European Union Referendum (Date of Referendum etc.) Regulations 2016

Lord Giddens Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Giddens (Lab)]

My Lords, this has been a pretty gripping debate so far, and it has only just started—so gripping, in fact, that I have scrawled all over my notes and completely ruined them, even though I took the trouble, unusually, to type out my speech.

I too am a passionate pro-European, but I am an academic and would put it in a rather more muted way than the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown, did. As my noble friend Lady Morgan said, this world is, by far, now more interdependent than ever before. That interdependence, connected to the expansion of global markets and an emerging global system of law, has fuelled a very rapid process of economic development in some of the poorest parts of the world. At the same time, large-scale tensions and conflicts have been generated too. Some of the most dangerous are today concentrated in the European neighbourhood. Wide-ranging collaboration is needed to separate the benefits from the risks and to manage them. The EU has an essential role to play here, as is emphasised in the document we are considering today.

I only wish that the opportunity had been taken to question some of the easy nostrums of those who would have Britain quit the EU. For instance, they routinely assert that the EU is a quagmire of bureaucratic regulation and the enemy of flexibility and progress, as though this were some unquestionable truth. Yet it is obvious that collaborative rules very often limit and reduce bureaucracy rather than the reverse. There could be no European single market without commonly agreed procedures and protocols that have to be stuck to. Imagine what would happen if 28 states had to agree individual trade deals with one another and in a rolling fashion. As the report makes clear, effective European security depends upon cross-border collaboration. The problem with the refugee crisis today is the lack of such effective collaboration between EU states, rather than an excess of it, and in this case the knock-on consequences could be very serious indeed. For me, it is in fact a terrifying example of what can happen when consensus breaks down and nations start again to see the world primarily through the narrow lens of self-interest.

A favourite adage of many Eurosceptics is that in today’s world small is beautiful. I enjoyed the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Howell, which was a nuanced one. He has been an eloquent interpreter of this position. If one develops that view, free from the shackles of the EU, the UK can, as it were, float like a butterfly, sting like a bee, daily picking up trade deals here, there and everywhere. The EU, it has been said, is an analogue organisation in a digital world. Try telling that to the negotiators putting in place the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, the biggest free trade deal ever implemented, should it be finalised. The US has made it clear that Britain acting in isolation would have no chance of joining up. Size and clout still count for an awful lot in world affairs. The EU holds 16% of global trade, compared to 14% for China and 10% for the US. The US, China and India have all made it clear that they want the UK to stay in the European Union. Britain exerts much influence in the world, given that it is a country of only some 60 million in a world of 7 billion, but it does so in some large part through collaboration and the attempt to enforce common rules within the EU itself, in NATO and in the UN.

Nor is it the case that leaving the EU would magically allow the UK to restore tight control over migration. Switzerland is not a member of the Union, but has negotiated a deal which allows access to the single market, as Britain would also have to do. To do so, the country had to negotiate 120 separate agreements with the EU. Yet Switzerland has a far higher ratio of immigrants per head of population than the UK does—more than twice the proportion, in fact.

As I messed up my speech, I will cut it short. The natural impulse is to revert to traditional political battle lines at this point. Many aspects of the approach taken in the report could be questioned, but keeping Britain a full and influential member of the EU is crucial to the country’s future. I hope that all of us who share such a goal will work together on a cross-party basis, setting aside other political differences, to achieve this end.