European Union Bill

Lord Kerr of Kinlochard Excerpts

Monday 9th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I simply do not accept what the noble Lord has said. I have been quoting from an Act from the last Government—his Government and that of the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Stamford, who was a Minister in it and who has now rubbished it. The Bill restates established practice, which in no way means that the British national media will—

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard]

I suggest that the reference to a scrutiny reserve is not quite right. A scrutiny reserve prevents a decision being taken, so the decision is not taken until the scrutiny reserve is lifted or the Minister goes into the statistics of the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, and decides that he will override the reserve and does not apply it any more. There is no decision until the scrutiny reserve has been dealt with, so the chicken and egg point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay of Chiswick, is real. I hope that we do not need to pursue it much further tonight, but it does need to be thought about.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I am very willing to reflect on this point and see whether we can return to the House with any words of comfort, but I fear that we are chasing headless chickens around the yard a little. I will leave it to others to decide whether the eggs are headless as well.

To conclude, we are not the only Government who—I will give way once more to the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Stamford.

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Moved by

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard]

30: Clause 6, page 4, line 33, leave out “to which this subsection applies” and insert “under Article 140(3) of TFEU which would make the euro the currency of the United Kingdom”

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard]

My Lords, I should like to start by offering an apology to the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, for something I misheard on our second day in Committee. I was not here on the third day and this is my first opportunity to correct that which I misheard. After I had spoken, the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, said:

“Is it not true that none”,

of the judges of the Court of Justice,

“would pass muster as a judge in even the lowest and least distinguished of British courts?”.

I thought that that was an assertion and I did not reply because I did not think that it deserved a reply. But on looking in Hansard I see that it was a question. I apologise for mishearing the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, and for not answering his question. Clearly, the ears of the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, are better than mine and he spotted that it was a question. He began his subsequent remarks by saying that,

“the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, is not going to answer”.—[Official Report, 26/4/11; col. 90.]

As a result of what the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, said and that reply, I feel that it is necessary for me to say that my silence did not in any way imply assent. I feel that it is important to put into the record what I think about the judges of the court, of whom I have known about 12 or 14. In this House, there will be some who remember with respect and affection Lord Mackenzie-Stuart. There will be many of us who would wish that Sir David Edward was here with us. The present judge from the UK, Judge Schiemann, is an immensely distinguished jurist with, behind him, I think, nine years in the High Court, eight years in the Appeal Court and seven in the Court of Justice. And all of us will remember the contributions that Lord Slynn of Hadley used to make from these Benches to our debate. These four men have been British justices in the Court of Justice and to none of them, by any stretch of the imagination, could the criticisms made by the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, apply.

I greatly admire the imaginative and irrepressible verve that the noble Lord brings to our debates but it is really important that we should not make absurd allegations about a serious institution and serious people. I thought that it was important to set the record straight and to say what I would have said had I not misheard the noble Lord at the time. I hope that the Government Front Bench will confirm now, as I am sure that it would have done had I not misheard, that it agrees with me and not with the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, on the quality of the judges of the Court of Justice.

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

I do not know how many of the legal luminaries to which the noble Lord has just referred are present members of the Luxembourg court. I would merely say that those of us of a Eurosceptic bent do not really regard the Luxembourg court as a court of law at all. We regard it as the engine of the treaties, endlessly pursuing, in its judgment, the ever closer union of the peoples of Europe.

I do not think it was the Luxembourg court, but we owe it to the Daily Express, which recently ran a two-page spread complete with colour photographs, to see a summary of the members of the Strasbourg court. I do not think that they pass muster either. Of course, if there is a judge in the Luxembourg court who would pass the muster which I have suggested he may not, then I am happy to apologise to him, or indeed to several of them. But that does not alter my strictures and the strictures of the Eurosceptic movement in this country regarding the Luxembourg court and its proposals over the years. One thinks again of Article 308 as it then was, and other flexibility clauses in the treaty, which it has used and adapted relentlessly to pursue the project of European integration.

Those are my comments and I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, for his apology.

