EU: Prime Minister’s Speech

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

Thursday 31st January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie]

My Lords, this might be termed the “boiling an egg” debate, because that is probably one of the very few things that you can usefully accomplish in the amount of time that each of us has been given to speak today.

I find myself very much aligned with my noble friend Lady Donaghy, who said that she campaigned for a no vote in 1975 for reasons of working people’s rights but has now come round to face somewhat the other way—as, indeed, have I. I would be very concerned should we, as a country, depart from the European Union. Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Owen, summed it up best when he described the Prime Minister’s speech last week as the words of a party leader and not a Prime Minister—that is exactly it. I really think that the European Union and our place within it are too important to be used as a way of dealing with a little local difficulty within the Conservative Party.

On the question of a referendum, I will ask: why now? I do not see why at all, but why now? Nothing of any great importance has occurred within the past few months. You could say, “I believe that referendums are appropriate for parliamentary democracy”. Referendums do have their place—certainly they were appropriate in 1975, for the Scottish Parliament, for the Welsh Assembly and, indeed, for the voting system. But what has happened to make this a pressing issue? Furthermore, what is likely to happen of a constitutional nature? I think it is key to a referendum that it should involve something of a constitutional nature. What has happened in the past few months or will happen in the next five years to make a referendum necessary? You could say it could have happened after Maastricht or Lisbon, but I do not see why we should be positing it as a notion now, because there is no constitutional issue per se to discuss. The basic question would be: do we stay in the EU?

The noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, opened the debate by talking of uncertainty. I think that she talked rather disparagingly of scaremongers. I ask the noble Baroness whether the following are scaremongers: Sir Andrew Cahn of Nomura, Sir Richard Branson, Sir Martin Sorrell of WPP, the CBI, and indeed the noble Lord, Lord Browne, a close confidant of the Prime Minister. These are people of some substance, as indeed is Sir Nigel Sheinwald, who has made some pretty pithy statements in the past few days. So there is a bit more to it than perhaps meets the eye. The response might be, “What about the 50 business leaders who wrote to the Times?”. When you read their statement, it is clear that they did so very strongly from a position of wanting to remain within the European Union. That is different from the wishes of many people advocating a referendum who want us to withdraw.

I think that there will be a referendum, as various noble Lords have said. It is pretty much inconceivable that any of the main political parties will not suggest that at the 2015 general election. Therefore, I think that those of us who are in favour need to start making the positive case for remaining in the EU. We should not just deal with negatives but talk the case up.

I conclude by referring back to the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, who said that she regarded the prospect of a referendum in 2017 as an exciting one. Well, placing her head in the mouth of a lion might be exciting, but it is not something that I would recommend.