European Union Referendum (Date of Referendum etc.) Regulations 2016

Lord Inglewood Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Inglewood (Con)]

My Lords, I have always believed that as the world evolves it will be necessary for political processes and the conduct of public business to adapt. For that reason, I have been a supporter of this country’s membership of the European Union and its predecessors, albeit they are far from perfect. They have brought to this country a wide range of benefits, many of them not at all easily defined as economic. I like our country being a member, and I believe that my family have gained great benefits and advantage from that.

We live in an interdependent world of networks, and we cannot simply unilaterally decouple from it all. Change has to be negotiated, and we must all recognise as part of those negotiations that our priorities may be different from other people’s; that is what our Prime Minister has recognised and what he has done. It is an interesting aspect of all this to me as a Conservative, but as someone who has also been a long-standing supporter of our membership of the European Union, that for him the line of least resistance in the Tory Party today would have been to go hell-for-leather for Brexit. But he has not done that; he believes, firmly, from the position that he is in, as do the majority of his colleagues, that the national interest should prevail and that it is in the national interest, despite all the difficulties that it is posing him, that we remain members.

For my part, there are two particularly significant reforms that the Prime Minister has achieved—not necessarily the headline reforms. The first relates to the relationship between those countries in the eurozone and those countries outside. It has been very important properly to entrench the fact that we cannot be discriminated against and cannot be compelled to bail out the eurozone if a disaster strikes there. It is interesting, too, that it was open to those countries that have gone into the eurozone to have done it completely outside the European Union mechanism. It is only because it is part of it that we are in a position to have secured that.

Secondly, the emphasis on the role of national parliaments is very important. It seems to me, not least because I have spent 10 years in the European Parliament, that the Monnet model of how the constitutional arrangements across the Union should work has not worked very well. There is a democratic chasm between some of the decision-making at European level and the citizen which needs to be bridged, and this could begin to be part of the process of doing that.

On a previous occasion, I explained that I thought that any fool could get divorced; the difficult thing is then dealing with the children and the financial settlement. If you look at Article 50, you see that once you press the button, you are not only out of what you want but you are out of everything. There seems to be absolutely no consensus about what should happen if we leave. Some people say that we should try to renegotiate, and others say that we should rely on the World Trade Organization. I am worried by the fact that there is no apparent plan from those who wish us to leave the union about what happens next. I do not think it is all right simply to say, sanguinely, “Well, it’ll be all right on the night”. I think they owe it to the public to be a bit more precise and firm about what the proposition they are putting in front of them might be.

I am concerned because, whether or not it is strictly logical, there is clearly a real risk to the union between England and Scotland. I live just south of Scotland, and what happens there is going to make quite a big difference to me. I am concerned that if we leave the European arrest warrant many of the security arrangements tied up with the Anglo-Irish agreement may well fall apart. That matters.

I do not believe in “one leap and we will be free from bureaucracy”. I was reading the newspaper coming up to London this morning, and read that the RPA’s activities have just been reviewed by the other place. The RPA is a bureaucratic nightmare. If you look at the administration surrounding the health service and education, you get the feeling that there is no country in the world that is more enthusiastic about bureaucracy than this one. I simply do not believe that in fact jobsworth does not really like bureaucracy here in England.

One thing is certain about Brexit: it is that, if you think about it, it is inevitable that once we have left the club, whatever terms we are offered later will be less good than the terms we are on now. The other thing that is absolutely clear to me as a lawyer, and having talked to many lawyers who are much better lawyers than I am, is that the legal unravelling of the arrangements we have in place are going to be very long, very drawn out, very convoluted and very expensive. I suspect that they would take a lot of people’s eyes off the ball, and that is not desirable. It appears to me that the case for Brexit is basically an article of faith; it is a step in the dark. It seems to me that I and the British public are being asked to stake the farm and everything else besides on a runner that has never previously run in a small race on a wet Wednesday afternoon—the 3.15 at Uttoxeter—and I do not think it is a good thing to do.