European Union Bill

Lord Willoughby de Broke Excerpts

Wednesday 13th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goodhart]

My Lords, Amendment 15, which the other place rejected, provided a kind of sunset clause for the whole of Part 1 but gave power for future Parliaments to restore the Bill. Amendment 15B replaces Amendment 15 with more limited powers. In the first place Amendment 15B applies only to Clause 6 and Schedule 1 and not to the rest of Part 1. Secondly, the original Amendment 15 cancels the operation of Part 1 and Schedule 1 at the end of the duration of the present Parliament and leaves incoming Governments to revive those provisions of the Bill. Amendment 15B leaves Clause 6 and Schedule 1 in force unless and until a new Government wish to suspend them, and suspension cannot go beyond the duration of the Parliament which suspended them.

Thirdly, the original Amendment 15 is all or nothing. Part 1 and Schedule 1 either are entirely out of action or are entirely in force. Amendment 15B provides for the suspension of any one or more of provisions contained in Clause 6 or Schedule 1. Amendment 15B is therefore much more flexible than Amendment 15, and that is a very important difference. It is surely plain that some of the decisions that may lead to a referendum under the Bill will not be appropriate for such a referendum because of the limited importance for ordinary citizens of that particular decision or because of the uncontroversial nature of that decision. In such cases Amendment 15B allows the Government to proceed by order, which requires the support of both Houses but without a referendum.

We need flexibility. Without it we may waste money because a decision which is not controversial has nevertheless to go through the process of the referendum. Without flexibility we may lose the benefit of useful decisions because a referendum is of little concern to the majority of citizens who have no objection to it and therefore a small minority are able to defeat the Government. Without flexibility the Government may decide not to go ahead with a decision which is useful and non-controversial but not important enough to justify the cost and effort of a referendum.

Nothing in Amendment 15B would affect the referendum lock in the present Parliament, but future Parliaments should have some control over it. I recognise that the amendment would give the Government and Parliament power in theory to avoid referendums on matters where a referendum would have wide support—especially, for example, in the case of adopting the euro—but there is no likelihood whatever that any Government would refuse a referendum in cases of that kind. In any event, if your Lordships' House accepts the principle of Amendment 15B, I can see no objection to amending it so that it does not apply to those categories where there is likely to be a strong demand for a referendum.

This Government propose to rely on favourable referendums in specified circumstances. So be it, but we should not enforce the same restriction on future Parliaments—that is for each Parliament to decide. Does the Minister recognise that it is impossible for the Government to prevent a future Government exercising their power without a referendum to bring in legislation? If that is so, it makes the situation somewhat different, but it seems nevertheless desirable for Amendment 15B to be included, because it makes simpler provision for varying the Bill now being enacted.

It is desirable to take Amendment 15B on board. I hope that the Government will consider doing just that.

[Lord Willoughby de Broke]

My Lords, this is again a wrecking amendment, which is how the noble Lord, Lord Blackwell, described the previous amendment. It goes to the very heart of the Bill and would neuter it completely if it produced a sort of son of a sunset clause. People outside this Chamber and outside Parliament will simply not understand what the House of Lords is doing if it votes for it. The Bill is intended to give British people a voice and protect them from further laws and further integration produced by Europe. They will not understand if the House of Lords supports this amendment, which goes against the whole tenor of the Bill.

On the earlier amendment, the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, made some great play about the lack of trust in politicians and Parliament in general. Although he would not interpret his remarks that way, I take them to support the use of referendums, precisely because of the lack of trust in Parliament and government in general in this country. The noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, prayed in aid the people of Slovenia, who apparently trust their Parliament and say that they do not want referendums. But that simply is not the case in this country. The voters in this country do not have the same faith in their Government and Parliament as the people of Slovenia apparently do. If the amendment is carried, it will drag Parliament even further into the contempt that British people already have for it. It is extremely dangerous, and I hope that it will be voted down by this House.

[Lord Radice]

The House of Lords is a very effective revising Chamber and has proved that on this Bill by making it better and more manageable than it was at first. However, the House of Commons has not accepted our amendments, except in the case of the definition of parliamentary sovereignty—I congratulate the noble Lord who so ably pioneered the provision that we have now just passed. We have just rejected the idea of confining referendums to major issues. Therefore, there is a case for a sunset clause.

