European Union Referendum Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Monday 2nd November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard]

I hope I may leave it to the Minister to deal with the allegation that on the last 77 occasions when we have expressed views and wished to change a piece of legislation we have been overruled. I would be completely astonished if there was any truth in that statement.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

I may be able to help. Part of popular opposition to the European Union, particularly in northern Norway, is the belief that it is a Catholic outfit and all part of a Catholic conspiracy. This was the case with much of the anti-European Union efforts when we first applied, but it is slightly below the surface now in Britain and rather more on the surface in Norway.

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard]

I do not think I will follow the noble Lord, although I am grateful to him. The Norwegians are not happy with their relationship with the European Union, and no wonder their Prime Minister told us last week that it would not do for us. I entirely agree with him. Before the electorate are asked to decide whether we should leave the Union, they clearly need to know where we would land if we did, what new relationship with the rest of Europe the Government envisage and how certain they are that it would be obtainable—hence my amendment.

If it is not the Norwegian model, what is it? The Swiss model is clearly worse from our point of view and probably not on offer. The Swiss have individual, sectoral and bilateral agreements with the EU. However, they do not extend to services, our major export, and would take many years to negotiate. Both sides—the EU and Switzerland—agree that the arrangement is unsatisfactory, complex and unwieldy.

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[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

I would be very happy to read it; what I would be interested in is who has written it. I note, for example, that three of my honourable friends from the other end of the corridor were kicked off the Council of Europe recently because their views did not accord with those of the establishment. But I am certainly happy to read what the noble Lord suggests.

I want to put some more figures into the debate that arise from our earlier discussions and are relevant to the amendment. They relate to the number of EU laws that EEA members such as Norway and Iceland have to accept. The Icelandic Government estimate 10%—5,000 legislative Acts in force, divided by 23,078 legislative Acts in consolidated EU acquis.

There seems to be a debate about the extent to which this applies to these countries, but as the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, said, all of this is completely irrelevant. We are not Iceland; we are not Norway; we are Britain. We are a country with a long history and relationships around the globe in a global marketplace in the Far East and elsewhere. It is utterly ridiculous to suggest that we would get into some sort of trade war with the EU and be vetoed by Portugal or Spain. It is a shallow argument that demeans our country, and will be hugely counterproductive if it is deployed, as we discovered when perhaps overenthusiastic unionists tried to deploy the same argument in Scotland when they said that Scotland would not be able to survive on its own.

Iceland has a population that is smaller than that of Edinburgh, for goodness sake, and here we have it on the authority of the Icelandic Prime Minister himself that Iceland is much better off outside the EU. So I do not think that these arguments apply. It has been suggested that the British Government could produce a report on what it would be like if we were outside the EU, and that we should not embark on taking control of our own destiny unless we had such a report, which would by its very nature be speculative and might very well underestimate the opportunities. Thank goodness we did not have this kind of thinking in May 1940.

This United Kingdom has a huge range of relationships and great talent and ability, and it is wrong to suggest that we cannot work with our colleagues in Europe outside the EU. It is not we who are leaving the European Union; it is the European Union that is leaving us. Of course it is. In order to maintain the integrity of the single currency, the euro, which the noble Lord and others would have had us join—what a mess we would be in if we had done that—the EU is having to introduce a more integrated system. Therefore, it is not a matter of whether we are able to have influence and to punch above our weight within this organisation. This organisation is changing; it has to change because countries are so obsessed with maintaining currency union that they are prepared not only to sacrifice the jobs and living standards of young people in the southern European states but to give up their autonomy. We are not prepared to give up our autonomy.

When we joined the EU, we joined the common market, which was a free trade area. That free trade area is being turned into something else. It is being turned into a country with its own currency and the ability to raise taxes and to control its own fiscal issues. The noble Baroness, Lady Smith, said that you cannot join a golf club and then not pay your subscription. We did join the golf club—but they want to play tennis now. They want to play a completely different game, which is not what we joined for.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

The noble Lord is making a long campaign speech, and I hesitate to interrupt him. I merely remind him that Edward Heath, Harold Macmillan, Alec Douglas-Home and others said as we joined the European Community that it had clear political connotations and that our foreign policy would be affected. I will send him tomorrow the speech by Alec Douglas-Home in 1971.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

The noble Lord may very well be correct that Edward Heath said this and Alec Douglas-Home said this, but most people thought that they were voting to join a common market. Certainly, Scottish fishermen thought that they would keep control of their fish stocks and that their industry would survive, and it has been destroyed—and facts are chiels that winna ding, as they say north of the border. The fact is that what we thought we were joining is not what has come to pass.

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[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

I am now having doubts. I am not surprised that the noble Lord supports the amendment, because it is a very sensible one. All that it does is seek to ensure that when the Prime Minister has finished his negotiations we have some kind of government publication that tells us what they were about, what their outcome was and what the implications would be for our continued membership of the European Union with those changes, if he so recommends, or the alternative.

The amendment is drafted in neutral terms and I hope that my noble friend might be able to accept the principle. I do not think that it is too much to ask. In my noble friend’s Second Reading speech, he hinted as much. The Chancellor of the Exchequer said in the early part of the summer that there would have to be some sort of paper. There are none of the issues that we have had to discuss earlier this evening arising from the debates that we had on publications of the benefits of being in and out. This is completely straightforward. What did the Prime Minister want? What did he get? What will be the effect on our relationship with the EU and what is the outcome? I beg to move.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I, too, agree with this amendment. I anticipate that when the negotiations are complete, the Prime Minister will publish a paper and I think it highly likely that the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, will disagree fundamentally with what the Prime Minister says.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

My Lords, I went to the Public Bill Office and said that I wanted to put down an amendment very similar to this. It would have called for a White Paper, which this amendment does not. When it was pointed out to me that my noble friend Lord Forsyth’s amendment was already tabled, I added my name to it. This smacks very much of Amendment 1, which I put my name to and which was supported very early on by the noble Lord, Lord Kerr. The Liberal Democrats supported it, too, and I suspect that the Front Bench of the Labour Party is going to support it. This amendment ties in with everything that the Government have said already. The only worry I have is that my noble friend the Minister may say that the Government have given an undertaking to this and that it does not need to be in the Bill. I have to say that we will all be very reassured if it is.