European Union Bill

Lord Willoughby de Broke Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Crosby]

I am grateful for that, which is exactly my view. Perhaps I might refer to what the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, said. I also associate those concepts with some of the later amendments. I will not keep the House for long. The noble Lord’s good argument was made strongly on the basis of the need in some cases for urgent decisions to be made. He pointed out that the formal procedures are long-winded and slow and that therefore in some cases it would be irrelevant to the issue that had come up because it would take so long to deal with the procedures.

I now refer to a second group of amendments, which is what I might call the Canute group. What is the Canute group? Those of us who remember the early history of Britain will remember that the king at the time ordered the tide to turn back. In other words, he insisted on not seeing the world as it is. The amendments in this group are about insisting—

[Lord Willoughby de Broke]

My Lords—

[Baroness Williams of Crosby]

Perhaps I may finish my sentence before I give way. The amendments in this group insist, to some extent, that the urgent and very troubling issues that confront us now can somehow be put off and not dealt with at the present time.

[Lord Willoughby de Broke]

All I want to say is that King Canute did not order the sea to go back. He was demonstrating to his courtiers that he did not have the power to turn the sea back, so the analogy that the noble Baroness was making is incorrect.

[Baroness Williams of Crosby]

I defer to the noble Lord’s deep knowledge of history, but he will accept that metaphors and similes are sometimes rather broader than a deep knowledge of history would insist on them being. I insist on keeping my metaphor going for a few more minutes. The point that I want to make strongly is that issues are coming up that clearly will require a degree of competence on the part of the European Union that is not embraced in the present treaties. Unless we exclude some of these issues from the elaborate procedure of the referendum lock, we will find ourselves hobbled in trying to deal with them.

I shall give two illustrations. I particularly urge my noble friends in the Conservative Party to consider one of them very carefully. In the past couple of months we have seen some of the consequences of the Arab spring. One of those consequences has been the placing of substantial sums of money within the structures of the European Union because there is very little control over how the European Union at present deals with inflows of money from other quarters. Members of the European Parliament have shown a great deal of sense about this and have urged the European Union to take additional action, which, as I understand the Bill, will probably require the referendum lock procedure to be met.

One of the most vociferous and articulate Members of the European Parliament on this issue of how one deals with what one might believe to be illegitimate funds—funds that have been stolen from a nation by its leader or funds that have been deliberately laundered through Europe—was the spokesman of legal affairs in the European Parliament. Mr Karim is a Conservative Member of the European Parliament, and I will quote what he said because it is extremely relevant to this debate. He said:

“I would … invite Baroness Ashton, as a key architect of the EU’s new plan for north Africa, to implement strong anti-money laundering provisions as an important part of the future EU strategy in the region. More broadly, the … Commission must act to urgently address the deficiencies in the current arrangements regarding funds originating overseas. The EU cannot continue to be a savings account in which leaders of developing countries deposit their ill-gotten funds”.

Mr Karim went on to call for urgent action by the European Union, which under this Bill will of course be caught by the referendum lock.

I think that my second example will stir a number of Members of this Committee as it certainly stirs me: namely, the relative unwillingness of the United Kingdom to address the issue of human trafficking. According to the International Labour Organisation, human trafficking has now become the third largest common illicit business in the world. It is valued by the ILO at approximately €32 billion in the past year. It is third after the drug trade and the arms trade. It has burgeoned and mushroomed in the past few years.

The United Kingdom was unwilling to sign and agree to an EU directive on the trafficking of children. It refused to do so on the grounds that the United Kingdom had its own measures and did not require a European Union directive on the issue. As many will know, the argument went on month after month, with only Denmark and the United Kingdom refusing to agree to the proposed directive. In this country, the official figures are said by the Home Office, the Metropolitan Police and the UK Border Agency to be far higher than the official figures that are given. Recently, the Home Office said that the official figure for child and human trafficking was around 250 cases a year. One area of the borough of Westminster alone has found something like 1,120 children who are being trafficked. It has announced that it is having to strengthen its own steps strongly to try to deal with the issues.

I will not bore the House with telling it—