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

Lord Tugendhat Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tugendhat (Con)]

My Lords, this should be a great national debate. The noble Lord, Lord Soley, and my noble friend Lord Jopling in their speeches raised the level of the debate to where it ought to be. But it is also a debate within the Conservative Party. I very much associate myself with the remarks of my noble friends Lord Howard, Lord Howell and Lord Gilbert, in his notable maiden speech, who talked about the need for people within the Conservative Party to conduct the debate in a civilised fashion and to bear in mind that, after the referendum, we will still need to live together and govern together. That is something which, I hope, will colour the way in which the debate is conducted, at least on the Conservative side.

I believe that the Government’s White Paper, The Best of Both Worlds, should be seen as something of a prospectus. As such, it is open, like all such documents, to criticism; in years to come, aspects of it may turn out to have been mistaken. That is the nature of documents of that sort. But like it or not—and some noble Lords do not like it—it is a serious attempt to set out the nature of this country’s special position within the European Union following the Prime Minister’s successful negotiations. It gives companies a basis on which to plan their investments and supply chains; it gives individuals the opportunity to plan their careers and retirements, for those who live in other parts of the Union; it gives the Government the basis on which to plan important aspects of our economic and foreign policy and security co-operation with other member states, as mentioned by the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, in his eloquent intervention; and it gives our partners and allies within and outside the European Union a degree of confidence in the reliability of this country and its effectiveness as a partner and ally.

The weakness of those who wish to withdraw from the European Union is that they have no similar document or even a coherent set of ideas about what Britain’s position outside the European Union would actually look like. They have been campaigning for many years for an in/out referendum; they have believed that, if such a referendum occurred, the country would vote to leave. Yet they have come completely unprepared into the battle. This shows the very great difficulty of drawing up a coherent plan of what this country’s role and position should be if we are not within the European Union. When one looks at the leaders of the out campaign, one finds that Mr Carswell has one view, Mr Farage has another view—and Mr Johnson, of course, has several views.

We all recognise that a vote to leave will lead to a period of uncertainty; I think that everybody accepts that. The present trade relations with the European Union will have to be unwound and replaced—likewise, those with other countries where our trade relations are governed by EU agreements. This will take a long time. I do not know how long it will take, but it will certainly take years rather than months, and people who invoke the Canada free trade agreement are surely aware that that took five years to negotiate and has still not been ratified. Parliament, meanwhile, will be dominated by the changes required to domestic legislation derived from the European Union. This will cover agricultural support, aspects of social policy, competition policy, the structural funds, the involvement of our scientific research with EU programmes and many other things. The Government will not just be dealing with international negotiations—we will be dealing with a massive programme of legislation in this Parliament, which will make the conduct of government, whichever party is in power, exceptionally difficult.

So when the people who wish to leave the European Union accuse those who point out these difficulties of indulging in Project Fear, what they really mean is that they do not have the answers to some very difficult questions. In that respect, they are in a very similar position to Mr Alex Salmond during the Scottish referendum, when he could not answer vital questions about the currency and other issues. But at least Mr Salmond knew the destination that he was aiming for—on that point he was quite clear—whereas, so far, I have not heard from those who wish to leave the European Union a coherent explanation of the destination to which they are going.