Queen’s Speech

Lord Taverne Excerpts

Wednesday 11th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Taverne (LD)]

My Lords, there are many achievements of the coalition that are to its credit, but not the Prime Minister’s policy towards Europe and, in particular, his commitment to a referendum in 2017. Its folly was exposed in a debate in this House in January, when we debated the Private Member’s Bill on a referendum. What is the policy and what has been Mr Cameron’s strategy? It is for a major repatriation of powers, which would involve treaty change, and after a new deal had been done that would be submitted to a referendum in 2017. I apologise for repeating some of the arguments made in January, but they were never answered and they are of extreme importance.

In 2017, it would be the referendum year and so not exactly the year in which to conclude a very difficult deal. The process of negotiation was completely ignored: there would first need to be a vote for a convention, then there would have to be a unanimous vote for an intergovernmental conference and anything that it unanimously recommended as a deal would have to be ratified by the different countries, in many cases by a referendum. There is not a cat’s chance in hell of achieving all this within two and a half years of the next election, so what would happen? In March, to his credit, the Prime Minister somewhat modified his aims in an article in the Daily Telegraph in order to avoid a treaty change and some of the difficulties mentioned.

There are two obstacles to his policy now. The first question is whether the Conservative Party, which especially after the next election is likely to be even more anti-European or Europhobe than many of its members are now, would accept the modified proposal and less ambitious aims. Secondly, the timetable problem will not in any way be resolved, because there cannot be a special deal for Britain only. It would have to be a Europe-wide deal. There is no support whatever in any country for a special deal for Britain.

It is true that there are many people who want changes in Europe. The difficulty is that they all want rather different changes. To take one small example, Sweden wants to repeal the ban on chewing tobacco and the restoration of wolves. More seriously, the French want more protection for their agriculture and, generally, not more free trade and they are very set on a social Europe, whereas many people want to modify, for example, the working time directive. The five years it took to secure our budget rebate after hard negotiation would be a doddle compared to getting 28 nations together to agree a new deal for Europe.

Further, the Prime Minister needs allies, because he has a lot of support for some of the things he seeks, and he has consistently made difficulties for allies so that they can hardly support us. He gratuitously alienated the Poles, the Romanians and the Bulgarians, and he has made life very difficult for Angela Merkel because he keeps threatening that if we do not get what we want, we will leave, and more and more voices are being raised in Europe which say, “If you threaten to leave, for God’s sake go. Good riddance”.

What then would be the consequence if there was no deal or only a cosmetic deal of the kind which the Conservative Party after 2015 is unlikely to accept? The result would be that, if there is a Conservative overall majority at the next election, the odds are on exit because if Cameron, despite not having a deal, says he will still recommend that we stay in, the party would replace him with a more Europhobe Prime Minister. If he has changed his mind, as sometimes he has hinted, and would then say we should leave, what would be the result? The odds would then be on exit because you would have an anti-European Government, a stridently hostile anti-European press and a significant UKIP influence. That would be completely different from the situation in 1975, when all three parties were united in favour of staying in, the press was in favour of staying in and there was no mood of poisonous xenophobia created by UKIP.

The issue is not the principle of a referendum, because the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats are in favour of a referendum if there is a major treaty change and a new deal has been reached. Then it should be put to the people because we will know what sort of Europe we are asked to stay in or leave. What I do not understand is why pro-Europeans ignore these arguments. The principle is not that of the referendum but of the question of timing.