European Union (Referendum) Bill

Marquess of Lothian Excerpts

Friday 10th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[The Marquess of Lothian (Con)]

My Lords, I support the Bill for two reasons. First, it seeks, finally, after 40 years, to re-establish the rights of the British people to decide their own future in or out of Europe. That is to be welcomed. Never in the history of democracy has there been such a large bureaucratic empire built over nearly half a century without once consulting the peoples who are affected by it as to whether they wanted it or whether they liked the shape of it. The Bill really establishes a principle which has to be welcomed.

I have been interested in this debate to try to analyse why the dog that should have barked has not barked or perhaps dared not bark—expect that it almost barked in the case of the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Oakeshott, but he withdrew from it just before its sound was fully heard. That bark is that there are, and have been all over my political career, people who are passionately in favour of Europe and believe that it is too important and complex an issue to trust the British people to decide. Those same people, and there have been one or two today, will say, “Well, they have the right to do that in a general election”. Some of us who have fought many general elections know that a general election cannot be fought on a single issue. There are many issues, so to say after a general election, “Part of our manifesto touched on Europe, and you voted for us and have therefore made your decision”, is actually nonsense. We have to have a clear decision taken, and I believe that this is the right way to do it.

The other thing that I have learnt in my political career is that this issue, however hard we have tried, is irresolvable by political parties. It is irresolvable between political parties and within them. In the end, when you have a situation like that, the only answer is to let the people themselves decide.

The second reason I support the Bill is that it gives us time. It gives us until 2017 to prepare. That is the one distinction between the 1975 referendum and this one. In 1975, we had very little time to prepare. We were told, if I remember rightly, that there had been a renegotiation. In fact, when we look at it in retrospect, the renegotiation was not worth a row of beans, but some of us were taken in. We regret that now, and we voted yes in that referendum.

The noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, touched on an important point: on this occasion, when the referendum comes, we must have established fully the cases for and against, so that the British people can make a sensible decision. I have heard the arguments for the reforms that are needed. They have to be fundamental, reversible only by further referendum, and must ultimately return to the people of this country the sovereignty which we have given away without asking their consent over many years.

The noble Lord’s second point was to make the case as to what would be the situation of this country were we to come out of the European Union. That equally requires time. The argument so often used on Europe is, “You may not be very happy with Europe, but look what it will be like if you come out. You will be cast into the outer darkness of isolation”. Well, we must fill that outer darkness of isolation over the years between now and 2017 by exploring what other arrangements can be made.

I hope that we will explore with some of our Commonwealth colleagues, some of whom have some of the larger economies in the world, what free trade or further trading arrangements can be made. We need to take part in further discussion about the future of NATO, which is a crucial issue whether we are in or out of Europe. It has to be part of what would be there were we to come out of Europe. We also have to start discussing with our European partners what trading arrangements we can have with them if we did come out of Europe. There is no question that they are going to need to continue to trade with us just as much as we are going to need to continue to trade with them.

We have the ability over three years to start filling that vacuum. If we do that, when we get to the referendum—and I think we will, because I am confident that there will be a Conservative Government which will deliver a referendum—then, for the first time, we will be able to ask a sensible question of the British people, to make a decision between two viable alternatives: “Which way do you want to see your country going?”. I hope that, if we do that, they will decide that governing our own destiny must be the right answer.