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

Lord Oates Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Oates (LD)]

My Lords, I welcome the setting of a date for the referendum and I support the case for remaining in the European Union set out in the White Paper. I hesitated before putting my name on this rather long speakers list but I am glad that I did because I just do not recognise the European Union that so many noble Lords have described—where apparently we have no friends, can win no votes and have no influence.

I thought it was Britain that had led the way in creating the single market, in securing admission of the members of the former communist bloc, in opposing Putin and securing a united approach to Iran, in pushing a free trade agenda and in living up to all of General de Gaulle’s worst nightmares. Of course the EU is not perfect. Of course it needs continuing reform. But we are not alone in thinking that. If we would for once drop the grumpy old man act and seek out our allies, we would find them. But for now our focus has to be on the referendum. I hope that the positive case for our membership will be made in this campaign and that it will not descend into an unrelenting diet of negativity.

I want us to convince the British people of the benefits of the European Union, as I have done since I rather proudly had my first and indeed only letter published in a national newspaper in 1993, calling for a referendum on the Maastricht treaty. I wanted then—and I want us now—to show why, despite all the inevitable frustrations of any multinational organisation, the EU is a massive force for good in the world, that Britain is a massive force for good within the EU, and that British exit would be very bad not only for Britain but for the European Union.

My case for the European Union is a simple one. It is about peace, prosperity and solidarity in the face of the many challenges that confront our world. It is about the benefits of working together rather than drifting apart in antagonism and misunderstanding. It is about avoiding a descent into the nationalist competition and conflict that have afflicted our continent so many times in the past.

While I want a campaign that focuses on the positive, I am not persuaded by those who object when the facts are pointed out to them—the Brexiters who cry, “Project Fear” every time someone puts a point to them that they cannot or will not answer. This was the tactic of the nationalists in the Scottish referendum. Unable to answer some of the most basic questions about their future outside our union, they shouted, “Project Fear” to distract attention. So let us not be distracted by those Brexiters who have decided to take a lesson straight out of the nationalists’ playbook. Let us be relentless in reminding them of reality and challenging them to deal with it.

On the day that the referendum date was announced, the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, spoke on BBC radio. He was asked what life would look like after Britain had left the European Union. Rather like the noble Lord, Lord Lawson, he said, “That’s simple; it will be like it was before the EU”. The noble Lord went on to describe, in some detail, his pride in Britain as a country that had intervened on numerous occasions to rescue Europe from war and domination. He catalogued the occasions over many centuries, from the days of, in his words, “the dictator Philip of Spain”, through the Napoleonic Wars and into the First and Second World Wars. I do not know exactly how many millions of lives were lost in those conflicts but I do know that arrangements that bring people together to work in partnership for peace and prosperity are better than the arrangements we have had in the past and may, if some Brexiters get their way, end up with in the future.

This is not some tired historical discussion. Today the external pressures on Europe are greater than they have been for decades and the internal threat from nationalists selling divisive politics and beggar-my-neighbour economics is higher than it has been since the 1930s. In such circumstances, I am sorry to see distinguished former Cabinet Ministers, who I feel I grew up with, drinking the elixir of Brexit. Many of them played important roles in the development and success of the European Union and the single market. All of them have had the privilege of living the majority of their lives free from the threat of European war, as part of a European project which has helped nurture democracy in the former fascist and communist states of southern and eastern Europe and has contributed to delivering peace and prosperity to our continent.

So I say to the noble Lords, Lord Lamont, Lord Lawson, Lord Howard, and others: I want my generation and the generations that follow to continue to share in the privilege that they themselves have enjoyed. I want them to continue to work, study and holiday throughout Europe. I want them never again to fight their way across it. The noble Lord, Lord Lamont, in declaring his support for Brexit today, described the referendum as a once-in-a-generation opportunity. I hope that it will not be a one-off opportunity for his generation to screw up the world for my generation and the generations to come.