Estates of Deceased Persons (Forfeiture Rule and Law of Succession) Bill

Lord Lamont of Lerwick Excerpts

Wednesday 15th June 2011 Lords Chamber

It has been argued time after time—

[Lord Lamont of Lerwick]

Is not one difference between having a referendum on an issue such as the National Health Service or local government reorganisation and a transfer of power and competence from the UK to the EU that in the case of the latter it is almost irreversible? It is extremely difficult to reverse.

[Lord Taverne]

The noble Lord has made a point which on the face of it is plausible. It very much ties up with the argument put by the Front Bench that the case of transfer of power in Europe is different because there is a special problem about British trust in the European Union, which can be restored only by giving people a say. Then by some extraordinary leap of logic, it is suggested that they should have a say on issues such as appointments to the European Court of Justice or the protocol on the excessive deficit procedure, because that would apparently restore trust—because in the pubs they talk of nothing else.

As the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, revealed in Monday's debate, the European Union is not the only body that has lost people's trust. Parliament is distrusted even more than Brussels—by 66 per cent, he revealed, as compared with only 64 per cent in the case of Brussels. The Government are mistrusted by 67 per cent. What is the answer to this mistrust of Parliament and Government? According to the Government's logic, the answer is more and more referendums—more power to the people. Who are the most mistrusted of all by miles, by 82 per cent? The political parties are. What should they do? Obviously, the answer is to promise more and more referendums in their election manifestos because people would have more say and, as Rousseau preached, the will of the people must prevail. I am amazed that speech after speech from Conservative supporters of the Bill echoed the cry of Rousseau; the inspiration of Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety. They abandoned the philosophy of John Locke, one of the architects of parliamentary government, who also inspired the founders of the American constitution—and, of course, goodbye Edmund Burke.

The noble Lord, Lord Howell, and others have told us that we will not have referendums in this Parliament. If there is a referendum in a future Parliament it will not be a separate referendum on each individual item in the list of the 56 but on a whole batch of changes together. We will be given a choice of saying yes or no, in a single vote, to a licorice allsorts collection, including perhaps the decision on a new Advocate-General, on new tasks relating to prudential supervision by the European Central Bank, on a multiannual financial framework and so forth, as if any such choice of one yes or no vote to cover the lot could possibly make any sense.

The noble Lord, Lord Howell, said that it will be no different from voting for party manifestos in elections with their long list of promises. Personally, I do not subscribe to the general belief in the sanctity of the manifesto mandate. Parties should make fewer promises and grade their commitments at election, with some as aspirations and others as commitments that they can safely undertake irrespective of changed conditions. Manifestos are too detailed and they do not allow for events. As Macmillan said, “Events, dear boy, events”, affect you.

At least manifestos relate to issues with which voters are familiar. Nothing could be more remote from their experience of everyday concerns than most of the items in the list of 56 possible referendums in the Bill. Essentially, the vote at elections is for something that people understand: choosing a new Government. The analogy of the noble Lord, Lord Howell, does not stand up.

The Bill is highly dangerous for two reasons. First, as the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, and others with great experience of European negotiations have argued, it may lead to immobility and sclerosis on many occasions when what we need above all is flexibility. Just as serious—I would argue even more so—are the crucial constitutional issues in the Bill that undermine the system of parliamentary government and are a major move towards government by plebiscite, California-style.

Some of the Bill’s supporters seem positively to welcome this. With others, it seems that the hostility of Eurosceptics to Brussels is so strong that it outweighs concern for parliamentary government, which has served this country so well. I hope that some of them will recognise that our system of parliamentary government matters even more.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lamont of Lerwick]

My Lords, when the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, spoke in the very first debate on the first amendment in Committee—or perhaps it was on Second Reading—he said that he was like a minor character in Shakespeare referred to in Act 1, Scene 1, and never heard of again. It has, however, been to the benefit of the entire House and the Committee that instead he has been bestride the stage like a colossus. Great as my respect for the noble Lord is, I do not feel that a sunset clause on this Bill is any more appropriate than a sunset clause on a local government reorganisation, a National Health Service reorganisation, or anything else.

However, there has always been an argument for attaching a sunset clause or a sunset condition to some EU legislation with great advantage, because so much EU legislation is irreversible. That is a point that I have made before, but I repeat it simply because I think that that is the problem of connection between the public, Parliament and the EU, and one of the reasons why there is scepticism and mistrust about the European Union.

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

Is the great distinction about referenda which the noble Lord is making—he has made it twice this afternoon—whether a decision once taken becomes irreversible, and that in that category there should be a referendum; and that in other categories there should not? If so, why will there not be a referendum on reform of the House of Lords? Surely that will in practice be an irreversible decision. Once you have a democratically elected legislative Chamber, you can hardly go back on that.

[Lord Lamont of Lerwick]

I have not heard that there is not going to be a referendum on legislation for the House of Lords; I have heard many people speculating that amendments may be moved. We shall see, and I shall see how I vote on the interesting suggestion made by the noble Lord.

