European Union Bill

Lord Pearson of Rannoch Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

I would never seek to claim that over the noble Lord. When he says that votes for prisoners had nothing to do with the Luxembourg court but came from the Strasbourg court, does he agree that under Article 6 of the Lisbon treaty the European Union has signed up to the jurisdiction and generality of the Strasbourg court? They are connected.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea]

There is a very slight nexus because of that recent linkage. The noble Lord will surely know that the European convention, the European court and the Council of Europe as a whole come from an earlier stage of European integration in the late 1940s and early 1950s that was very different from the treaty of Rome and the more integrationist stage that came at that point. I hope he will look through the debate in the other place on votes for prisoners and, alas, see the enormous ignorance of those who failed to see that distinction.

So what do we have? We essentially see a failure of leadership. If there is a disconnect, it is surely in part because of the Government’s failure of leadership in trying to put over the case for Europe, as the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, did so eloquently. If only there would be something positive about Europe from this Government. The only thing I have seen was from Mr David Lidington, who is a very able Minister, tucked away in a Written Answer on 10 January.

I come to the specific proposals, and I shall be brief because I can adopt everything that the noble Lord, Lord Williamson, said about the referendums. If it were in the judgment of the Government of the day against our interests, we would veto it in any event. If the Government seriously thought that it was in our interest, they would come out against this great cloud of ignorance that has, in fact, been created partially by the Government. In fact, there are unlikely to be many examples.

As for the referendums, excluded from them are the accession treaties, and who can doubt that one of the largest influences on our country would be, for example, the accession of Turkey? Yet there would be no referendum in respect of Turkey. A number of the transfers would benefit us—one thinks of the foot and mouth matter and QMV in the past—and the definition of “significant”. The sovereignty clause has been mentioned by many colleagues. It is essentially symbolic. It is gesture politics. No Parliament can bind its successor. It is superfluous, meaningless and a waste of parliamentary time, and is to be seen only in the context of the Government’s problems with their own Back-Benchers.

The key principle of this Bill appears not to be to be at the heart of Europe but rather them and us, as if we are engaged in a constant struggle against those who wish to conspire against us and our interests, and our need to confound their knavish tricks. In fact, it is a very false picture. It is a gesture to the populist press and step by step, as was the danger during the 1990s, we will be led inexorably along a road to distancing ourselves, or at least to a semi-detached status.

Finally, I am reminded of a distinguished observer of France on the eve of the French Revolution who looked at French aristocrats who were flirting with revolutionary ideas and said very sagely that those who were blowing upon the flames would one day be consumed by them. The Conservative Party is indeed blowing on those flames, and there is a real danger that the public might go for the real thing. There is UKIP, and one day it might find it is indeed consumed by it.