EU: UK Membership

Lord Giddens Excerpts

Tuesday 25th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Giddens (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Newnham, on her excellent maiden speech. She will be a formidable addition to your Lordships’ House. It is a double pleasure to welcome another academic into this House—it is a triple pleasure to welcome another Cambridge academic —and not another deranged politician, as I think the noble Lord put it.

I speak as a strong and committed pro-European. The European Union has helped to bring peace and reconciliation to a continent with a history of devastation. Unlike the noble Lord, Lord Empey, I believe that peace project is certainly not finished, and here I also diverge from the noble Lord, Lord King. One hundred thousand people died in the conflict that followed the break-up of Yugoslavia. The incorporation of Serbia into the EU is an absolutely crucial task for the near future. Russia might already be working to destabilise that process. Will the Minister confirm that the British Government absolutely would not consider blocking further EU enlargement as a way of advancing their agenda in Europe, as some papers have reported?

I am also a committed pro-European so far as Britain’s continuing membership of the EU is concerned. The world today is massively more interdependent than ever before. Britain can have far more real control—in other words, real sovereignty—over its affairs acting in concert with other EU states than it ever could acting alone, as 60 million people confronting a world of 7 billion.

The rise of UKIP is not without its benefits for those of us who hold quite opposing views. Its success will force a public debate on Britain’s future in Europe, which is a debate that we absolutely need to have. Those of us who believe that the UK’s future necessarily lies in Europe should, as my noble friend Lord Liddle said, mobilise and put our case forcefully. He also said that we should do it with passion, and I support that. The rise of UKIP has coincided with a surge of support among Britons for staying in the Union and helping to reshape it; indeed, there may be some kind of causal connection there.

The recent Ipsos MORI poll that my noble friend Lord Liddle quoted actually had stronger results than he mentioned. It showed support for Britain’s membership at its highest level for almost a quarter of a century. If you look at those who actually expressed opinions rather than those who said “don’t know”, 61% of respondents who expressed a view endorsed continued British membership, compared to 26% who wanted to leave. That is an interesting and remarkable result.

A detailed and proper public debate will oblige Eurosceptics to say what they are for, not just what they are against. The risks are enormous. Were the UK to leave, this time it would almost certainly lose Scotland. The US would bypass this country and deal directly with the EU. Some say small is beautiful, especially in the age of the internet, or else they argue that we should turn to the Commonwealth. If that is so easy, why have we not done it already? Germany, which of course is in the European Union, has twice the level of trade with India that the UK does. Power and size do matter and the influence of geopolitics is still all too real. Without the European Union, we would live in a G2 world dominated by the United States and China. The UK should play its full part in providing that necessary counterbalance.

In conclusion, I was very interested in what the noble Lord, Lord Howell, said—what he says is always interesting. As I took it, he was suggesting that there should be a more bipartisan approach at this point to the debate in this country. I think that could be really important for the national interest, and if that is what the noble Lord meant, I heartily endorse it.