EU: Prime Minister’s Speech

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Thursday 31st January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

My Lords, I suggest that the Prime Minister's speech is a curate's egg—some good some bad. I include among the bad elements, the commitment to a referendum on a fixed timetable many years ahead on what may well turn out to be a false premise; namely, that wholesale treaty reform will be called for by others in a federating sense. That is not likely. They are more likely to go for rather modest changes to meet the requirements of the eurozone, so I regard that as unwise.

In one speech, the Prime Minister created a whole string of known unknowns. He should not have been playing Russian roulette with major national assets such as membership. I entirely see what the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes—I welcome her initiative in choosing this debate—said was not the end of the world. But nothing done by politicians has ever been the end of the world, yet. That does not mean that they have not done some damn stupid things.

It was wise of the Prime Minister not to choose a long laundry list of things that he wanted changed. Much more careful thought is needed as to how to approach this. I suggest three criteria are needed to be applied to any such changes. The first is: are the changes necessary for Britain's national interest and are they, at the same time, good for the EU as a whole? If the second condition cannot be met, they will not be agreed. The second criterion is: are they negotiable? The third is: do they match the Prime Minister's laudable objective of Britain staying in the European Union and influencing EU policy? The proposals published by the Fresh Start Group, which I would rather characterise as the false start group, would not fulfil any of those criteria.

However, we do need a positive agenda and we need that now. We do not need it in 2015 or 2016. We should be pursuing that now and be prepared to go outside the normal British comfort zone of single market completion, enlargement and freer world trade, although those are excellent things that we should be pursuing. But why are we not thinking more actively and intelligently about defence? The effect of austerity on defence budgets is surely pushing us all closer together.

My final word in the brief time that we have been allotted in this debate is; tactically astute, strategically reckless.