European Union Bill

Lord Goodhart Excerpts

Monday 9th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne]

The point of my remarks is very simple. I believe most profoundly, along with a number of others who support the Bill, that that is exactly the sort of transfer of sovereignty—absolutely au fond the transfer of real sovereignty of the kind that matters most of all to us, which is our defence—which should surely be put in front of the British people. I refer to the making of a common defence and security policy. Let us take Amendment 28A; let us recall that the Council of Ministers and the European Council and the institutions of the European Union in their wisdom can make unanimous decisions without many people being present—not only without ourselves being present but without others who would agree with us and are also members of NATO, for example. So we can have a unanimous decision without core members of NATO being present. Those are common defence and security policy issues. I believe most powerfully that that is the fundamental transfer of real sovereignty, which puts many other things in the pale. It really matters.

I would be aghast if that happened through the mechanism that the Government have put forward in this Bill, which is a good Bill and not a great constitutional Bill as the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, suggested. I do not think it is that at all; it is a very good, solid, small and middle-of-the-road Bill, which opens the door for us to speak directly to the British public. I cannot help but feel that if we close the door again, as the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, and his colleagues would recommend, and put down a referendum merely on the euro, which it is extremely unlikely that we will ever join—look at Greece, for a start—and we do not have referenda, it will all be done by Twitter anyway. It will all be done on the web. This mass of knowledge base that the public have will be expressed in another way, and our Parliament will become ever more excluded from what in effect will be the national debate.

My only point is a simple one. The integrity of the Bill is demonstrated by the linkage with the people. The only way in which we as parliamentarians can offer the people a true linkage is by referendum power. I was interested and pleased to see—result or no result—that 42 per cent of the electorate turned out on the referendum last Thursday. People want to express their views. They want to be asked; if they are given the knowledge, they will respond. They are very used to it these days—are not we all, with iPhones and so on? It is most foolish and self-defeating to say, as the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, did, that these amendments, which are in many ways contradictory, as I have already pointed out—some going too far and some not going far enough; in that sense they are really wide of the mark in some respects—do not remove the context in which the Bill is based and would not be foolish in terms of Britain’s future.

[Lord Goodhart]

My Lords, I am entirely in disagreement with what my noble friend has been saying. This Bill is full of absurdities, and the most absurd of those is that referendums will have to be held for changes in 56 sets of EU rules, even if they are minor changes that are of no particular interest to members of the public.

There is a large number of these possible proceedings, listed especially in Clause 6 and Schedule 1. Of these, only one—the decision to make the euro the currency of the United Kingdom—would clearly justify a referendum. In practice, it is inconceivable that there will be any decision to seek to make our currency the euro. It is arguable that a decision under the Schengen protocol to remove UK border controls would also justify a referendum, but none of the other matters in the Bill does so.

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[Lord Lamont of Lerwick]

I think that it is common ground that we are all in favour of increased national involvement in treaty changes and changes in the competences and the power of the European Union. That is a point that the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, has gone out of his way to emphasise. That is common ground; the argument is about where there should be referenda. My argument is that, whatever the general arguments about the Bill, these provisions, particularly the European defence policy, the euro, our borders and the European public prosecutor are suitable projects on which to have a referendum.

I said that I had listened carefully to the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, and that I always do. I was with him on a committee that considered the European arrest warrant, and I was in a small minority in expressing strong reservations about it. Some of the arguments that were put forward then were, “Well, it’s going to apply only to a few criminals”, “It won’t apply to very many people”, and, “Why should people be worried about appearing in a court?”. Many of us would argue now, though, that it was a hugely significant transfer of powers that has now worked out in the way that it was intended to. There have been many examples of injustice, certainly several that are known to me personally, and it is something that I very much regret. I hope that we might return to that subject and amend the arrangements that exist.

Article 86 of the TFEU, which refers to the possibility of the public prosecutor, talks about,

“offences against the Union’s financial interests”.

Fair enough if we are talking about offences against the Union, as the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, has often emphasised, but one wonders in what ways those words might be stretched. One notices that subsection (4) says:

“The European Council may, at the same time or subsequently, adopt a decision amending paragraph 1 in order to extend the powers of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office to include serious crime having a cross-border dimension”.

I know that the noble Lord said that he was not in favour of that extension, but this is a big area and one that is suitable to give great consideration to. Peter Hain, Britain’s representative at the convention leading up to the constitution that never was, strongly opposed participation in the EPP. He said:

“Criminal prosecution should be essentially a national responsibility. Our national prosecutors must be accountable to national courts and ultimately to our national parliaments. The European Public Prosecutor would be accountable to neither”.

It is true that these are not treaty changes but they are big increases in competence, brought about through the passerelle, which we do not have to endorse. In ratifying Lisbon, we were not endorsing that we would automatically let these things go through. For that reason I am strongly against the amendment.

[Lord Goodhart]

The noble Lord is right to say that the European arrest warrant has not worked out as properly as it should have done or as we expected it to at the time. However, this matter wholly involves people who are concerned with international crime. How does the noble Lord see that it could operate to the damage of ordinary citizens of this country, who make up the vast majority of those who find themselves in court?

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[Lord Goodhart]

Perhaps my noble friend will explain why judicial independence is damaged by our relationship with the EU.

[Lord Risby]

I will be delighted to. I will come in a moment to a discussion of various elements such as passerelle clauses, which I hope will cover this point.

Clause 6 sets out which passerelles would automatically trigger a referendum if powers or competences were moved from the UK to the EU. We touched, for example, on the matter of defence. This reflects the reality for us that EU member states have different relationships with third countries and different foreign policy priorities. For example, the UK has particularly strong relationships with interests in the Commonwealth. It would be wrong to give the EU the ability to prevent us developing these relationships. I am sure that that is perfectly logical, and it is covered in Article 31(3).

I turn to measures on working conditions and social security. Noble Lords will know that QMV already applies to many decisions concerning the health and safety of workers, working conditions, informing and consulting workers, combating social exclusion, modernising social protection systems, as well as to decisions in areas such as the European social fund. However, there are important things left for unanimity; for example, social security and the social protection of workers, the protection of workers when their employment contract is terminated, et cetera. These things can have a huge impact on the life of an individual nation and the businesses that add to the prosperity of that nation. Any move to QMV could jeopardise independent national decisions on that score. If we look at environmental matters, for example, they are mostly covered by QMV, but there are others that are still subject to unanimity. We would, of course, like to retain national control of what is left on the environment where there is a fiscal element attached to them: town and country planning; the management of water resources or the availability of those resources or land use; and, of course, the choice of energy resources and the general structure of the energy supply. These are very important for people at an individual level, a community level and a national level.

So, as we look at this debate and hear the discussion, I find it rather perplexing that our currency alone seems to have a critical aspect for our relationship with the EU. I think it is misplaced. There are all these other areas of vital concern to our national interest which concern people in terms of our relationship with the European Union. Coming back to my original point, it is precisely because we want to defuse the difficulties that have arisen in terms of public opinion and the public’s attitude to the European Union with a totally pragmatic Government—that has been obvious in the past year—that this Bill is in place. If we have red lines, they have to be very clear and very red. The amendments would make the Bill incoherent and make the public very suspicious and alienated. That is exactly what this Bill seeks to avoid.