EU: Reform

Lord Pearson of Rannoch Excerpts

Thursday 16th May 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

Of course, many things require the agreement of nearly 28 member states—Croatia is about to join. There is a great deal that we can achieve without treaty change; the Lisbon treaty has considerable headroom in it. The question of whether we are likely to face treaty change in the next five years is much more to do with what form banking union takes—I am sure that the noble Lord read Mr Schäuble’s article in the Financial Times the other day—and with other areas of management of the eurozone.

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

My Lords, as a first step towards closing down the whole ill-fated project of European integration, why do Her Majesty’s Government not propose the abolition of the euro, with all its participants returning to their national currencies? Would that not start to ameliorate the suffering of the Greek, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Cypriot and—soon—French people? Would it not also give us financial and monetary clarity for the longer-term future?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I am fascinated by the way in which the noble Lord approaches some very complicated international issues. I am struck by the extent to which European Union regulation and global regulation go together. While the UK is inside the EU, we are playing a major part in negotiating global regulation, for example on tax and on how the global framework for digital regulation will evolve. If we were to leave the European Union, we would lose our influence over the evolution of global regulation—unless the noble Lord is such a free trader that he believes that we should have no global regulation at all.