European Union (Referendum) Bill

Lord Armstrong of Ilminster Excerpts

Friday 10th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Armstrong of Ilminster (CB)]

My Lords, I do not intend to spend time today on the intra-party or inter-party shenanigans of this Bill. I propose to underline only two points, which have already, of course, been made in this debate. There are only about three points to be made throughout the debate.

On the first point, the Prime Minister has made a clear commitment that if he returns to office after the election next year he will enter into negotiations for changes in this country’s relationship with the European Union with a view to concluding them by 2017 and in time for the outcome to be the basis for a referendum. He needs no legislative reinforcement for that commitment, although of course he will be able, if he wishes, to reiterate it in his party’s manifesto in due course. If he is returned, he will be able to use his best endeavours to fulfil his commitment whether or not the Bill is passed. He does not need to have his feet held to the fire by a law.

If he is not returned in the election, his successor will not be bound by his commitment. It is the established convention that no Parliament can bind its successor. If another Prime Minister after the 2015 election decides that a referendum is not necessary or called for, he will be entitled to invite the new Parliament to pass a new Bill—one of those mythical one-clause Bills—and guillotine it, repealing this legislation if it has been passed by this Parliament. The Prime Minister’s commitment is quite as binding as it need or can be without legislative underpinning. This Bill is unnecessary and, I might almost say, pointless.

The second point I should like to underline—it was made a few moments ago by the noble Lord, Lord Jay of Ewelme—is that the Bill is, in some respects, bad policy. Negotiations within the European Union for major changes in the constitution of the Union can take a very long time. This is particularly the case at a time when many other member countries will also be looking for changes and wide-ranging reform seems likely. It is impossible to predict either the form in which or the date by which the Union will emerge from the process of renegotiation.

It is admirable for the Prime Minister to say that he intends to achieve changes by 2017, but he cannot be sure of being able to do so in complex negotiations which will involve 27 other member countries as well as the United Kingdom. It is not likely to be conducive to constructive negotiations and he is not likely to be assisted in his negotiations if he goes into them with a time bomb in his briefcase which he says that he must detonate if he does not get the result he wants by a fixed date in 2017.

He would do better to take a leaf out of the book of Mrs Thatcher. When she wanted to get a satisfactory outcome on the British rebate, she did not threaten her partners with an “in or out” referendum if she did not get her way by a certain date. It took her five years to get an outcome which she was prepared to accept, but she stayed in there until she got what she wanted or, at least, what she was prepared to accept. There are some of us who still bear the scars received in the course of that bruising process; but it worked.

If the Prime Minister is returned to office in May 2015, he should be allowed to take whatever time it requires, even if that is more than two and a half years, to stay in there and get the result he wants or at least a result that he is prepared to commend to the Parliament and people of this country. He would no doubt try to achieve that outcome within two years—and I should wish him the best of British luck in doing so—but the issues at stake for this country, and for the European Union, are too great, too important, to be confined by this kind of deadline. It is not in the best interests of the United Kingdom for Parliament to send the Prime Minister into these negotiations with a fixed two-year deadline.

I conclude by saying that this is a funny old Bill. I am not sure whether it is a government Bill masquerading as a Private Member’s Bill, or how you should define it, but in a sense it is a one-off and a unique thing that defies the conventions. All your Lordships will accept the rule—it is not just a convention—that the will of the House of Commons should in the end prevail, but that should not, in this case, be allowed to override the duty of this House to exercise its own responsibility to revise and improve the Bill if it sees fit to do so. If the Government really feel very strongly that this Bill has to be completed in this Session and cannot wait, as the noble Lord, Lord Tomlinson, suggested, until the next one, I suggest that the Government make room in business for the proceedings that would be required to enable the Bill to complete its passage in this Session.