EU: Prime Minister’s Speech

Lord Blair of Boughton Excerpts

Thursday 31st January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blair of Boughton]

My Lords, it is a privilege to listen to so many excellent speeches. I am neither a constitutional expert, nor a political expert on Europe, but I know a little about criminal justice and I want to use this occasion to draw some comparisons and to make some observations about the Government’s indication that they might wish to opt out of the European justice and home affairs provisions. A committee of your Lordships’ House, chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, is examining this. Here is a flavour of some of the answers they are receiving to that question.

On 16 January, one member of the committee, the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar, asked:

“So it”—

an opt-out—

“would be complex, complicated, risky and it is right that it would be a gamble?”.

Professor Peers of the University of Essex said yes. Would that all answers by witnesses were that succinct.

Of course, the opt-out on criminal justice is not the subject of this debate. I just want to use it as a way of looking at what would happen if you extended away from dealing with an important but minor part of the third pillar of some part of the European conventions to attempt to renegotiate our entire relationship with Europe. I draw your Lordships’ attention to an excellent article by Hugo Brady of the Centre for European Reform, entitled: Britain’s 2014 Justice Opt-out: Why it Bodes Ill for Cameron’s EU Strategy. He lists five reasons, but I am only going to talk about two. The first is Scotland. Policing and criminal justice are devolved powers, so it seems ill-advised for the Westminster Government to announce that they want to give up something that the Scots clearly want to keep in the same year as the referendum on independence.

The second is more important. It is what Brady describes as, “make your case clearly” or they will not understand. He describes the sense of bewilderment, turning to anger, contempt and disengagement by our European partners at the sight of the British trying to withdraw their support from something they invented in the first place. You cannot be a little bit pregnant. You cannot be a little bit divorced, but lots of people try. Many of us have seen friends have trial separations. They attempt to end in reunion, but they normally wreak havoc on relationships, partnerships and the prospects of future generations.