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Pearson. Unless I misheard again, the noble Lord did not end his remarks with a question, so I am not going to respond except to say that the Strasbourg court is, of course, elected by parliamentarians. I do not think that the Strasbourg court has anything to do with this discussion, which is about the European Court of Justice, but I am grateful for the words of apology from the noble Lord.

I turn to Amendment 30. Here in Clause 6 we are in a different part of the forest. We have abandoned treaty land and treaty amendment by any form, and now we are into decisions of various kinds and the mandatory referendum requirements for those decisions. By definition we have therefore left coalition agreement territory because we are not talking about treaties any more. We are now dealing with the 56 categories of decision on which a mandatory referendum could overturn an Act of Parliament. As the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, pointed out at the start of the Committee, that would be unprecedented. These referenda are entirely unnecessary because a Government, if they wished, could always choose to say no in the Council. The law requiring referenda is particularly unnecessary because, as the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, pointed out during the third day of debate, not having a reference in the Bill to a particular requirement for a referendum does not mean that a Government could not, on the day, choose to say that they wanted to have one. All this does is tie the Government’s hands, which of course some would want to do.

Why have we got into this curious mess in these extraordinarily detailed thickets—and we have not yet looked at Schedule 1 where mandatory requirements are to be imposed? I can think of only two rationales. The first was the one that the noble Lord, Lord Lamont of Lerwick, talked about in a different context during the third Committee day. It might be called the Odysseus rationale. We would have a British Minister, let us say the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford, sailing past Brussels and insisting that he be tied to the mast so that he cannot be lured by the siren voices with their seductive song. He wants to be able to say, “Look, guys, I have nothing against what you are saying, but I can’t possibly agree with you. If I did, we would have to have a referendum back home”. It is the wax in the ears and tied to the mast provision—the Odysseus provision. I think that it is very pusillanimous. I would have found it very hard to brief Mrs Thatcher, as Prime Minister, on this point. Mrs Thatcher thought that if you disagreed with something, you disagreed with it. You said no. You did not say, “I am terribly sorry. There is nothing much we can do about this because we would have to have a referendum and we do not want one”.

It is insulting to our negotiating partners to turn up tied to the mast. They expect to do serious business, but the Brits cannot do so because of this Act on the statute book. The Brits therefore cannot take part in negotiations. It will feed the temptation and tendency for people to do things in smaller groups without consulting us because we are such a bore.

[Lord Lamont of Lerwick]

I am most grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. According to his argument, Ministers will be put in a position where they have to say, “I cannot agree because we will have to have a referendum”. Why is he assuming that a referendum cannot be won? Why is it not possible for a Minister to say, “I agree to the draft decision. We will put it to the people and we hope and intend to win”?

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard]

That is a fair question in relation to, say, the euro, which is the subject of Amendment 30. If we were to decide that we wished to join the euro, it would be totally reasonable for the Minister—I would like to see the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, in this role—to say to his ECOFIN colleagues, “We would now like to join the euro, but this is a big one and I am afraid that we will have to have a referendum on the issue”.

[Lord Gilbert]

Forgive me for being impertinent, but could the noble Lord define his pronouns? He said, “If we were to decide”. Who are the “we” he is referring to?

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard]

The British Government of the day. My point, in answer to the noble Lord, Lord Lamont of Lerwick, is that when you look at the sort of decisions in Clause 6, they are the kind which the British public are not going to be remotely interested in. The public prosecutor and all that is not referendum stuff. It is therefore particularly difficult to play the Odysseus rationale because everyone knows that you are not going to have that referendum. You are going to block the decision in Brussels in order to postpone sine die the referendum. That will be the effect of what you say.

There is a second possible rationale, which is the one we hear from time to time from the Government Front Bench, usually in the context of the treaty. It is the one that particularly worries me. I think it worries the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, and everyone who knows about the way in which opinion in Brussels is moving now. It is the argument that the noble Lord, Lord Howell, comes up with when he says, for example:

“The picture of a dribble of referenda on small issues completely misunderstands the way in which the European process works now or will work in the future, whether this Bill is on our statute book or not. I have obviously explained that insufficiently because the message has not got over, but as we continue our debates I hope to be able to make clear that the pattern will not be dissimilar to the pattern of the big treaty packages in the past”.—[Official Report, 3/5/11; col. 369.]

