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

Lord Jopling Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jopling (Con)]

My Lords, while I am fully aware of the shortcomings and the nonsenses of the European Union, I speak tonight in favour of our staying within that organisation. I must say that I sometimes feel that my patience is tried by the way in which those who oppose it seek to deride it. My experience goes back a long way on this. I feel that the anti-European approach has not changed very much at all over the years. We still have the same people, or their philosophic heirs, bridling at the very word “Europe”.

I remember almost 60 years ago, in 1957, moving what I think was the first motion of the Conservative Party conference about Europe. Then, all we were asking for was that we should seek with others to form an economic alliance with the original six members, which eventually turned into EFTA. It was overwhelmingly agreed by the party conference but there was a substantial number of Conservatives who voted to oppose it at that time. That was nothing to do with the six—it was to found an economic association that, as I say, turned into EFTA.

Over the years, we have still had what I sometimes regard as the same mindless approach to anything that has a Europe tag to it, relating to the colour of passports, women’s institutes’ cakes and straight carrots. I remember back in the 1960s, when I was a member of one of the first departmental Select Committees down the road, which Dick Crossman set up, we had the Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Agriculture saying that we should not join the European Common Market because we would then have to put up with grey kippers. It all reminds me very much of giving a dog a bone.

Now, of course, the Eurosceptic element is having a field day belittling the Prime Minister’s agreement to reorganise our relationship with the European Union. Quite frankly, they cannot have it both ways. They wanted many more fundamental changes than they have got, nearly all of which could be achieved only through a treaty. But within the timescale that the Prime Minister had set out of having a referendum before the end of next year, it would clearly be impossible to get a treaty through the processes. It was just not within the timescale and therefore treaty changes were impossible, but that is for the future.

We now have our new relationship with the EU. We are out of the euro; our borders are protected under the Schengen agreement; we have barriers to benefits for immigrants seeking them; and we are excluded from ever-closer union. This puts us into a new position, which is a sort of halfway house between full membership and solely being members of the EFTA agreement. That is an admirable position to be in and far better than being outside with little influence over crucial EU decisions, which could be very damaging to us.

Of course, not all Eurosceptic arguments are trivial in the way that I have talked about. One argument is to refer to loss of sovereignty and the desire for our Parliament here to make our laws. I do not object to a certain loss of sovereignty in this modern, global world but I do not hear dissent from those Eurosceptics when we come to consider the massive loss of sovereignty which we have with regard to NATO. It is a far greater loss of sovereignty when we commit our armed services to the possibility of our servicemen dying under the command of foreign generals. I am not against NATO in any way; I am vice-president of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly and as far as I am concerned, long live NATO.

As a former member and president years ago of the Agriculture and Fisheries Council, I am convinced that the relationship between European Parliaments and Governments over these last 50 years or so means that, after 70 years without a great European war, much of that period of peace is due to the development of the European Community—not all of it, of course. I have two sons, and I regard the creation of the European Community as a principal reason for them not having been involved in such a great European conflict, unlike so many young people over the centuries who have died in a succession of European wars. I see this period of European peace as the greatest achievement of my political generation.