This Bill is an attempt, as the people who introduced it in the House of Commons have made quite clear, to bind successor Governments, and it involves a major extension of referendums. In a sense, it is a major constitutional innovation. Noble Lords who have so ably supported Governments of the past in Europe have said to us that we should take seriously the danger of marginalisation that might arise from the Bill. Therefore, there should be a reassessment mechanism in it. I consider that we have a new, mild and flexible version of that in this amendment, which it would be very useful to Parliament to have. We should go beyond what the Labour Government introduced, which has been mentioned already; that is, a committee report on whether a Bill has been effective. Perhaps that should be part of the process, but we should then go on, as the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, said, to have a mild version of a sunset clause.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Maclennan of Rogart]

My Lords, if the purpose of this Bill were gesture politics, with no outside effects, then perhaps it would be possible to go along with it. However, the provisions proposed in this amendment are reviewable by a Government and are by no means gestures alone. They are bound to have a significant effect on the ability of our Ministers negotiating in the Council to decide issues of massive importance to the people. We have been told that none of those issues will be considered by the people in the lifetime of this Parliament so the Government appear to be putting on ice any questions about improving the efficacy of the working of the European Union until the end of this Parliament.

My noble friend who opened this debate said that a subsequent Parliament could amend this Bill or throw it out. He is right, but he also said in an earlier debate that the Government have no intention of using this Bill in this Parliament. If that is the case, why are we having to legislate at all? It seems to me that the appropriate time to do that would be in the next Parliament if that is when these measures are supposed to bite. The notion that we are legislating for the future in this way is bound to have almost no effect on public opinion beyond putting up scaremongering notices about the possibility that after the next election we will all collapse in a heap and be walked over by our fellow members of the European Union. That is guaranteed to make the issue of Europe a very divisive one at the next election.

The amendment of my noble friend Lord Goodhart seems to be eminently sensible. It has not been rejected by another place. It is new and it is not merely differently phrased but differently conceived. I supported the sunset amendment as it was drafted but I am happy to support my noble friend’s revision. It would allow Ministers to decide, in the light of the circumstances at the time, whether the issue before Europe and before this country was of such massive importance that it would be inappropriate to prepare a referendum. My experience of dealing with European matters in Parliament suggests that debates are long and thorough about European issues. The public are made completely aware, by debate and deliberation, what the issues are. Surely some of those who are supporting this Bill must remember the debates on the Maastricht treaty—the hours after hours in which Members of Parliament considered these matters. To suggest that the public were not aware of it is simply to deny the facts of history.

The noble Lord, Lord Willoughby de Broke, suggested that this was a wrecking amendment. It is not—it is an amendment that enables the Government of the day to decide whether the national interest is better served by legislative process—by debate, as we had over Maastricht—than by having a prolonged debate in public leading to a referendum.

[Lord Willoughby de Broke]

My Lords, I took part in the debates on the Maastricht treaty. I remember them very well. The central point about those debates and about the way the treaty was pushed through is that we were not given a referendum. There was a big debate here on whether we should have a referendum on the Maastricht treaty. Unfortunately, that Motion was lost and we did not have a referendum, and that is part of the problem with the EU in this country. The people have never been given a vote since the referendum on the Common Market in 1975. This sort of amendment will stop them having a say, which they should be given.

[Lord Maclennan of Rogart]

We live in a representative democracy and elected Members of Parliament are put into that position of authority to act in the best interests of the citizens of this country. The notion that by not having referenda we are somehow denying the fundament of our parliamentary democracy seems to be a complete and utter nonsense. It is not only the Maastricht treaty that was carried through by Parliament in that way. Mrs Thatcher, when she was Prime Minister, also introduced the Single European Act which introduced majority voting and there was no question of a referendum about that. If you look at the opinion polls of those years, and indeed of the years around Maastricht, the public were far more supportive of our membership of the European Union than they are now.

I heard the remark of the Minister for Europe, Mr Lidington, that it is only people of my generation who are supportive of the European Union. When we were active young Members, supporting the European Union, the public listened and believed what we were saying—that it was in the interests of the people of Britain. Now we have a new generation, a whole generation younger than me, who claim that it is our fault that the public are not with them. The nonsense of that is that they have never seriously tried to explain what the purposes of the European Union are; what its achievements are and what its goals are. That is why we are wasting our time with this ridiculous piece of legislation, which is a waste of parliamentary time in scrutiny and is deceiving the public. We have been told it will not be voted on. There will be no referendum this side of the next election and after that the picture will all change.