There is a worrying misunderstanding here. In Brussels, everyone is determined that there should be a discontinuity. Everyone is determined to break with big treaty packages. That has been true for 10 years and it is why the convention invented the passarelle. Why do people want to avoid big treaty packages? If efficiency is your criterion, it is more efficient to make a change when the need arises. It is not very efficient to put the change in a hover and say, “We’ll wait for the next big package”. It is more transparent and democratic to give member states the right to agree or disagree with single specific decisions. It is good to get away from the awful IGC business of trade-offs, where people do a market haggle and things go into treaties which some would say should not be there in order to buy somebody else. The issues should be considered separately and on their merits, and they will be in future. That is why the convention produced the ideas that it did about accelerated methods of treaty reform—and passerelles in relation to decisions that do not require treaty reform.

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[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard]

I—

[Lord Stoddart of Swindon]

Order. You cannot intervene on an intervention.

[Lord Triesman]

I have a feeling that I am going to give way instantly.

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard]

I cannot let the noble Baroness get away with that. The North Atlantic treaty says that when we go to war, our forces will be under foreign command. The supreme commander is an American general. That is fact. The Western European Union treaty, the revised Brussels treaty, says that when any of the parties to the treaty is attacked, we are all at war. These are huge transfers of sovereignty that were done, of course, without a referendum—quite rightly.

The noble Lord, Lord Lamont, talks about a European army but that is not what the treaty says. It might in the end be what someone comes up with, but the treaty talks about a European defence force; the noble Baroness, Lady Nicholson, correctly read out the treaty passage. It seems almost inconceivable to me, though I would like it very much if it were true, that non-aligned and neutral countries—the Irish, the Austrians, the Swedes, the Finns—would wish to get into any kind of binding defence arrangement remotely like the ones that we are already a member of, the Western European Union and NATO. We are dealing with a very remote contingency here. It would be a momentous national decision for us.

[Lord Triesman]

My Lords, that makes the point that I wished to make about the character of the alliances, even in an area that is as sensitive for us as defence. I suspect that most people would conclude that our membership of those alliances has been absolutely fundamental to the security of our country and would not wish to see them shaken. Were there to be some absolutely massive change in the architecture of defence, it might be so substantive as to require a mechanism that is contained in an amendment and has been in past undertakings that we have made. However, it would be a fairly extraordinary event that looked as though it were even more significant than the arrangements that we have under the provisions of the NATO treaty.

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[Lord Howell of Guildford]

I accept that. I note that I had already crossed out the words “Act of Parliament” in my notes in anticipating that comment. Unfortunately, in the excitement, I put those words in, so I take them out again. However, when we come to the minutiae, there may be some qualification even to what I am saying.

I want to try to explain why shortening the list is not the right thing to do, and to deal particularly with the passerelle provisions, on which the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, commented with his enormous expertise and hinterland of understanding of these things, having been in at the creation of not all the passerelles—some have existed for many years but never been used—but of those that we dealt with in the Lisbon treaty, which we had first seen given birth to in the constitution, which unfortunately came to a sticky end.

I say as a preliminary that all this discussion about referendum requirements against treaty changes and for certain decisions where no treaty change is required, and for giving up vetoes—in other words, allowing the right to be outvoted on certain issues—takes place against a background of huge areas of existing power and competence in the European Union. When one thinks of the enormous range of areas where the European Union can legislate, and where we can develop all kinds of positive ideas and initiatives to enable it to deal with entirely new global conditions of the 21st century, I am always left a little bewildered that we should come back again and again to the probably, I suspect, fairly marginal areas—these may be very small areas indeed—where there is supposed to be a tremendous yen for new treaties and extending the competences and powers of the European Union. These are areas in the margin of the real world of the European Union, where many of us have been involved over many years, and where enormous tasks have yet to be carried out which do not require yet a further extension of the powers and competences of the European Union. I say that just as background; I want to come back to that point in more detail a little later on.

