European Union Bill

Debate between Lord Hamilton of Epsom and Lord Radice

Monday 13th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

My Lords, I have been on a steepish learning curve for the duration of this Bill and one of the more amazing things I have learned this evening is that my noble friend Lord Goodhart is actually a supporter of the Bill. For some reason I got the impression that he did not really like this Bill at all. I am very encouraged to hear that he supports it, but I find it rather extraordinary that someone who is trying to support the Bill puts their name to an amendment which will mean that a whole lot of things that were going to be subjected to referenda will not be subjected to referenda any more.

As we know, the way in which the EU has operated for a very long time is that it never does anything in a great big bang: it is always “grandmother’s footsteps”, it is always one bit after another. It is very unlikely that at any stage the EU would introduce something saying that there should be a single, integrated military force. That would be much too large and dramatic a step. They would do it incrementally, bit by bit, until we ended up with a single, integrated military force.

[Lord Radice]

Is the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, actually arguing that it is not legitimate to amend this Bill? He is coming very close to that. This amendment is trying to accept the principle of referendum but confine it to the major issues, as our own Constitution Committee suggested was the best way forward. It is trying to escape from the fact that this Bill has referenda for 56 separate issues, which brings the whole idea of referendum into disrepute.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

I am very glad that the noble Lord, Lord Radice, has mentioned that point. This Bill covers a large number of issues concerning where there should be referenda. Of course, they are all wired back into the red lines laid down by a Labour Government. This is why they are in the Bill: they are not just dreamt up at random, they are related back to the red lines laid out by a Labour Government, and those are the issues that will now be subject to referenda.

The noble Lord’s accusation that I say people should not have the ability to amend this Bill is absurd—that is what we are here for—but some amendments have a much more wrecking impact on a Bill than others, and I would suggest that these amendments go a long way to removing most of the point of this Bill altogether. That is why I will not be supporting this amendment, but it will be up to the House to decide whether this amendment should go through.

My noble friend Lord Goodhart said that when these referenda come to be debated in the country the dinosaurs of UKIP will be the ones out there campaigning and winning the argument. I would suggest to him that if there is any rationale for UKIP, its primary purpose seems to be to have a referendum to decide whether we should stay in the EU. However, another reason people join UKIP is the feeling that not only are we in the EU but we are getting sucked further in. That is one reason there has been this pretty modest growth in the membership of UKIP, the feeling that not only are we in the EU but we are getting dragged further into a federal Europe, which people do not want to be part of. I think that UKIP is going to be very seriously damaged when this Bill becomes an Act of Parliament because it will be reassuring to people to know that we are not going to be taken any further into the EU and end up in a federal Europe for which nobody voted.