European Union Bill

Lord Davies of Stamford Excerpts

Wednesday 25th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

Of course—but the noble Lord will know well that the late Lord Hailsham described government as an elective dictatorship. I view what will happen as being very much more in the hands of the Government than of Parliament. I take the point that we are talking about Parliament rather than the Government. However, it is an entirely different matter when you give powers to people in the form of a referendum, because if you then take them back you are taking them from the people. That is different from all the other sunset clauses that we have in our legislation.

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

My Lords, I put forward five simple propositions. Many of them will be regarded by noble Lords as entirely unexceptionable. The first is something that most people would regard almost as a platitude; every human institution must be able, in order to survive, to adapt to changing circumstances, and to change from time to time its decisions, procedures and way of doing business. I think people would accept that proposition for the private and public sectors, and for any realm of life. The Government have not attempted to argue that this principle does not apply, for some extraordinary and miraculous reason, to the institution known as the European Union, and no such argument could cogently, coherently or credibly be made. I will leave the proposition there in the hope that it will not be challenged; I shall be fascinated if any noble Lord chooses to.

My second proposition is one that I have already put forward in these debates, and about which the Government have not succeeded in persuading me that I am wrong. It would not be credible, or possible in practical politics, to have a referendum on 90 per cent of the issues listed in Schedule 1, such as the appointment of judges or the prosecutor general or something of that sort. The British public would consider these matters to be of tertiary importance and interest. We all know how difficult it is to get a respectable turnout in general elections, even when they are the high point of political controversy in a five-year parliamentary period.

The Government have not attempted to argue that I am wrong about that. They have said that, in practice, referenda issues would be bunched. There would be a referendum on six or 12 issues—they have not come up with a figure—at one time. That is not practical politics, either. You cannot ask the British public to answer yes or no to a dozen different questions; you would have to ask for a dozen different considered responses, which would mean that you would have to have a campaign running in parallel on a dozen separate questions, many of which will have a complex technical background. That is not a practical proposition at all.

That is my answer to the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton. I often agree with the noble Lord in this Chamber and always appreciate his interventions. He asked why noble Lords on this side should be worried about referenda, because if we think that something is in the national interest, the public will vote for it. That was the noble Lord's argument; there will be a referendum and it will be won, and the result will be in favour of, for example, greater integration in a particular area. My response is that those referenda will not occur, because it would not be practical politics to have a referendum on at least 90 per cent—or some such very high figure—of the issues set out so conveniently in Schedule 1.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

I thank the noble Lord for giving way. Is he suggesting to me that it is in the national interest that we should integrate more greatly with Europe?

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

I am suggesting that sometimes it may be and sometimes it may not be. We need to be pragmatic about these things. I believe that the noble Lord is in favour of our membership of the European Union and of the single market. I believe that he voted for the Single European Act, so he is in favour of qualified majority voting. He therefore considered that it was very much in the national interest to integrate policies in those areas. It may be that he is on record as having been in favour of other forms of integration on equally respectable pragmatic grounds. I think the noble Lord’s record would be quite inconsistent with any suggestion that it is never in the interests of this country to integrate our policies with the rest of the European Union.

I have a third proposition to put forward. Most noble Lords have had some experience of decision-making bodies in the private sector, company boards and so forth, or in the public sector. Anybody with any background in affairs of any kind will agree with this proposition as well. It is a very simple proposition. They might also think it is a platitude. In normal circumstances, it might not have been necessary to put it forward. Often in life, in order to make substantive progress in any human institution or to achieve a particular substantive decision, it is sensible and expedient to move via a procedural change. If you want to get members of your board to come to a particular agreement on a particular matter, you might suggest that you do not take the decision then but set up a committee to take it, or you have some other arrangement that will lead in the right direction.

