European Union (Information, etc.) Bill [HL]

It is always a pleasure to be engaged in debate with the noble Lord, Lord Pearson. He has always brought to his views on Europe the great virtues of simplicity and clarity. We know exactly where he stands. We now know that even more so as his party membership has changed. I am slightly bemused by the concept of UKIP advising the Privy Council on the achievement of balance, which seems an altogether novel notion, but there we are. UKIP’s views are black and white. Quite apart from anything else, this amendment allows for no intermediate colours. Which would be the two organisations opposed to continuing United Kingdom membership of the European Union? The bottom line on all this is, as we all know—indeed, I think it is broadly accepted in this House—that the level of general public knowledge about the European Union is woefully inadequate. Poll after poll reveals this to be true. Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, and I agree about that. The question is how you rectify this. How do you improve the levels of knowledge? The Bill is a genuine and sensitive attempt to increase the levels of knowledge, which is an ideal thing to do. This year, we are celebrating the 50th anniversary of the original Treaty of Rome. Whatever one’s views about specific weaknesses or strengths of the European Union, one thing is surely clear: the European Union has made an enormous contribution to the civilisation of which we are a part. I dread to think what the consequences of the collapse of the Soviet empire would have been if the European Union had not existed to provide a road map for the countries of east and central Europe in their progress towards a civil society. It is almost unimaginable. We had one rather scary but thankfully brief moment right at the beginning of that process when the French and the Germans suddenly found themselves with very different views about the future of the failed state of Yugoslavia. That brief glimpse of the hard edge of European nationalism, which has not yet finally expired, was a warning. We should do what we can to improve the levels of knowledge, as well as the understanding of the enormous achievement of the European Union and the issues that remain for debate, which are clearly controversial. The Bill is a good step in that direction. The amendment, however, is based on an extraordinarily odd notion that the only way in which you can achieve balance is to take the two most extreme positions you can find and pit them against each other.