states have argued that vehicles used for military purposes are military equipment and therefore have to be manufactured in that particular country—Italy, in this case. There are arguments the whole time about whether something is genuinely military equipment. This can sometimes be resolved, but the effect is a major derogation in the single market. I thought that it was a matter of consensus in British politics—certainly involving all three major parties—that we are in favour of a single market and we want to get rid of obstacles to it. Yet this Government are placing an obstacle in the way of extending the single market. This Government are using a referendum to block the removal of a derogation from the single market legislation. In effect they are supporting a restriction on the possibility of the British defence industry expanding its exports within the European Union. This is a crazy, crazy policy, there is no doubt about it. I do not know whether the Government have thought this one through. If they have, I hope that at this 11th hour they will think about it again.

I am proud that, as defence procurement Minister, for the first time I abolished protectionism. I said that Britain should buy the capability it needed, where it could get it best and at the cheapest price. I made that absolutely plain. There are certain areas where for defence purposes and strategic security reasons we would not buy military equipment. We would not buy from Russia or China, for example, because we would not know what was in it. If there was any software, we would have to be very wary indeed of allowing it into the country. Nevertheless, where security and defence considerations did not apply, we would buy equipment from the best and cheapest source.

I placed a contract for an armoured vehicle, the Warthog, in Singapore and I am glad I did. I have a record, if I may say so, of being liberal in defence procurement and it is deeply shocking to me that we have a Government who are trying to go against that liberalism and damage an important British industry. The defence industry, probably together with pharmaceuticals, is the manufacturing area in which we have the greatest international competitive advantage.

I hope that, as a result of the debates in this House—unfortunately these matters will not be explored properly in the House of Commons—the country as a whole, including, in this case, the manufacturing and defence industries, will be alerted to what is going on here. If the arguments that we bring forward from these Benches, and those of others with reasonable views on Europe on the other Benches, do not prevail, maybe the voice of British industry might be heard. If it is not heard soon, a very important piece of damage will be done. It will be extremely difficult for us to find a rational solution to this problem if we continue to have enforced unanimity in this area of single market legislation, because that is what it is.

[Baroness Williams of Crosby]

I shall quickly follow the noble Lord, Lord Davies, but I shall not detain the Committee for more than a few moments. I plead particularly to those Members of the Committee who are women. Article 19, the provision to which the noble Lord, Lord Davies, referred, concerns discrimination on the grounds of sex, religion, sexual orientation and so forth. The effect of what we now see in Schedule 1 is that a referendum would be needed to move from unanimity to qualified majority voting. I ask my colleagues to give a moment’s thought to a position where the discriminator is one of the members of the Council.

That was exactly the example in the case of the Czech Republic when it sought to join the European Union. It discriminated viciously against the Roma; in some cases they were assaulted in small Czech towns and, in one or two cases, burnt. The attempt to say to the Czech Republic that discrimination against the Roma must end would have been impossible had there been a requirement for unanimity—in other words, no movement towards qualified majority voting. In those European Union members where there is clearly discrimination against women—Romania is one example of that—it would be possible for that country effectively to veto an attempt to rule out such discrimination. I cannot believe that that is what the Committee wants to see.

Essentially, one of the great achievements of the European Union—one that the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, totally fails to recognise—was the extension of human rights and democracy to central and eastern Europe. It is an astonishing achievement. In any country except Britain it would be recognised as such. The consequence of that, in practice, is that the Copenhagen criteria—laid down in 1993 at the European Council meeting in the Danish capital—specifically said that for a country to join the European Union it must meet requirements about human rights, democracy, the independence of the courts and the proper, non-corrupt provision and maintenance of the rule of law, all of which are fundamental pillars of democracy. All of these depended on the wishes of these countries to join the European Union, and the requirement on them to meet those political conditions in order to do so.

The success, in extending democracy to that huge part of Europe, has a great deal to do with the respect that many of us have for the European Union. I spent nine years as the head of an organisation based in Harvard University called Project Liberty, which argued time and again with the Governments of eastern European countries that they could not join the European Union unless they put right laws that were discriminatory and corrupt. I know this because I was involved at first hand. It was an extraordinarily powerful weapon.

I conclude by saying, first, that nobody in this Committee should underestimate the astonishing impact that Europe has had on democracy in this continent and beyond it. Secondly, to try now to limit opposition to discrimination by obliging it to be unanimous would be a huge step back for the European Union, and one for which I, for one, would hate to see my country be responsible.

[Lord Liddle]

My Lords, we have heard many fine speeches in this short debate. I shall be brief and focus on what I regard as the central problem with Schedule 1. The Government need to accept that there is a central problem, and they have to agree to some amendment to the Bill that addresses this issue.