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

Lord Stoddart of Swindon Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stoddart of Swindon (Ind Lab)]

My Lords, I confess that I was rather surprised when I came in to find that I was in such an exalted position on the speakers list. Now I have to follow that impassioned speech by the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown, so I am in some difficulty. But I shall try my best. First, I say to voters: when all the political parties are agreed, beware. Beware, beware, beware. I say to the Government, referring to the title of this debate, that those who always wish to get the best of both worlds very often get the worst of both worlds because they are being too greedy.

I turn to the statutory instrument arranging the referendum for 23 June. I would have thought, bearing in mind that the referendum need not take place until the end of next year, that the Government would have taken more time in the negotiations to get a better deal than the sad one that they have got. They would also have had the advantage of asking the Tory Party at its conference in October whether its members agreed with what the Government had brought back from the negotiation.

I have to declare myself straightaway; I always do. I was against joining the EEC, or the Common Market, in 1973, and now that the EU has gained so much additional power in policy fields other than trade, I am even more convinced that we should leave it as soon as possible and have the power in this country to decide our fate and future. I remind those people who say that the direction of the EU is not towards integration that at the beginning of this month the six original members of what was then the EEC proposed that the eurozone should become a fiscal power and have power in military matters as well. So in fact the direction is not backwards but forwards to, as they say, a more integrated Europe.

I cannot help feeling that the Prime Minister made a demeaning spectacle when he went to Europe and did not demand but pleaded with them to give him some concessions that would enable him to recommend that Britain should remain in the EU. I am afraid that he has not come back with anything at all of that sort: indeed, the concessions are pitiful. They are virtually as pitiful as the concessions brought back in 1972—possibly 1973, or was it 1974?—by Harold Wilson, which turned out to be no concessions at all.

He, too, promised that there would be no economic and monetary union. He gave that assurance. Well, we know what happened to that assurance. Now the Prime Minister is assuring the country that we will never join the euro. He cannot make that promise. The parliamentary situation arranges that. As he well knows, no parliament can bind its successor and there is no agreement, national or otherwise, that can alter that constitutional position. So he is promising something which he cannot properly deliver.

I am sick and tired of being told by politicians, self-serving multinationals and foreign potentates that Britain must remain in the European Union—not only for Britain’s sake but for their sakes. We now have to arrange our affairs to suit the rest of the world, not to suit our own country. I remind the Government that they are here to serve British interests and not the interests of those people.

Britain has survived and thrived for 1,000 years as an independent country. Even in the face of hostility from European countries, it would do so free of the incubus of the EU. We need a country that is governed for itself—Britain governing for itself through its own institutions which have been with us successfully for the last 1,000 years.