Queen’s Speech

Lord Giddens Excerpts

Monday 14th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Giddens]

My Lords, I feel a distinct frisson of anxiety in saying that I do not intend to talk about reform of your Lordships’ House—at least, not very much—but about much broader issues. I find it hard to credit that the Government have put forward such an anodyne legislative programme in the middle of the greatest crisis to afflict the industrial countries for the past 80 years. The recession is not just cyclical but has deep structural roots. It is essentially a crisis of competitiveness for the West, one which was building for some three decades. It has essentially been papered over by large-scale borrowing, which we know now is unsustainable. To confront that effectively will require a huge effort of the intellectual and practical imagination. I see no sign of that whatever in the most gracious Speech.

I am a believer in an elected second Chamber—apparently one of only about six or seven Peers who hold this view. I am a believer in 80:20 per cent, or what we could now call the Egyptian position. I admire the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown, for standing up so forcefully for that. Yet I cannot agree with him that reform of the Lords is of systematic importance at this juncture in relation to the overwhelming crises that we face not only in this country but also elsewhere.

At this juncture, far more pressing constitutional issues are looming, perhaps as fundamental as the economic ones. I mention three. The first has been alluded to en passant by one or two noble Lords: loss of faith in political leaders and the rise of extremism, which we find in all industrial countries at the moment—this is not just a British phenomenon. It will demand an effort of imagination, constitutionally and practically, to confront it, to hold the democratic centre of politics together in this country, as elsewhere.

Secondly, there is the potential secession of Scotland. That is not just one part of a country breaking away. Even devo-max would give an enormous impetus to English nationalism and the long-standing idea of setting up an English parliament. There would be deep constitutional and economic implications even for a referendum, which we shall see as it approaches, which need to be thought through.

Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, there are the dramatic events in the eurozone. I was very pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Owen, who is not in his place, gave the speech that he did; in my opinion, it was very powerful. He said that he might be in a minority of one; he is not, but perhaps he is in a minority of two. I find that odd, given the huge nature of the issues that we face and the enormous implications of what is happening in the eurozone and the EU for this country. The possibility of a collapse of the eurozone and, with it, much of the European project, is all too real at the moment. Not many realise how catastrophic that would be if it happened suddenly, for this country as much as for other EU states.

That means that the future of Europe is radically different from that of even three or four years ago. There is the possibility of collapse; if that does not happen, there is essentially only one way forward, not just for the eurozone but for the wider European Union. At this point, essentially, it is federalism or bust. We do not know what kind of federalism it will be. This is a totally different situation from the past, as the noble Lord, Lord Owen, observed. For not just the eurozone but the EU to survive, there has to be much tighter fiscal integration, a further ceding of sovereignty over economic and social affairs, with the ECB in some senses the lender of last resort. We know from what is happening in Greece and elsewhere that new democratic mechanisms will have to accompany those innovations for them to succeed, and those mechanisms will have to be transnational—in other words, they will have to be European mechanisms of democratic involvement.

At the moment, the Government seem hapless in the face of those events. The semi-detached approach to the EU, based, above all, on simply supporting the single market, which all British Governments have favoured, including the previous one, can no longer be an option. The UK must take a position, as the noble Lord, Lord Owen, so forcefully said. Whenever that should happen, whenever there is a significant movement towards federalism, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Owen, and my noble friend Lord Mandelson that there will have to be a referendum in this country on continued EU membership, which itself raises all sorts of issues and problems. I think that that point may come much earlier than my noble friend Lord Mandelson suggested in his recent lecture at Oxford, when he said that it might be in five or six years. It might come much earlier than that, because I see no other option for Europe than an acceleration of the integration process.

I would welcome the Minister’s comments on this. He is not only a Minister but a distinguished academic in the field of international relations and an expert on the European Union, and he has reached the pinnacle of academic achievement possible in this country as a professor at the LSE. I hope that he will at least address these wider issues, as surely this country and the world are at the moment on the edge of a precipice. I would like to hear his views on how the Government plan to respond.