European Union Bill

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

My Lords, when we leave the European Union, we will not do as the noble Lord, Lord Davies, suggests. We will take back those waters that were our waters, take back those fish that were our fish and re-establish our national fishing industry. That is what we will do. As the noble Lord has mentioned, this was not actually in the amendments but as the noble Lord, Lord Deben, mentioned it in connection with me, I thought that I would just touch on it in closing.

The noble Lord assumes, again, that some form of European common energy policy is in any way necessary for this country. We simply rebuild our own energy supplies. We do not let the European Union close down our coal-fired stations, as my noble friend Lord Willoughby de Broke has mentioned, but build new ones. We might even consider incineration of landfill. We certainly consider nuclear power. We therefore supply our own energy. If we then wish to go on buying Russian gas through France, which is what we have to do at the moment, then we may be able to, but I entirely agree with my noble friend that this pursuit of wind power is madness of a dimension that only the political class could be guilty of. I think that that covers everything that I had to say to the noble Lord, Lord Deben, and I shall sit down.

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

Perhaps your Lordships would welcome it if we began to come to the end of this enormous debate. I agree with my noble friend Lord Lamont that the effect of this debate has been to clarify our differences, particularly the concerns of noble Lords opposite, about the Bill, and the worries that lie at the centre of their anxieties.

I do not want to parody what the noble Lords, Lord Liddle and Lord Triesman, have said again and again. They wish for more flexibility, and by “flexibility” they mean the readiness to agree to or even initiate treaty changes. They further argue that in some of its provisions—notably Article 48(6), but in others as well—the Lisbon treaty provided this flexibility, which somehow the Bill is reversing and putting back in the box. I think that that is a fair summary of where they stand. I question straight away whether they have got the Lisbon treaty quite right. We know that using the passerelle provisions requires a treaty change, and in a life experiment, not a laboratory experiment, we have seen how that is conducted. It is conducted through some very elaborate negotiations on an urgent issue that will not be solved by any immediate policies to hand—namely, the stability of the European financial and monetary system—and, to meet that, a treaty change is winding its way through the system and will take one year and three-quarters to come to fruition and be agreed. So that structure, that passerelle arrangement—which, incidentally, was as noble Lords know very well, an agonising compromise between several other suggestions at the Lisbon treaty negotiations—is certainly not a quick solution, a flexibility device, an emergency provision, which somehow the Bill is negativing. That is not the pattern.

Then we come to the broader question of whether treaty changes generally are synonymous with flexibility. I have considerable difficulty with the line taken by the Opposition. Not only does it take 18 months to two years to work up and elaborate treaty changes and get them agreed between the 27 members, which all have their own procedures for handling these matters, going through their own legislatures and constitutional arrangements and, in many cases their own referenda arrangements as well, but this seems to be a very poor response, a very poor kind of flexibility and a very poor pattern of responding to emergency and difficult issues.

As I understand it, the implication of the amendments, which extend the exemptions to a very wide range of issues, is that it would be nice to be ready to have treaty changes in an enormous list of things. We dealt with banking and financial regulation in the previous group of amendments, and I would be testing the patience of the Committee if I went through that again. However, these amendments deal with climate change, pollution, energy security, migration, cross-border crime, neighbourhood policy, maritime law, piracy and human trafficking, about which my noble friend Lady Williams spoke with such precision, knowledge and telling appeal. In all those areas, as I understand it, the amendments would like to see treaty change. I wonder whether the Opposition realise quite what they are asking for; it seems extremely doubtful that treaty change is the way to solve crises or problems in any of those areas. The amendments appear to have been drafted on the assumption that the Bill is trying to impair the UK’s role and participation in all these areas. They take no account of the fact—and it is a fact—that the existing treaties which extend enormous areas of competence to the EU already afford the European Union ample scope—I shall show in detail why this is so—to legislate in all the specific areas referred to in all the amendments.

If I were to go through that vast list now, we would be here till well after midnight and probably the early hours of the morning, so I cannot do justice to every aspect. But let me try to show how, in many of these areas, the competences are there. The need to plunge into this complicated area of treaty change is minimal; the opportunities for creating a highly effective European posture and policy are available within the existing competences and the existing absolute competence in particular is available to the EU in trade questions. Let me explain some of the points where this is so.

Perhaps I should begin with referenda generally and the concern that a multiple stream of referenda lies ahead if the Bill gets on to the statute book. That, I think we have established, is nonsense. Far ahead, a great new treaty could touch on a number of the issues we are looking at tonight. But the idea of a stream of referenda, which I know noble Lords in many cases dislike intensely, is unrealistic. In two highly eloquent pieces of oratory in two debates, my noble friend Lord Deben has let us know that he does not like referenda at all. That is my impression from listening to his words. He is perfectly entitled not to like referenda at all. However, he must face it: they increasingly creep into modern government, particularly in this internet age when 2 billion people, out of 6 billion on this planet, are on the web every morning. This obviously empowers people and leads to more consultation of public opinion than ever before in many democracies. It goes with parliamentary representative government; it does not undermine it, provided it is handled in a sensible way.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord, but no one, as far as I know, has tabled an amendment to Clause 2. It states that if there is a major new constitutional package there will have to be a referendum. No one has argued about that—not one person. What we are all arguing about is whether you need this cascade of Clauses 3, 4, 5 and 6 that block off the non-intergovernmental conference treaty big-package route. Honestly, I ask the noble Lord not to answer the wrong question. All the amendments relate to this cascade of referendums for matters that are dealt with within the Lisbon treaty.

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

The noble Lord, who is very skilled in these matters, knows that he is putting the question upside down. It is dangerous to halt a cascade, because you may have to divert it, and the cascade that the Bill is designed to halt is the cascade of small competence and power transfers that have been going on over the years in many areas and have caused a lot of people to fear that competence creep—I am sorry to repeat that unfortunate term—and power creep are continuing all the time, allegedly under parliamentary control, but somehow without proper public discussion, and certainly without the consent of the people.

The referendum-lock device is precisely to ensure that when the big transfers of competence and power come, they are in a clear package. The noble Lord said that that was the wrong thing to talk about, but that is the way that it will happen, like the Lisbon treaty, and the country will be invited, because of the many items that will involve competence transfer, to have a referendum on them. That is precisely my point. There will be no cascade because, if the Bill works effectively, which I think it will, the great changes needed in the 2020s and 2030s in the European Union, as it adjusts to new conditions, will have to be treated in a substantial treaty that must and will automatically trigger a referendum. That is entirely right and it will offend only those who, like my noble friend Lord Deben, do not like referenda at all. However, for most people, including 84 per cent of the country, or their children, that will be the right way to proceed. It should ensure that some degree of trust, reconnection and support for the great European cause is resurrected. At present that support is fading away very fast. It is draining away in Finland, Hungary, to some extent in Poland and in many other countries. I am not sure that even in Germany these matters carry the popularity and support needed for the kind of reforms we want to see in Europe.

This is a very serious matter. I do not say that this Bill alone will do the job of reconnection—of course it will not. We need leadership, articulation and an understanding that giving more and more powers to the centre is an outdated 20th century idea and that the more you accumulate powers at the centre, the more you get public disaffection and remoteness. That must be understood. It must be understood that in this networked age, you do not need centralisation to carry out effective powers. Once that is understood, we will begin to get shapes in the European Union that relate to and connect with the people, as the Laeken declaration pleaded for almost a decade ago. That is why I believe that these exemptions will increase mistrust and take Europe back, rather than forward to the 21st century adjustment needed in the information age, and why I therefore plead with the noble Lord and his colleagues to withdraw the amendment.