That applies to the way the European Union works. It works as a horse-trading body. I do not think that is a disparaging comment. Human life is like that. People have different views about different questions and sometimes take some time to realise that they might have an interest in concerting and integrating their policies. It is sometimes quite difficult for Governments to change publicly the way they vote on an issue. It may be that declarations have been made in the past, in their Parliaments and so forth, saying, “We will never agree to vote this way”. We all find ourselves with that kind of commitment on our backs, in our luggage, and it is very embarrassing and trying. Sometimes when you are doing business with somebody who has this kind of problem, he would quite like to agree with you, but finds that he cannot because of some prior commitment of that kind. The way round that often is to change the procedure and say, “Let’s have qualified majority voting”. Then your counterparty may well say, “That’s fine. Nothing wrong with qualified majority voting in my Parliament. Maybe the British Parliament has neuralgia about it, but our people don’t, so we will agree to have QMV on this matter from now on”. Then you can make progress and achieve your common purposes. The single market, of which I know the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, is a strong supporter, was achieved in precisely that way. That is why Margaret Thatcher came out with qualified majority voting in the first place. That is my third proposition. It is often sensible, if one wants to make substantive progress, to have available to one the opportunity for procedural change and for changing the method of decision-making. It therefore makes no sense to block off that possibility altogether in the way that is often suggested.

You would think that my fourth proposition would be a platitude as well, and I hope it will not be challenged. It is that it is sometimes in our interest to change things. It is sometimes in our interest to get a new decision. It would be very odd if there was a systematic and entirely symmetrical position in which the British national interest always coincided with no, if whatever the question was, it was always in the British national interest to say no. We could save a lot of money if that was the case. We would not need highly paid, highly talented people such as the noble Lords, Lord Hannay and Lord Kerr, living in Brussels. It would be very simple because the answer would always be no. That could be delivered electronically with no expense at all whenever it was required.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

Noble Lords may laugh, but it is an absurd idea that the answer regarding the British interest is always going to be no. But if the British answer is not always going to be no and we need to think about it intelligently, and sometimes it might be yes, then does it make any sense to paralyse ourselves, to tie ourselves up, to put handcuffs on ourselves? I do not think it can. That is my fourth proposition: that the way that the Government are going forward with the Bill is profoundly not in the national interest.

At the end of the Committee stage, a lot of us on both sides of the House evidently feel very strongly that serious damage could be done to the national interest. It can make no sense whatever to say that, for the rest of time, the British answer to everything must be no; or that the British answer to everything must be a referendum, because there will not be referenda so that comes back to saying no. The Government say, “No, in fact, if we have this lock on ourselves, the compensation will be that the British public will have greater confidence in the European idea”. The implication of that argument, which we have heard several times from the noble Lords, Lord Howell and Lord Wallace, is that at some point in the future we will not want these handcuffs on us. We will want to revert to normality and be able to take a pragmatic view as issues come up of where our interests lie and whether we should go ahead with colleagues in a greater degree of integration, have the normal arguments, use our veto when we want to, change the procedures and set up QMV where we think that that is in our interests, and so on. The implication of the Government’s argument is that we do not want to tie ourselves in for ever; we do not need to; it is a temporary problem, which they think will be resolved by the passage of the Bill. That is a matter of judgment; I will not go back over that; it is obvious to the Government that most of us are not persuaded by that argument, but they could be right.

As, sadly, I do not think that we will be able to defeat the Bill—I would like to; I do not disguise that fact; I have never disguised that fact from anyone—is not the sensible solution simply to say, “Let the Government have the Bill for this Parliament. Let them have it for four or five years. Let us see whether they are right and that there is some improvement in national sentiment towards the EU as a result of the Bill being enacted and being part of the law of the land”? Let us hope that over just a few years no cataclysmic damage is done to the national interest by preventing us from taking rational decisions in the way that I just described. Is that not a sensible compromise? I think it is. At this stage of the proceedings, it is probably one that we could all bring ourselves to live with, coming from different points on the spectrum and different parts of the argument.

I commend noble Lords—the noble Lord, Lord Taverne, in particular—on the amendments and I hope that they end up enshrining the solution which this House brings to this complicated problem.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

Does the noble Lord accept that there is a clear distinction between changes in the rules of the EU and decisions in the EU? The Government's case is that extensive competences are provided within the Lisbon treaty. There is already extensive QMV within the treaties. The Government’s case is that there is plenty of opportunity for us to say yes, as we have done on a number of opt-ins and day-to-day decisions. We do not always have to say no in Brussels, nor do we always say no in Brussels. The question is one of competences. There is plenty of room for competences. At some point, there may be a need for further treaty change. That will have to be negotiated. But the time for further treaty change is not now or in the foreseeable future.