It has been said that this debate has at times been something of a Second Reading debate on many of the amendments. That is because the Bill has been misrepresented in several of the debates in an exaggerated way. The noble Lord, Lord Howell, has made it clear again and again that we are not going to get a plethora of referendums, for several reasons. First, changes in competences and powers tend to come in packages, in treaties. Secondly, we have been assured many times that we will not have more great treaties. The fact that certain vetoes and certain competences remain after we have had Lisbon, Nice and Maastricht shows that there are very good reasons why national Governments wish to retain them. No Government are going to invest a huge amount of political capital in pursuing some relatively minor matter. That is not how these things operate; they tend to come in packages.

People talk about these issues being trivial. We are talking about competences and powers. We are talking about vetoes, for example. The noble Lord, Lord Kerr, referred to the amendment very well proposed last week by the noble Lord, Lord Davies—I think it was Amendment 22A—about exempting defence procurement from the requirements of the internal market. He said that that is something that could advantage the country, and surely we ought to have the flexibility to move to QMV. Actually, I think it is important to be able to buy certain types of defence equipment and certain weapons, or produce them where you want to, and not have them subject to the full rigour of the market. In the previous Government, Des Browne himself—now the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Ladyton—said that he regarded that as a vital power to be retained by the British Government. Judging by the previous Government and what the former Secretary of State said, that is an extremely important power for this country to retain.

The noble Lord said the Bill was otiose because the Government were not intending to hold referenda in this Parliament. As the noble Lord, Lord Howell, said, the Bill will apply in this Parliament. It is not otiose any more than the Act giving effect to the Maastricht treaty. It had an opt-in for Britain to opt into the euro, but it was made very clear that we were not going to opt into the euro in the next Parliament. That did not make it otiose.

Then we have heard the argument that we are legislating for future Parliaments, but of course it is perfectly open to any future Government to repeal the Bill. With great respect to my noble friend Lord Jopling, we would be getting the worst of all worlds if we enacted the Bill but then said that the whole floodgates could be opened again without any specific intention at the beginning of each Parliament. I can think of nothing that would inflame public opinion more and get the tabloid press—about which we have heard a lot in this debate—going again than if, without any specific intention, a Government decided at the beginning of each Parliament to open the floodgates to the reversal of this legislation. We are told that it will lead to inflexibility in negotiations. However, other countries have procedures that take a long time and they have certain provisions on which they have to hold referenda. We have seen how it takes time for some of these treaties to be legislated for in other countries. Therefore, I do not think that the position of Britain’s negotiators would be any different from that of other countries.

What has been confusing in these debates is that this legislation is about competence and powers, whereas people try to make it about issues and policies. Nice, Lisbon and Maastricht have all given a tremendous amount of power and transferred sovereignty to the European Union. What in terms of power and competence do the Opposition and those opposed to the Bill think the European Union needs? What is the issue? What is the European Union not able to deal with at the moment? We have had many changes in recent years. The United States constitution has had only 27 amendments since coming into existence but we produce endless changes. The European Charter of Fundamental Rights was written in very dense language and was much longer than the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or the charter of the United Nations.

The noble Lords, Lord Kerr and Lord Hannay, have certainly enlightened our debates with their enormous expertise and very abstruse knowledge of difficult and complex issues. However, when I listened to them I was reminded of what Winston Churchill said when he became Chancellor of the Exchequer. He came out of the Treasury and said, “These chaps speak Persian. I prefer generals and admirals”. Of course, the contributions of the noble Lords, Lord Hannay and Lord Kerr, have been extremely important and enlightening in these debates, but I think that with some of these abstruse issues—the language used and so on—there is a real problem of connection between ordinary people and the European Union.

What has not been recognised enough by opponents of the Bill is the tremendous crisis that is taking place in Europe over the European Union. We have seen dramatic changes in public opinion on European integration in countries such as Finland. However, I would particularly single out what has happened in Holland. Throughout my life, Holland has been the most pro EU-integrationist country in Europe; now, it is the most obstructionist. It is strongly opposed to the bailouts of Greece, Ireland and Portugal and it wants to dismantle the Schengen provisions as well. The Bill draws a red line to say that in this Parliament, and beyond if this Government are re-elected, there will not be a transfer of powers. It seems to me to be sensible legislation and we should be determined to carry it forward. I think that the red lines we are drawing will go some way to restore some trust in the European Union.

[Lord Grenfell]

My Lords, after so many Second Reading speeches at a Report stage, it may well be sunset before we reach a decision on this amendment. I have only one thing to say following the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Lamont. My experience in this place has been that your Lordships’ House has always been quite reluctant to call for sunset clauses—we do not do so lightly. They are a very important instrument and one has to treat them with great respect and care. The noble Lord, Lord Lamont, asked: if we have one on this Bill, why not have one on a number of other pieces of domestic legislation? I agree with him. I would not want to see a sunset clause on those pieces of legislation that he mentioned. However, there is a big difference between those and this piece of legislation.

This Bill has huge constitutional implications, but it is a step in the dark at the moment for us because we do not quite know what they will be. As it is of such huge constitutional importance, I feel that there should be the safeguard of a sunset clause because the next Government will be in an experimental stage of having to see how this legislation will be implemented. I do not think you can group this piece of legislation with other kinds of legislation and say that if you want a sunset clause on this, you should have it on the rest. This is a special case. It needs to have a sunset clause in order to be sure that when we step out into the darkness—it will be dark when the legislation first starts to have an impact—we can, if necessary, draw back from the brink.