European Union Bill

Lord Waddington Excerpts

Monday 16th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Liddle]

I think the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, is right on that subject. The problem is the people who believe in the thin end of the wedge, but the way to deal with that is to have a proper process for deciding what is significant and requires a referendum and what does not in the form of an independent process that people will respect. That is what we are proposing in these amendments. It is a sensible compromise for the way forward that I hope the Government will consider seriously. It would resolve an awful lot of the big problems that people have with this Bill. I beg to move.

[Lord Waddington]

My Lords, the noble Lord referred to the two amendments as probing amendments. I think that they could better be described as tongue-in-cheek amendments. Similar amendments were moved in the House of Commons, but at least they applied to Clauses 3, 4 and 6. These amendments mysteriously apply only to matters dealt with in Clause 6. For the life of me I cannot understand why, as I am sure others will not either, if Parliament is to be involved in these matters, Parliament as a whole should not be involved. Quite obviously, members of the public will wonder what this mysterious body is. At least if Parliament as a whole was involved, they would know what was going on.

[Lord Liddle]

The noble Lord has made two points which reflect a misunderstanding of what this side is trying to propose. Parliament would be involved because it would be Parliament that would take the decision on whether a referendum was necessary on the basis of advice from either a Joint Committee of both Houses or some kind of independent committee which had real expertise on it. This is not being proposed tongue in cheek, but makes a serious point.

[Lord Waddington]

Of course I accept what the noble Lord says about the proposal not being tongue in cheek, but I certainly do not accept his argument. The fact remains that if you put in a Bill that a mysterious committee is going to have some say in the matter, you are moving even further away from a situation where the general public has any confidence at all that its views are considered when vital decisions are made. I fail entirely to see how giving a Joint Committee of both Houses a key role in deciding whether there should be a referendum will help to restore trust in the EU. I am bound to say—obviously this will not find favour with everyone in the House—that the House of Commons, controlled by the Whips, has never proved to be an effective check on the ambitions of the Europhiles, and this House, I have to say, seems to suffer from a built-in Europhiliac tendency. The idea of having a Joint Committee and expecting it to come up with a unanimous recommendation for a referendum is just pie in the sky, and I suspect that the noble Lord knows that perfectly well.

I remind the House that on 9 May, the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, implied in an unguarded moment that it was inconceivable that a Government would just give everything away for no gain. But the public are of the view that we have made a habit of giving things away. Sometimes Ministers have listened to anguished cries from the Guardian that if we do not agree with our partners we are going to be isolated, when it really would not be the end of the world if the others went ahead without us and, for instance, wasted their money on empire building like the setting up of the European External Action Service while we continue to benefit from the single market. I think that that would be a good idea.

Let us face it: sometimes peer pressure has got to work on the vain and on those who wish to be thought good members of the club with disastrous consequences like Mr Blair’s surrender over the rebate. I listened very carefully to what the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, had to say about that matter at Question Time today. I invite him to read with care various contributions made in this House on 4 February 2008 when we had a debate on the European budget. Every action of Mr Blair was dissected and examined with great care. All his convolutions, distortions and changes of front were brought out into the open. I do not think that any impartial person could honestly say that it is a very happy story. Governments are often not very good at saying no and Parliaments have gone along with them. That makes this Bill as it stands very necessary and overdue and makes the amendments very dangerous.