Queen’s Speech

Lord Alderdice Excerpts

Wednesday 11th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Alderdice (LD)]

My Lords, in the debate on the Queen’s Speech last year, I said:

“Unless those of us who are pro-Europe are able to convince the rest of our colleagues in Europe to take seriously what needs to be done”—

on a series of issues—

“our people will not be persuaded that Europe is a viable entity”.—[Official Report, 15/5/13; col. 441.]

That would be the ultimate tragedy. We have not succeeded, and I think that we have not even gone the right way about trying to persuade our people. All the talk of jobs, the economy, currencies and our standing in the world is not very persuasive, and furthermore it was not the purpose of the European project. The European project was to ensure that we did not go back to killing each other, as one of my noble friends said earlier in this debate.

I find it astonishing that during a period when we have centenaries and other anniversaries to remind us of what we did to each other in Europe in the last century, we seem to have failed completely to address the need to connect the young people of this generation not just with the sacrifices made by those of previous generations, but with the reason for those sacrifices, and thus the reason that the European project is crucial to ensuring that the next generation does not have to make the same kinds of sacrifice all over again. I plead with the Government to look again at the approach they have taken to the European question and to recognise the tremendous opportunity not to use these anniversaries, but to acknowledge that they are being commemorated to ensure that we do not return to war again.

However, it will not be enough just to persuade and argue. For us to attack Mr Putin or other parties is completely futile. We threaten that all sorts of dreadful things will happen, but we do not make the materiel available to ensure that we could do anything. A week or so ago I came back from Helsinki. My friends there are increasingly worried that while NATO can make all sorts of promises about what it might do, it does not have the capacity to intervene anywhere at all from the military point of view—and Mr Putin knows that perfectly well. There is no evidence that anyone in Europe is taking this seriously. We have less and less capacity to defend ourselves without our American friends, so are we taking it seriously?

Last year, I spoke of the Middle East and said:

“I desperately hope that when we come to debate the Queen’s Speech next year we will not do so in the context of some kind of catastrophic conflagration that has developed from the situation in the Middle East, because we are perilously close to it”.—[Official Report, 15/5/13; col. 442.]

The word “conflagration” is precisely the one that was used by my noble friend Lord King of Bridgwater. He pointed out that the danger is not just in the Middle East itself. He said that it is from Mumbai to Mali. He is right, but Mumbai and Mali are not just “over there” faraway places: they are here in our own towns and cities, where many people look at what is happening to their friends, families and co-religionists and feel moved to act and react. This is not a question simply of foreign policy; it is increasingly a question of domestic policy. If we do not find ways of paying more attention to how we deal with these matters, we will be facing them in an increasingly serious and dangerous way.

Finally, I turn to Scotland and Northern Ireland. If the First Minister, Mr Salmond, has his way, Scotland will be a separate country and, if he has his way, a part of the EU. If Scotland were to leave the United Kingdom, the possibility of a referendum within the United Kingdom to leave the EU would be much greater, in my view. The border between England and Scotland would become not just an English-Scottish border but an EU border. Furthermore, the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland—a border we have increasingly been trying to address through the peace process, to make it more open to people—would become an EU border. Whatever the consequences may be on this side of the water, I have to tell your Lordships of my anxiety about what developments of that kind would do to a fragile peace process on my side of the water within the United Kingdom. These are serious issues as well, so serious that they are not simply matters of the Scots and for the Scots—they affect all of us.

All these issues are related. UKIP is not a United Kingdom issue: look at the results of the elections in the rest of Europe and you will see other parties with similar unpleasant, xenophobic, racist attitudes developing in other parts of the European Union. This blowing apart, this mood that is developing of being against the other and turning in on oneself, is not a local matter, it is not a national matter, it is not even just a European matter, but it is a matter that could take us down the road to serious violence, for which I believe we are ill prepared.

It worries me greatly that with matters of this consequence, our Government decide that we should have a one-day debate with more than 80 speakers to address these issues, which could take us down a road leading we know not where. I hope that my ministerial friend will be able to tell us at the end of today that we will have the kind of time that our Government need to take the advice of your Lordships’ House on matters of this danger and consequence.