European Union Bill

Lord Flight Excerpts

Tuesday 26th April 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

I speak in support of this amendment, though I support more drastic surgery in terms of reducing the number of areas in which a referendum would be required. This amendment, however, goes in the right direction. In supporting it, I make two points, which arise from what the noble Lords, Lord Liddle and Lord Waddington, said.

The noble Lord, Lord Liddle, made an extremely important point, which has been overlooked so far, but which is integral to my own approach and some of the amendments I have put down for later debate. It is not suggested that we should go back to the status quo ante, to the situation prevailing under this House and the other place’s ratification of Lisbon, a situation where these decisions should be endorsable purely by a resolution of both Houses. The noble Lord, Lord Liddle, said in his introduction that his amendments accepted that it would go back to primary legislation. The position of Parliament in approving these matters would be strengthened over the present situation. That is, frankly, a very important point. I hope that the Government will take due account of that. There is an acceptance among a number of us—and that is true of amendments of a more drastic kind that I have tabled and which we will debate later—that we should not just be going back to the Lisbon provisions, but should be going back to Lisbon plus.

The second point relates to points made by the noble Lord, Lord Waddington. As one of those who are moving amendments, I do not contest the analysis that the Government have made, namely that support for the European Union in this country has been losing ground and that there is often dissatisfaction with measures taken in Brussels. It would be quite stupid to deny that. What I, and probably some others who are moving amendments, contest is whether a whole list of referendums on matters of highly technical, and some might say trivial, interest would actually help to deal with that situation. My own view—and I would be interested to hear anybody contesting this—is that it would actually make it worse. If we went around the country trying to persuade our compatriots why they should vote in a referendum on whether or not additional advocates-general should be created by qualified majority voting, or whatever, they would think we were certifiable. Certifiable or not, the reason I am supporting these amendments, and moving my own amendments, is not because I dispute the analysis, but because I dispute the prescription.

[Lord Flight]

My Lords, it is a sad fact that this legislation is needed because successive Governments have let down the people of this country in failing to protect our national interests—particularly the last Government.

A sensible balance has been achieved in this Bill. There are as many items that do not require referenda as those that do require referenda. A reasonable, practical and sensible balance has been achieved. This amendment is about waiving the referendum in cases of urgency and national interest. I am not quite sure what that means, but it occurs to me that we are right now living at a time when several European countries are in dire financial straits, largely as a result of being uncompetitive, having adopted the common currency. I can just see a financial crisis coming up in due course in Europe and the classic argument being put that, in the interests of urgency and in protecting us from some of the contagion, there is an urgent need for the introduction of far greater collective decisions on matters fiscal and economic. This would be the ultimate objective of achieving a European state with fiscal and economic powers. Should this, as has been suggested, slip by under one of the three different new powers that we have for introducing measures without referenda if it qualifies as being in the national interest out of urgency? No, the Bill has struck a sensible balance, as I have said, and putting up a whole list of new potential excuses that should remove the need for referenda is merely ducking the issue and trying to weaken the impact of the Bill.

[Lord Tomlinson]

My Lords, I was not going to speak to this group of amendments, but I have been provoked by the previous speaker. He seems to suggest that we are implying in these amendments that there will be circumstances in which we seek to hide behind amendments such as these in order to deal with circumstances of economic and monetary convergence. We should, however, look at the current reality.

I have just come back from spending two and a half weeks with some of our continental friends in the European Union. Even though I am a teetotaller, I spent a number of hours in a number of quite agreeable bars speaking to expatriate Brits there, among others. They are not complaining about the strength of sterling and the weakness of the euro; they are complaining about the exact opposite. They are complaining about how weak the pound sterling is and how few euros it buys them in what they had anticipated would be golden years spent in the sunshine. I recall, when I first became involved in buying a property in Spain some five years ago, buying euros at the rate of 65p to the euro. Now I have managed to sell my house in Spain, I was able to repatriate money at the rate of 89p to the euro. That shows that the euro has improved by 38 per cent vis-à-vis sterling. There is a serious point to this, because when we talk about the rising costs of our membership of the European Union, they are the rising costs of a budget that is denominated in euros.