Estates of Deceased Persons (Forfeiture Rule and Law of Succession) Bill

Debate between Lord Hamilton of Epsom and Lord Pearson of Rannoch

Wednesday 15th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

My Lords, I will not delay the House for long and I certainly will not repeat many of the arguments that have been made extremely well by my noble friends. But I should like to take up a point made by my noble friend Lady Falkner who was seriously worried that the problem would be one of delay when this Bill has to be renewed at the beginning of each Parliament. I am afraid that I come from a more paranoid side on this. My view is that we do not want a sunset clause because, if we had, say, a non-Conservative Government, it might be quite attractive for them to let this Bill lapse. There would be a bit of a row that would last 24 hours and they would get away with it. It would be much more complicated—indeed, almost politically impossible—to put forward a Bill to cancel this Bill, put it out of business all together and repeal it. So I come from a rather different angle but I reach the same conclusion as my noble friend.

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, who has just answered the noble Lords, Lord Dubs and Lord Flight, and has come to the right conclusion. I am no longer bamboozled by this Bill or this amendment.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

I am not sure that my erstwhile noble friend should take such comfort from that. One of the reasons people join UKIP is that they are worried that they are going to be drawn further into the European Union, and certainly they will be much reassured when this Bill reaches the statute book that that is not going to happen. I suspect that he will see his membership going into reverse, but that will be his problem rather than mine.

I was interested in the opening remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Kerr. He said that the whole of this Bill is otiose because it would not have any effect in this Parliament. My noble friend the Minister intervened to say that of course it would in terms of updating the stability and growth pact because it was going to be exempted, and there might be other amendments from the European Union. I am afraid that I do not take quite such a phlegmatic view. The eurozone is in a state of crisis at the moment. That makes one wonder, when one looks at the people proposing these amendments, how many of them would have suggested that it was a good idea to join the eurozone some years ago. We all mistakes in politics, but that would have been a major one. If we had joined the eurozone and we were in it today, I can tell the House now that the asset bubble we have seen over the past few years would have been even bigger because the interest rates we would have enjoyed in the eurozone would have been much lower and this country would be in even greater difficulties than it is today.

Let us return to the eurozone. I believe that it is reaching a crisis point, one where a decision has got to be made. Members of the eurozone either have to let the thing collapse and completely disintegrate with defaults happening one after the other, starting with the periphery countries and moving steadily towards the centre, or they have to completely revamp the eurozone so that there is probably a finance ministry or a massively beefed-up European Central Bank. The reason I am boring the House with all this is that that would need a treaty change. The Government would argue that such a treaty change would concern only members of the eurozone, not the United Kingdom, but I have to say that that treaty change would have come through both Houses of Parliament and possibly could be subjected to judicial review as to whether there were transfers of sovereignty as a result of such a treaty change coming through.

Noble Lords might say that that is not going to happen in this Parliament, but is it not? At the moment there is a guarantee on sovereign bonds within the eurozone that will last until 2013, but we have to ask what will follow after that. I have to remind noble Lords that 2013 comes two years before the time when we are to have a general election in 2015. I give way to the noble Lord.

European Union Bill

Debate between Lord Hamilton of Epsom and Lord Pearson of Rannoch

Wednesday 8th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

That was not the story that I was told. If I had realised the massive implications for the transfer of sovereignty as a result of signing, I would not have supported the referendum on the question of our membership of the European Union.

There has been a tremendous amount of deception. Not only is it an understatement of what we have signed up to, but it is a process of grandmother’s footsteps—a little bit at a time, always understating the implications. Therefore, with reference to the amendment, if we leave it with Parliament to make the decisions about whether the implications of the business are worthy of a referendum, we are right back in the position of deceiving the people of this country and will merely sow more mistrust and undermine the whole purpose of the Bill, which is to reassure the British people that if there is any question of us being drawn further into the European Union we will put it to them to decide whether it should happen.

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

My Lords, there is another reason to disagree with the amendment. Any Joint Committee composed of Members of your Lordships' House and the other place is bound to be stacked in favour of the Europhiles. In your Lordships' House, we now number some 800 Members, of whom I think only eight are prepared to say, more or less in public, that we should leave the European Union. That compares with some 84 per cent of the British public who want a referendum on whether we stay in the European Union at all—which has nothing to do with the Bill—and more than 50 per cent who believe that we should leave outright. In recent years, I have often pointed out that the composition of your Lordships' Select Committees is skewed in favour of Europhilia, even by the standards of your Lordships' House. I have not made a recent examination of the members of the main European Select Committee or its sub-committees, but I am prepared to bet that not a single member of those committees agrees with at least half the British people, and perhaps only two or three of them could be regarded as vaguely Eurosceptic.

In the House of Commons, some 26 Members have joined the joint Better Off Out group and have voted in a refreshingly Eurosceptic direction on the Bill and other matters. The Joint Committee of both Houses of Parliament of course will be stacked by the Whips and will, in the recent tradition of both Houses of Parliament, get wildly out of tune with the British people—something that the Bill is supposed to do something to correct. The amendment goes in entirely the opposite direction and I hope that it will be resisted.

EU: Budget

Debate between Lord Hamilton of Epsom and Lord Pearson of Rannoch

Thursday 28th April 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

My Lords—

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

My Lords—

European Union Bill

Debate between Lord Hamilton of Epsom and Lord Pearson of Rannoch

Tuesday 26th April 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

Yes, and perhaps my noble friend would like to remind himself why William Hague fought the election on European issues. It was because he had done so incredibly well in the European elections not much before, and it seemed at that point that the country did not want to have anything to do with Europe.

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

Perhaps I may also remind the noble Lord that Mr Hague did not fight that election on the issue of Europe; he fought it on the issue of the euro, the currency. He said that the election was, in effect, a referendum on the currency. That was not wise, because a referendum on the currency had already been promised by all parties. That election was not fought on the issue of Europe.