European Union Referendum Bill

Lord Pearson of Rannoch Excerpts

Monday 23rd November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 24C. In doing so, I pay tribute to the Minister for the way in which she has listened to the points raised, with some force and detail, in Committee. With the two amendments that she has produced today—Amendment 24A, in response to an amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, which I also felt was absolutely justified, so I am delighted that she has picked up his amendment and turned it into a government one, and Amendment 24B, which deals with matters that I and others raised—I think that she has made a major effort to meet the point that we made in Committee, and which I continue to make, which is that there will be a need for the electorate to receive factual, objective information from the Government about these extremely complex matters, additional to any information that will come to them, no doubt in tsunamis of rhetoric, from the two campaigns. The campaigns will be advocates but the electorate has to make a judgment, and it will be of essential value to them to have objective factual material provided by the Government. That is why we were extremely dissatisfied with the absence of any provision for this in the original Bill that was drafted by the Government and which came to us with the imprimatur of the other place because we felt that it was a completely inadequate basis on which to move forward to what is after all, as the Prime Minister said, one of the most significant and important decisions that this country has had to take for many decades. So that is a very good step forward.

I shall explain why we felt that the Government should be prepared to go further and be a bit more specific than they are in Amendment 24B, or at least than they were before the Minister gave some rather helpful clarifications this afternoon. I shall take two examples—two sub-headings—that illustrate the amendments that I and others have proposed. I start with Gibraltar because the Minister has mentioned it. What the effects of withdrawal would be is of importance to more people than just the people of Gibraltar. Our own wider electorate needs to know that Gibraltar became part of the EU only because it was a dependent territory for whose foreign affairs the United Kingdom was responsible. That was the sole basis on which it became a member, and therefore if the UK left, it would leave. That has quite important implications for the vexed issue of the land border with Spain, for example, which would cease to be an internal border of the EU and would become an external one. These are facts, not matters of opinion; they do not seek to draw the Government on to what would come after an Article 50 negotiation or anything like that. They are just so that the electorate knows that, the moment they cast their votes, certain consequences could follow from it.

Secondly, I take the law and order issue. The European arrest warrant was debated at enormous length in both Houses at the time of the Protocol 36 negotiations two years ago. It became apparent during that debate that the European arrest warrant is extraordinarily important for this country in terms of recovering indicted criminals from abroad and returning EU citizens who are accused of often very heinous crimes from here to the country where they have been indicted. These are hugely important for our law and order and our battle against international crime.

In those debates, it also became apparent how important the European arrest warrant is for the Good Friday agreement and what goes on in Northern Ireland because it has depoliticised the extradition arrangements between Ireland and Northern Ireland. In the past, they have been highly politicised and have led to a number of very unsatisfactory discussions between the two Governments, often not leading to the return of criminals who have committed terrible offences. Therefore it is important for the electorate to know that the European arrest warrant would disappear in this country if we left. I am not talking about what we might try to put in its place, the fantasies about negotiating 27 extradition agreements with the other member states or anything like that. I do not want to go there. That is not where the amendment was intended to go.

This afternoon, the Minister has given some important clarifications on a large number of the detailed specifics that I introduced. I and others will need to study them with great care. However, on the point about Gibraltar and the devolved Administrations, I entirely understand what she is saying—that it would not be right for the Government, off their own bat, to write in a report what the consequences were going to be for Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales or Gibraltar without consulting them and without having their view—but I hope that in her reply to this debate the Minister will go a little further. She said that the devolved Administrations and Gibraltar will be able to produce their own reports. That is fine. They would be reports to their parts of the electorate. I do not imagine—I do not speak in any disparaging way—that they will be widely read by the electorate of this country, yet the issues involve the electorate of the whole United Kingdom. Therefore, I hope that she will be able to say that after consultation with the Government of Gibraltar and the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland Administrations and assuming—I do not see why they should have any objection—that they are willing to do so, the Government will include the implications for the Administrations of Northern Ireland, Wales, Scotland and Gibraltar in the report to which Amendment 24B refers. This will allow the whole electorate to have a proper sight of all the implications. Frankly, those implications, particularly with regard to Northern Ireland and also to Scotland and Wales, could be very far-ranging. Therefore, I hope that when the Minister replies to this debate, she will able to cover that point.

We are making progress now. I shall listen with great care to the Minister’s reply. Others who proposed this amendment may wish to take up other points on which they would like to have clarification. Meanwhile, I look forward with interest to the Minister’s reply.

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch (UKIP)]

My Lords, buried somewhere in this group of amendments and, I think, in the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, is the question about what happens on Brexit to all the EU law which is now sewn into our domestic law. That law will remain valid until repealed. I hope that it will be helpful to your Lordships if I recall that in 1997 I got a Bill through its Second Reading in your Lordships’ House, on a vote, that would have taken the UK out of the EU. The same question arose, since one is not allowed to table Bills which cannot be executed in practice. At the time, the clerks’ advice was that it would have taken about a dozen parliamentary draftsmen about one month to identify all the EU legislation that was then part of our domestic law. The laws that the Government of the day wanted to repeal could have been brought before Parliament either singly or collectively for Parliament to repeal. Of course, the volume of EU law would be much larger now, the draftsmen required rather more numerous and/or the timescale proportionately greater. However, I make the point that the process and its happy outcome would be the same, and there is no reason why it should not be undertaken.