I turn more specifically to the amendments. Of course I am very pleased that the signatories to the amendment have accepted the principle that a decision on whether to join the euro is of such fundamental importance that the people should decide. I have argued before—Ministers have argued, the Government have argued and the Bill argues—that the referendum requirement is a vital part of rebuilding trust with the British people. We perfectly accept the point made by the Constitution Committee of your Lordships’ House that referenda should not be used, as it put it, as a “tactical device”, and that referenda should, as we argue, be used for more critical issues of fundamental importance. We therefore come down to a central question running through all this debate—what are the critical issues? What are the fundamental problems and matters on which it would be right for people to be consulted before powers are pushed away or—whether through treaties, various procedures, the passerelle device or simply a decision of this Government—they decide to give away a certain power or move in a certain direction?

We begin with a puzzlement as to why the other one-way irreversible decisions in Clause 6 that we are talking about and I shall come to in detail are considered any less important in the minds of noble Lords than the euro. I find it difficult, as do a number of noble Lords who have spoken with great precision and accuracy, to conceive that the monetary independence of the UK should be considered essential to our national identity and economic interest—an argument apparently accepted by the supporters of the amendments—but not the UK’s military independence and commitments to NATO, if it were decided to establish a common EU defence that might well conflict with those commitments. We have held many debates in this House in the past four or five years about the dangers of that.

Why consider just the euro but not the impact that joining the European public prosecutor’s office could have on the UK’s judicial independence, as my noble friend Lord Faulks clearly emphasised. I want to refer to that in much more detail. I note that the previous Government opposed that. The present Government are against it. Many of the Nordic countries think that it is an extremely bad idea. There is very little support at all for the proposition. Yet the suggestion that there should be a safeguard against what would be a major incursion into the criminal justice system in this country is not seen as important. I cannot give all the details, because I know that there are different views on this. What about the UK’s ability to police its own borders? This is a red-hot issue, yet for some reason it is not included in the list.

Allow me to elaborate on some of my remarks. A decision on whether to join a common EU defence is fundamental, as it could result in a common EU army—the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, said that that may not happen immediately; but it could happen—and in giving the EU the power and legal right to decide on the deployment of UK civilian and military assets in a way that is not the case with NATO. It is of course perfectly true that operational command is under an American supreme commander, and that on the battlefield decisions and powers may be taken that can subordinate British forces to others. However, the suggestion that we should move in a new direction and be aligned with some of the European Union’s ideas is a new departure. These would be huge decisions on which the British people should decide that are discussed on the doorstep.

It is reasonable to suggest that Parliament and the people are entitled to ask what extra benefit would be bought by moves of that kind. The UK has long valued its NATO membership and key bilateral defence relationships within Europe, of which the treaty with France announced last summer is one. The UK also values existing mechanisms for security and defence co-operation within the EU. Bilateral and multilateral co-operation is an essential part of our approach in the UK and to wider international defence—as has recently been shown in Libya and earlier off the coast of Somalia, through Operation Atalanta. All that is going on; all that is thoroughly sensible; all that is within the operational activities of the European Union and I find it hard to see why an advance into a completely new area of power delegation and power transfer should be brushed aside. It would be a major development.

I turn to the issue of the public prosecutor, because a good many comments were made on that. It is coalition policy that we will not participate in the establishment of any European public prosecutor. We know that it is a sensitive issue, as was recorded by the House of Lords Select Committee on the European Union in its 16th report seven years ago. It is perfectly true—the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, spoke with great expertise on this—that Article 86(2) provides only for the European public prosecutor to combat crimes affecting the financial interests of the Union. Although that is so, the participation of the UK in a European public prosecutor would mean giving up control of a fundamental part of our judicial system: the decision on who can be brought for prosecution in this country. That is not a small matter. That is a vital principle. As Article 86(2) states, a European public prosecutor,

“shall exercise the functions of prosecutor in the competence courts of the member states”.

In other words, a European public prosecutor would have power to prosecute in those member states within the prosecutor’s jurisdiction.

