European Union Bill

Debate between Lord Flight and Lord Tomlinson

Tuesday 26th April 2011 Lords Chamber

[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.