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[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

I point out that I am not in receipt of such a pension. If the noble Lord was referring to me, perhaps he will withdraw the reference. I am not sure who he thinks he was referring to among those on the Order Paper, but as far as I am concerned, I am not and never have been in receipt of a pension from the European Union. I ask the noble Lord to consider the fact that he will have ample opportunity in the name of his party to put forward his views, including those on the giant octopus in Brussels, which seems to be taking a day out today. The purpose of this amendment was not as he has erroneously described it; the purpose of this amendment was to persuade the Government, which we will perhaps succeed in doing, to provide factual, objective information that will enable the electorate to make up their mind on the point the noble Lord raises.

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

My Lords, if the noble Lord is not in receipt of an EU pension, I have nothing to clarify. I do not have to name names. I am referring to previous employees of the European Union—in particular, of the Commission—who are in receipt of EU pensions, which they can lose if they go against the interests of the European Union. If no one feels guilty in that regard, of course they have nothing to say. On the amendment, I am going into the fundamental reasons why it is misguided, and with the noble Lord’s permission, I will continue.

It is some time since I reminded your Lordships of that founding idea, which was that the European nations had caused so much bloodshed over the centuries that they had to be gradually emasculated and put under a new form of technocratic government that was to supplant national democracy, which it has indeed done; hence the EU’s absurd claim to have brought peace to Europe since 1945, which was instead of course secured by NATO; hence also the huge but little-understood powers of the unelected Commission, with its monopoly to propose new legislation, in secret—which is now so much of our own legislation—and then to execute that legislation when it has been through the Brussels sausage machine, imposing heavy fines along the way, and subject only to that engine of EU integration, the Luxembourg court. The Commission also manages the EU budget—so badly that its accounts have not been signed off for 21 years. Believe it or not, the Commission also negotiates all our foreign trade agreements—so badly that we still do not have a free trade agreement with China, India, Russia, the USA, Australia, Canada and many of the markets of the future. Singapore has had them all for 10 years. Who knows what that failure has cost our economy; the amendment refers to our economy.

As to what is left of our democracy while we stay in the EU, the Euro-lie goes that it is upheld in the Council of Ministers from the nation states, where we have only 12% of the votes and where we have been defeated on every single one of the 55 new laws we have opposed since 1996.

My first point is, therefore, that even if we did get any advantage from our EU membership, in any of the areas mentioned in the amendment, it would still not be worth it because the price would have been our democracy. However, the fact is that we do not, as my noble friend Lord Willoughby de Broke will confirm.

Europhiles try to frighten us by pretending that jobs would be lost if we left the EU. We are back to the economy again.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab)]

When the noble Lord is talking about democracy, what does he think of the democracy where a party—the UK Independence Party, say—gets a large percentage of the vote but only one seat in the Parliament? Is that the vibrant democracy that he believes in?

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

My Lords, no, of course not. If the noble Lord would care to read my peroration on this subject on 15 September, he will see that I opined that our first past the post system no longer produces a vibrant democracy in this country. The system which sends Members of Parliament to the House of Commons should be changed. Then one might find that the UK Independence Party would get one or two more seats.

As I was saying, Europhiles still try to frighten us that jobs would be lost if we left the EU. However, we would keep our free trade with the single market because we are its largest client. We have some 3 million jobs selling things to clients there, but it has 4.5 million jobs selling things to its clients here. Our Europhile friends then conveniently forget that only about 9% of our economy goes in trade with the single market, declining and in deficit; some 11% goes to the rest of the world, expanding and in surplus; but 80% stays in our domestic economy. Yet Brussels overregulation strangles all 100% of our economy.

Another Europhile silly one is to point out that we would still have to obey single market rules if we left the EU.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, we are on Report. I have heard the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, repeat these familiar arguments many times in the House, but I am not entirely sure that we are addressing the amendment under discussion.

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

My Lords, I think I am addressing it. I am going into the fundamental reasons why the amendment is misguided. I will continue, if I may. Only 9% of our economy goes to the single market and this is the percentage of our exports and economy for which we would have to follow EU rules. Of course we would, just as it pays to put the steering wheel on the left if you are selling a car to the United States.

Talking of cars, Europhiles give our car industry as one which would suffer if we left the EU. Once again, I remind noble Lords of Global Britain’s briefing note No. 96, which shows why that is nonsense. We import twice as many cars from the single market as we export to it—1.4 million in and 0.6 million out. EU manufacturers actually own 53% of our domestic car market. Why would they want to impose a tariff against their own profitable business? Indeed, I can go further and recommend that Europhiles particularly, and our civil servants, should take a little time to read the Global Britain briefing notes, which briefly but comprehensively destroy the economic case for staying in the EU.