In England and Wales, it is the responsibility of the Crown Prosecution Service to decide whether to prosecute and whether to take over any private prosecution, so powers granted to a European public prosecutor would cut across that well-established principle. As the noble Lord, Lord West of Spithead, when a Minister in the previous Government, informed this House:

“The Government have consistently opposed the creation of an EPP”.—[Official Report, 1/3/10; col. WA325.]

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard]

I agree with everything that the noble Lord, Faulks, said on the European public prosecutor. It seems to me highly unlikely ever to be suitable to a common-law country such as us or the Irish. I am delighted to hear the Minister say that it is coalition policy is to play no part in that. It was precisely because of such considerations that the article in the treaty specifically provides for a group of nine or more to go off to do their own thing, so we are in a rather unlikely scenario here when we come to the point on which a referendum requirement is imposed. That is the question of whether the European public prosecutor’s office, set up to look after the financial interests of the Union and prosecute fraud against the Community budget—and unsuitable in this country as a vehicle for doing that—should extend its role to cross-border crime—human trafficking or whatever. That is a really unlikely contingency, because we will not be in the thing anyway. Surely, if we had an issue for a referendum, it should be: should we have common procedures for prosecuting people who traffick children? That issue is referendable. The issue of whether the European public prosecutor's office, in which we will be playing no part, should have its role extended into that area is a very rum one to choose to block. That is why the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, was absolutely right to say that this provision in Clause 6 is completely inappropriate, although I agree with the noble Lord, Faulks, on the substance of the EPPO.

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

All these issues are interconnected. In Clause 6 there are two concerns about the surrender of our veto, and therefore the opportunity for others to outvote us on those matters and the agreement to go along with the public prosecutor proposal, which is, of course, already in the treaty. One is joining up with and adopting the European public prosecutor proposal; the other is the extension of the public prosecutor's competencies and the regime which might follow.

Therefore, those are both areas where, because successive Governments have set themselves against them, one hopes that the matter will not arise. However, it is one of the issues involving big decisions—and they are big decisions; there are five such issues and I shall come to them in due course—where there would not be a treaty change but where, as Clause 6 suggests, the British Government should put the matter to the people in a referendum, and the public prosecution proposal is certainly one of them. Perhaps I may mention the big five issues. I do not want to take an unlimited amount of time over them, difficult as it is to cover all the issues.

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[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard]

I thank the Minister for his disarming response to the debate. It was an interesting debate. I am a little sorry that the Front Bench has not associated itself with the defence of the ECJ that I rather inadequately attempted.

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

Much of what the noble Lord said on that matter is correct. There is no question of challenging the integrity of the very senior legal figures who have served their country and Europe very well, and I associate myself with some of the noble Lord’s remarks, although some decisions coming out of the ECJ and the European Court of Human Rights are a different matter, and I would question them very strongly. However, I would not question that the personnel involved are men and women of integrity, uprightness and skill.

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard]

I am grateful to the Minister. The most endearing feature of the debate was that it was the first of our debates in Committee where we all agreed on something. We all agreed that the grouping was insane. The Opposition Front Bench said that the grouping was insane, and the Minister said that the grouping was unfortunate. One wonders where the grouping comes from. Clearly nobody in the Chamber was in any way responsible for it. It came down from above. Perhaps it came out of Brussels or some dreadful place like that.

It was a difficult debate because of the amendments seeking to subtract, the amendments seeking to add and the amendments of very different weights. At the end of the previous short debate, there was, as the noble Lord, Lord Tomlinson, pointed out, a very significant move by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, who indicated that he might be prepared to go away and think about something said in the debate. I urge the coalition to share this insight.

It would be extremely good if the Minister too would consider at the end of these debates whether there might not be something that he would be prepared to think about further. He has very kindly said that he would be happy to explain, meet informally and discuss, but that had slightly the ring of the schoolmaster: “If you guys only do your homework, you will in the end understand the wisdom of the Government’s Bill”. I am not sure that that is quite going to do the trick. I think it will be necessary to come back at a later stage to the scope of Clause 6, but for the moment, I withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 30 withdrawn.