EU: UK Isolation

Lord Howe of Aberavon Excerpts

Monday 22nd April 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Howe of Aberavon]

For pretty well all of our 40-year membership of the Union, successive British Governments have sought to maintain a position of strength for this country at the top table of the European Union politics. Whatever opportunities may have been missed and whatever mistakes might have been made, a common thread throughout the period has been that consistently Prime Ministers and Foreign Secretaries attempted to avoid the development of anything approaching a two-speed Europe. We have accepted opt-outs and derogations in specific cases, but we have never allowed Britain to lose its place at the heart of EU decision-making, although we have been sliding away from the centre.

One of David Cameron’s first acts as Prime Minister was to decline to attend eurozone summits, whereas his predecessor, Gordon Brown, not exactly a noted euro-enthusiast, fought tenaciously to ensure that he was always invited. Our absence has made it more difficult to articulate Britain’s voice on some of the key decisions in the eurozone debt crisis. I do not need to spell out at great length my anxiety about the imminent shift in responsibility for banking supervision, for example, from the traditional EU institutions in Brussels to the European Central Bank in Frankfurt, based on a new banking union from which we seem determined to exclude ourselves. It is worth recalling that when the EU Bill was debated here at Westminster, two years ago, we were assured that it would have no operational effect in this Parliament, yet we now know that fear of the need for the passage of an Act of Parliament helps to explain why the Prime Minister vetoed the EU treaty change that Mrs Merkel wanted in December 2011.

The net effect is not just that we are throwing up unnecessary political obstacles in the way of our own involvement; we are beginning to stand in the way of others moving ahead. In fact, the real terms of British membership of the Union have sadly already been redefined; instead of seeking to continue leading in Europe, the Government are in danger of gradually locking us all into the defensive mentality of a country reconciled to life on the margins, as support for European membership declines and Euroscepticism becomes increasingly dominant.

If the Prime Minister is serious about obtaining what he calls “fresh consent” for our membership of the Union in a referendum that he presumably hopes to win, he must begin now to set out a more realistic account and a more positive vision of why the European Union should feature as part of the future of this country, and how and why we can play an important role in helping to shape the future of our continent, as well.