EU Referendum: Assessing the Reform Process (EUC Report)

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Lawson of Blaby, but I will spare the House a description of the very large number of areas in which what he said relates more closely to fantasy than to reality. Speaking as someone who is no longer a member of your Lordships’ EU Select Committee, I can without embarrassment or self-congratulation say that the report we are debating maintains the high standards of topicality, forensic inquiry and probing of the Government’s positions which remain the mark of the committee’s work. The same can be said of the opening remarks of the committee’s chairman, the noble Lord, Lord Boswell of Aynho. If I have a criticism of this report, it would be that it is overly focused on process and says too little about the matters of substance that are at stake. I would hope that the committee will remedy that shortcoming in further reports as we move closer to the date of the referendum.

In paragraph 49 of its report, the committee, very wisely in my view, urges the Government to engage fully with the devolved Administrations. The Government’s response to this recommendation can best be described as limp and inadequate. The consequences of a vote to leave the European Union for the three devolved Administrations could be dramatic, and would certainly be irreversible. The risk that Scottish and Welsh votes to remain in the European Union might be overturned by an English vote to leave is extremely likely to trigger a demand, in Scotland at least, for a further referendum on independence.

The risks in Northern Ireland are different but even more severe. In the event of the two parts of Ireland emerging with one part inside the European Union and the other outside, we could find ourselves slipping towards a re-establishment of border controls on goods, services and people. This would be a major backward step, fraught with political dangers. So would a loss of the European arrest warrant, which has underpinned the depoliticisation of the island-wide fight against terrorism and organised crime. One should not underestimate the importance of that particular instrument. The issues at stake in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland really need to be better understood and more fully debated. Otherwise, we could be sleep-walking towards a binary choice best described as that between two unions and no union.

The committee’s report rightly devotes a good deal of attention to the role of national Parliaments in influencing and shaping EU legislation. The committee’s comprehensive list of ideas in this area remains, I suggest, the best available quarry for possible reforms. The Government’s attachment to the terminology of a “red” card is, I fear, too likely to prove both misleading and counterproductive: misleading because there is no question of a single national parliamentary veto being agreed and counterproductive because red card terminology will cut across the necessary task of gaining support in other member states for the strengthening of the existing yellow card procedures so that they work more effectively. This is a case where the Government’s and your Lordships’ House’s objectives are cutting with the grain of European opinion, but they could be damaged by overbidding.

In last night’s Committee proceedings on the EU Referendum Bill, there was some mockery by those who advocate the UK leaving the EU of the fact that those of us who advocate Britain’s best interests being served by remaining in the EU are focusing attention on the weaknesses of the possible alternatives to membership in the event of a vote to leave. But to do otherwise would surely be to display astonishing complacency, which could only bring its own nemesis. Moreover, those who advocate leaving need to explain and to defend the alternatives they favour, if the electorate are not to be duped and left completely unaware of the consequences of the decision they are being asked to make.

The problem is that there is no agreement among those advocates of leaving on the alternative to be picked. Do they favour the Norwegian model, the Swiss model, the Turkish customs union, a WTO membership framework or simply a leap in the dark? Nor is there any agreement among them as to whether the UK outside the European Union would set a tariff lower than the common external tariff, higher or, perhaps, just the same—in which case, what on earth is all the fuss about? These are all important choices that need to be made and to be set before the electorate before they make their choice.

So there are plenty of substantive issues relating to the referendum, and they do not involve—here I respond to a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Boswell—taking sides in it, which I entirely agree would be quite inappropriate. But there are issues here on which our Select Committee could turn the spotlight of its attention. After the noble Lord has completed the trio of visits to Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, it would be extraordinarily valuable if a report could be produced setting out the main issues that have arisen during those visits and the conclusions of the committee on the attitudes of the devolved Administrations as, so far, we are in total ignorance from the government side of what those attitudes are. There is not a word in the reply to this report about their attitude; it merely says that the Government are engaged with them and that, if they are jolly lucky, Mr Lidington might go and see them one day. I think that we have to go a bit further than that. Of course, whether the committee takes up such a matter is of course entirely a matter for its present membership and not for a former member like myself.