In conclusion, the amendment makes the basic Europhile mistake of thinking that any area of our national life is funded by the EU, whereas of course for every £1 it sends us at the moment we have sent it £2.63. According to the latest Pink Book figures for 2014, we sent £19.994 billion gross in 2014 and the EU sent us back £7.665 billion for things such as our research budget, structural funds, farmers and so forth, as covered by the amendment. That leaves our net contribution at £12.329 billion per annum. That is £34 million a day, which goes down the drain in Brussels. Or we could look at it as the annual salaries of 352,257 policemen—of whom we could do with a few more right now—or nurses or any other public servant your Lordships may care to mention, at £35,000 a year each.

I would rather welcome the amendment if it were honestly fulfilled because the voters would understand better what a complete disaster is our membership of the European Union and they might even start to ask what is the point of the European Union itself. They might start to see it for what it is. It is an emperor whose clothes have long since fallen off.

[Lord Lea of Crondall (Lab)]

My Lords, it would appear that despite our best efforts, this whole objective of some degree of dispassionate analysis will nevertheless wind up as a dog’s breakfast. We have to persist in trying to follow what the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, accurately described as the distinction between things that are facts and things that are for debate between the two opposing camps. A good example in the Brexit scenario is one that I will cover now.

A key distinction behind these amendments is similar to what Mr Rumsfeld would have described as the difference between a known known and a known unknown. I have an example. I have in my hand a copy of the pamphlet that I helped to put together entitled Europe and Your Rights at Work. Since Maastricht, there have been 10 or a dozen very important reforms that are now on the statute book, such as protection when a business changes hands, equal rights for part-time workers, maternity and paternity rights, equal rights for fixed-term workers, four weeks’ paid holiday—although that falls under the health and safety regime. Other reforms include having a voice at work, European Works Councils, the posting of workers in Europe and health and safety at work.

Those were negotiated—I did a lot of that myself for some years—in Brussels between the leaders of the trade unions and the leaders of the employers. The result is that, despite the sound and fury at the beginning, we do not hear too much complaint now because everyone, including the employers, appreciates that they are a useful floor for employment rights in this country.

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[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, I believe that we will select examples of countries that can best inform the people of this country about how they should cast their vote. We must not try to skew that. Clearly, it would be a balanced selection of countries. I would not like to define now what will be in the report because that would assume that I would be writing it—I will not be.

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

For instance, will the noble Baroness assure us that the Government will give us a summary of the free-trade agreements reached by Singapore, whether we would be able to emulate Singapore and within what timescale? At the moment, we have none of those.

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, I believe I have answered that question twice. I would test the patience of the House were I to repeat myself a second time.

With regard to the devolved Administrations in the renegotiation, as foreign policy issues are reserved matters, relations with the European Union are the responsibility of Parliament and the Government of the UK. However, the UK Government involve the devolved Administrations as directly and fully as possible in decision-making in EU matters that touch on devolved areas. Further, Ministers have held meetings with representatives of the devolved Administrations. Most recently, the Minister for Europe met Fiona Hyslop MSP, the Cabinet Secretary for Culture, Europe and External Affairs, on 11 November to discuss the EU reform process. The renegotiation is now a standing item at quarterly meetings of the Joint Ministerial Committee on Europe, which allows Ministers from the devolved Administrations to feed in their views ahead of the meetings of European Councils. The next such meeting is next month. I hope that is the information that the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, requested.

The noble Lord also asked whether the report described under Amendment 24B would cover matters such as structural funds and how they impact on the region. I thank the noble Lord for his contribution to this debate. He reminded us of the importance of these matters at Second Reading, in Committee and, quite rightly, now, too. I remarked in my opening speech that the report under government Amendment 24B would indeed cover important rights such as the right to apply for structural funds. Where appropriate, we will set this information in context. However, again, I am not in a position to set out the exact contents of the report today. Clearly, it is a matter of making sure that the information is as balanced and full as is appropriate.

I was also asked by the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, and the noble Lord, Lord Lea of Crondall, whether employment rights would be covered. I briefly referred to that in my opening remarks, but they were quite detailed, so I can give the assurance that employment rights would be covered under the report required by government Amendment 24B, as indeed would the rights of EU citizens referred to by the noble Baronesses, Lady Smith of Newnham and Lady Morgan. They would be covered by Amendment 24B.

In coming to my final words on this group of amendments, I reflect on the fact that what we have sought to achieve is to listen to the request of the House to table amendments that provide a factual basis on which people can make up their minds when they cast their votes. Government Amendments 24A and 24B will ensure that the public are crystal clear on what EU membership currently entails for the UK and how the EU has been reformed. This will enable them to make their decisions in an informed way at the referendum.

The Government reports are intended to be informative, objective and evidence-based. It will be for others—the campaigners—to then take from the report such information as perhaps fits their case, and to use it with regard to other information they may have when they talk about risk assessments and views. That is a matter for another day, although I know we have had quite a flavour of it today.

In conclusion, when Amendment 24A is called in its place, I will move it, and Amendment 24B. I hope they will both be acceptable to the House and I hope the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, will not press his Amendment 24C as an amendment to Amendment 24B. I beg to move.