European Union Bill

Viscount Trenchard Excerpts

Wednesday 8th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Triesman]

My Lords, given the debates that we had in Committee and the debate which we had shortly before the dinner break, it is possible to speak to this amendment fairly briefly. Its aim is to take account of circumstances where the Government conclude that it is in the interests of the people of the United Kingdom to act with greater dispatch than would occur if the whole of the processes set out in other parts of this Bill were gone through.

Earlier this afternoon the noble Lord, Lord Howell, asked—I understand the point—“What are the circumstances in which events might take place that are difficult to put into words?”. I shall try to put at least one such circumstance into words, but I recognise immediately that it may be difficult to do so in the context of the judgments that Governments have to make about the interests of the country when events precipitate at a rate which is not anticipated in the normal course of events. However, my ministerial experience, and that of many others in your Lordships’ House, tells us that events happen. I think that I am quoting a former Conservative Prime Minister, and he was entirely right—they do. Events happen and Governments have to respond to them. We will be able to deal with many of them using the sovereign processes of our own political system. Some will occur in a wider context and we will deal with them through international organisations, including the European Union and its existing competences—that is not the subject of this Bill—the United Nations, the World Bank and others. Those are not the issues to which I refer. However, it seems to me at least conceptually possible that some things will happen which require an urgent response and where it will be clear to the Government of the day that they need to act in concert with others in ways which are not covered by current arrangements. Before any noble Lord says that he cannot conceive of such circumstances arising, I assure the House that they will do so. They will arise, for example, around an environmental disaster or a financial disaster. The purpose of this amendment is to make provision for the circumstances in which they will arise.

When we talked about the meltdown of the world banking system, noble Lords rightly pointed out that the emergency arrangements that were made took a considerable time to design and to begin to be put in place. Indeed, they are not in place to this day and we have not reached the end of that process. That is rather regrettable because it seems to me that in international terms we are without a number of the levers which we would probably desire to have, in order to have a real impact on some of those events in concert with others. The G20 made a very good effort at least at one meeting, and arguably at two meetings, to try to work out some sort of architecture to deal with those circumstances. Others may disagree but I believe that if Europe had been able to speak with a more coherent voice in the G20 meetings, it would have been much more likely to have arrived at an authoritative consensus with the United States and with China in particular.

It seems to be within the realms of possibility, and perhaps not so fanciful either, that there could be circumstances—particularly in acute financial crises—where the Government might conclude that emergency conditions applied, they needed to be able to act under those conditions, it was desirable for the interests of the country and the people of the country that they did act under those conditions, and that slight variations in the current arrangements would make that more possible. These are inevitably difficult conditions to envisage largely because every time you try to do so you can usually point to a set of arrangements which have already been designed to take account of them. However, we have surely learnt, certainly since late 2007—we have learnt this rather harsh lesson through 2008 and up to the present—that it is not possible to predict all those circumstances, manage them, say that we have the levers for managing them or say that the other institutions, particularly the G20 in which we put such faith, are capable of doing so, partly because Europe is incapable of acting or speaking in a single and coherent way. I beg to move.

[Viscount Trenchard]

My Lords, I am afraid the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, has not persuaded me of the need to include an urgency condition. It seems to me there is absolutely nothing that prevents the UK from co-ordinating with other EU member states in response to any natural disaster. Furthermore, if the amendment were adopted, the ability of the UK to react speedily might even be circumscribed. The amendment does nothing to improve clarity; rather, it confuses the situation, compromises legal certainty and is very subjective. Amendment 10 states:

“The urgency condition is where an amendment under the simplified revision procedure is considered to be urgent”.

“Considered” by whom and in what forum? It is very unclear. I venture to submit that this amendment does nothing to improve the clarity and certainty of the Bill.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine]

I too oppose the amendment, although I recognise that in tabling it the opposition Benches are very conscious of the leap in the dark that we are making to some extent with this Bill. It is about future eventualities at a time of significant flux in the world, and indeed in the European Union. One would need to be a clairvoyant to imagine what might be coming down the road in terms of emergencies and urgencies that would need rather speedier action than the normal pace of change in the European Union. In fact I think one of the reasons why there is a disconnect between the British electorate and the Union is partly because of the very slow and cumbersome methodology and pace of reacting to events. When there is a deep economic recession or a great financial or banking crisis, people out in the country want their leaders and politicians to act speedily to deal with the issues that led to those events, and perhaps would wish us to move faster than we have been capable of doing in international fora and multilateral institutions.

Despite recognising these things, I nevertheless oppose this amendment because I think what defines urgency is so subjective and so much predicated on what the Government of the day, and the policy-makers on either side of the debate, would imagine to be urgent or not. While I think we all know what is urgent when it hits us in the face, and it is quite right that we should and should then act speedily, enshrining it in law seems to raise a host of problems, not least again with judicial review. It also creates a basis of very subjective analysis as to whether something is urgent or not, and the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, in his very helpful moving of the amendment, accepted that we do take quite a long time—that even the European financial stability mechanism is going to take a leisurely pace. This really goes to the heart of the argument; that it is better for us to look for ways to facilitate speed and urgency when the urgent situation arises, rather than to seek to enshrine it in law at this stage.