European Union Bill

Lord Stoddart of Swindon Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

It does not alter the fact that the United Kingdom will continue to have a veto, as other countries will, unless we surrender positions of unanimity by abandoning our veto. That would be the position. It is perfectly true that there would be very marginal and small changes in the pattern of weighting, but there is no particular reason why they should involve a loss of power or a transfer of competence. They do not do so. The noble Lord, who is very experienced in these things, was talking about patterns in which all sorts of alliances are formed or not formed. All sorts of gatherings and countings of votes take place when Ministers go into these negotiations. That will continue as before. The accession of another country does not alter that pattern in any way.

The noble Lord, Lord Pearson, asked about the ways in which immigration or financial regulations might be affected by the arrival in the European Union of a new member state. He will recall that when Bulgaria and Romania joined the EU, we put transitional arrangements in place. We had the perfect power and legislative opportunity to do so, and we can do so again. Nothing in the treaty of accession prevents us from doing so and nothing has prevented us from doing so in the past.

I emphasise, as the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, and other noble Lords have asked me to, that, as with all previous Governments regardless of their political composition, we are strong supporters of future enlargement. Like some noble Lords, I remember the considerable uplift in spirits when first there was the fall of the Berlin wall and the Soviet empire and then when the processes of enlargement embraced one after another of its former satellite countries. We all worked, planned and hoped for these things. Some of us thought that we would never see them in our lifetime, but they did occur.

EU enlargement helps to create stability, security and prosperity across Europe—we have never disputed that—and serves to spread democracy, human rights, the rule of law and fair rules for workers and businesses. These standards are high although they are not always achieved. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, for reminding us of a joke—which, frankly, I had heard before—about the standards of the EU itself. The EU is not, of course, a country; it is a vast confederal structure. It is a unique institution in the 20th and 21st centuries but it is not a country, and perhaps it is a little distorting to suggest that it should be judged in the same way as a nation state. However, that we favour enlargement in the way in which it has come about so far—and in the way in which it might come about in the future—should not raise one iota of doubt for a single minute.

Whenever a candidate country meets the EU accession criteria and it is decided that it is ready to join the EU, we will support its entry. The Government will present its case to Parliament through the introduction of a Bill that will be debated in both Houses and passed or not passed into an Act according to the will of Parliament.

I have little to add to the strong points that have been put by a number of noble Lords as to the fact that transfers of powers and competencies do not arise in the precise form in which we are dealing with them in the Bill; there is no competence or power transfer. The commitment in the coalition government programme for government is to have a referendum on treaties that change a power or competence from the UK to the EU. Treaties that merely allow a new country to accede do not meet this requirement. On that basis, I urge noble Lords to consider what I have said on this matter and to withdraw the amendment.

[Lord Stoddart of Swindon]

I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in the debate, particularly those who supported the amendment—the noble Lords, Lord Pearson and Lord Willoughby de Broke. I confess that I did not think there would be a debate of nearly an hour and a half on my amendments; I thought they would be dealt with very swiftly. I am pleased that I tabled the amendments because we have had a well considered and authoritative debate on the subject, whatever opinion we hold. That has been altogether good. I would like to reply to all the points that have been made but, including my own speech, there have been 15 speakers—the equivalent of the number of speakers in normal short debates that are two and a half hours long—and I am sure that the House would not welcome a long speech from me in these concluding remarks.

I say to the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, that I was interested in the way in which the Estonians were bribed, so to speak, to vote in the referendum with whisky and chocolates. I am sure that the Scots would be pleased that their product was being used in that way. I visited Estonia shortly after the referendum. It seemed, from the general view of the population, that they regretted the decision that they had made and wished that they could go back on it. That is by the by.

It has been a good debate with some important issues raised. Although the noble Lord, Lord Richard, does not support the amendment, he made a valid point that if we are going to have referendums on some rather less important things—public prosecutors and what have you—there is little merit in raising the question of having referendums on more major matters. That was taken up by several other noble Lords. It is clearly important that we realise that the Bill is deficient in many respects.

On the question of referendums, there appears to be a lot of opposition to referendums per se. That opposition is perhaps on the basis that those who do not want them believe that they cannot win them. That is a big mistake. We have referendums on all sorts of things such as mayors. The objective of having them is to give people a say on major items. I stress that it is on major items. We should not rule them out of our decision-making process.

Another point was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Triesman. I, too, welcome him to his new post on the opposition Front Bench. He may well be right to claim that the European Union has given us nothing but benefits. The noble Lord, Lord Pearson, and I have asked repeatedly for a cost-benefit analysis of our membership of the European Union. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, might support the next Bill which asks for a referendum.

Another point was made by the noble Lord, Lord Howell, who suggested that we should not have referendums on the accession of new members because there are no new competencies. As I pointed out in my opening speech, the accession of new members has often if not mostly been the reason for new treaties transferring competencies to the European Union. In that respect, new accessions may well result in new competencies being given to the European Union and its institutions.

I again thank noble Lords for contributing to a good and essential debate. I do not intend to press the matter to a Division this afternoon but, after reading all the contributions to the debate, I might wish to bring the matter forward again on Report and perhaps even put it to a vote. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 20A withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Williams of Crosby]

In the case of prostitution, quite a lot of the entries are from eastern Europe. Indeed, some of the more disagreeable people have exploited the fact that the eastern Europeans are not aware of where they are going. They are offered jobs in the catering trade—hotels and so on—and then find out that they have been sold into prostitution. They are not aware of how to deal with the situation or of the safeguards that should be open to them. However, that is not the case with the other two examples I gave of domestic slavery and agricultural exploitation. In those cases, most of them come into this country, rather amazingly, straight from third countries and not by way of other member states of the European Union.

[Lord Stoddart of Swindon]

On the first intervention, I got the impression that the noble Baroness thought that all five groups of amendments were being taken together. Is that correct? If we are taking all five groups together we will be here for a very long time and noble Lords will miss their dinner. Could we have clarification on this?