EU: UK Membership

Lord King of Bridgwater Excerpts

Tuesday 25th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord King of Bridgwater (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, for introducing this debate and the argument for making the case for Europe. We all appreciate him initiating this debate and, speaking first from our side, I also congratulate the noble Baroness, as her namesake did before me, on a most interesting and excellent maiden speech on what I think is her major topic—which was very convenient for her.

I make it absolutely clear, as somebody who has always supported our membership of the European Union, that I believe that this is the right time for a fundamental reassessment of the state of the European Union, our position in it and the importance of the negotiations on which we are about to embark. I believe, very much as my noble friend Lord Howell said, that this is not just a matter for us with a British interest; it is acutely in the interests of all the nations of Europe at the present time to stand and take stock of what is actually happening. I have found that there is huge ignorance about what Europe really looks like at the present time. I have quizzed some of my noble friends on this Front Bench before on how many members there are now in the European Union—hardly anybody ever gets it right—and the developments that are taking place.

I come to this because for six years of my life I represented the United Kingdom in the Council of Ministers in Europe, because before I did Northern Ireland and defence I was doing environment, transport and employment. There I was, sitting in the Council of Ministers of nine member states, all really with a similar standard of living and level of economy, with the possible exception of Ireland. There was very much a feeling that Ireland, with a population of 3 million joining a European Union which at that time was getting on for 300 million, would have the advantage and that its economy would be brought more to the level of those of the other countries, which is exactly what happened.

Then I take stock of what has actually happened now. The enlargement started quite gradually. In 1981 Greece came in, Spain and Portugal in 1986, Austria, Sweden and Finland in 1995—but in 2004 came this vast expansion. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Malta and Cyprus, followed—as we remember well—by Romania and Bulgaria in 2007 and Croatia in 2013. Waiting in the wings as candidates are Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Albania and, if it remains as a candidate, the largest of all by far—Turkey. That is 28 going on 33 and undoubtedly, if one looks at eastern Europe, there is the possibility of one or two more.

I was brought up to believe that if Europe expanded, if we were going to move as we did and support the enlargement, it could not just be the same Europe that it had always been—and this is where the important point arises. Can ever closer union coexist with ever greater enlargement? I think the particular problem—a point made very clearly by the noble Lord, Lord Empey —is that it is happening at a time of quite exceptional international instability. We have stopped talking about the problems of immigration. The problem now is of almost mass migration out of certain countries. If you look at the membership of the boats that are sinking in the Mediterranean, are those people Iraqi, Syrian, Lebanese, Egyptian or Libyan? Look at the refugees at Calais who are coming from Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia and Yemen—different countries that are practically ungovernable; almost completely failed states from which huge numbers of people are deciding to get out.

That situation, along with the very porous boundaries of the Schengen agreement—there is no doubt about how all these people are arriving in these different places —is putting an additional serious pressure on the national attitude to the European Union. Those of us who believe that there are considerable benefits from our membership of the European Union cannot just sit there echoing the phrases, “Not an inch” and “No surrender”—phrases that the noble Lord, Lord Empey, knows well—to your European policy, believing that that is the right thing to stick by. Unless people wake up and realise that there needs to be a fundamental renegotiation, in the interests of all the countries of Europe at the present time, popular attitudes will become absolutely demanding of far greater change than might be in the interests of the people of this country.