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

I was invited to comment before I sat down, so I shall. I am grateful for the Minister’s intervention and, in particular, for his comment, which is now on the record and which many of us will be pleased to hear, that he does not exclude treaty change in future. As he knows, the drift of my argument this morning has been that it is wrong to make the distinction between changes in decisions and changes in voting procedures. Often the best way to get the right decision will be via a change in the voting method. That is exactly the argument that I was making. I do not need to repeat myself, because I know that the noble Lord always listens to my comments with the greatest attention.

[Lord Radice]

We all do, Quentin.

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

I am most grateful for that flattering comment from my noble friend Lord Radice.

That is exactly the burden of my remarks this morning. In adapting, as any institution needs to do, to the challenges of the future, we should not exclude doing so by decisions within the existing structures and rules, or the need, where necessary, to evolve those rules. That is a false and damaging distinction to enshrine in our law.

[Lord Howe of Aberavon]

My Lords, I notice that my name is attached to one of the amendments on the Marshalled List. I rise with rather a heavy heart to say anything at all. The kind of discussion that is now taking place—I rebuke nobody for it—and which has been launched by the Bill and beforehand, casts a shadow over an enterprise which deserves to have been given more wholehearted support from a much earlier stage.

I am on record in my own disreputable memoirs as having written a letter in 1948 commending the prospect of Britain taking part in the original negotiations on the formation of the European Community. I reproached the Attlee Government for not having then undertaken the initiative commended by Winston Churchill. It is sad that we did not join at the beginning. We were proud at the time, and entitled to be, of our survival and success in the war. However, at some points we have allowed that pride to be transformed into conceit and have staggered and stumbled in quite a less attractive way in joining this enterprise.

It was entirely right, when we had considered it carefully, to conclude as we did after the 1972 Act that the British people should be entitled to express their view on the major, fundamental change involved in the transfer and sharing of sovereignty, an enterprise that was already under way and working quite well. In that spirit, we were able in successive Governments to play a reasonable part in carrying forward an important and worthwhile policy. I was content and proud, for example, when, under the leadership of my noble friend Lady Thatcher, we circulated a document around the Community entitled Europe—the Future, which visualised steady progress in enhancing the influence of Britain and Europe on the world stage as it was developing.

I have become less and less happy with the to-ing and fro-ing, which has been illustrated as a reductio ad absurdum in this debate. I find my name attached to a thing called a “sunset clause”, which is also a “sunrise and re-set clause”, and does not do justice to the enterprise on which we were embarked and to which we are still committed. The Bill is a response to anxiety among the British people and a tendency to think that we can resolve that lack of understanding if we have an immense clutch of referenda ad infinitum. It would be far better if we were to recommit ourselves to the original enterprise rather than find ourselves engaged in this kind of discussion on this kind of issue.

There is a great course still to be put under way. I grieve at the fact that the Bill purports to give the British people an opportunity that they ought not really to have because it becomes so complex that it is absurd. They were entitled to have that question put to them, as was done in 1975; it was the major step. It is on that foundation that I would prefer us to be going forward now rather than allowing it to get into this morass of multiple referenda.

I do not support my own amendment. I apologise for the fact that it is there because I have joined the rattling to and fro in a context which does not deserve it. I hope that the amendment is not put and that the Bill does not pass, but I am not going to challenge it single-handed at this stage. However, I think that I am entitled to express my dismay in the light of what could have been achieved and sustained, and what can be achieved and sustained if we commit ourselves more wholeheartedly to the European Union, about which Winston Churchill spoke with favour and where successive Prime Ministers have led us forward—even my noble friend Lady Thatcher. We worked together for 15 years, trying to enhance the power of the United Kingdom in the European Union. Our political marriage, which lasted for 15 years, concluded in a divorce, about which the less said the better. However, I reaffirm the legitimacy of that which we did together in those years, and the legitimacy of the objective to which we should be directing ourselves.

The sooner we allow this Bill to spread itself into the morass of discontinuity and die a death, rather than have a sunset clause fluctuating one way or the other, the better. We should let it die of senility because we have had enough of it. That is what I should like to see happen.