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

I suggest that the noble Lord, Lord Howell, takes the Marshalled List home and gets it framed, so that he can see his name in such illustrious company. I understand the noble Lord’s feeling about this being mandatory, but I think that there is a case for greater use of the European flag, not least because of the problems of ignorance that have been complained of on all sides. I am sure that we have all had the experience of knocking on a door and somebody coming out and saying, ““I don’t think we should join that Common Market””; when you say, ““Actually, we did that 35 years ago””, you realise the gap between general knowledge and reality. But of course that is also a reflection of the whole approach of the noble Lord, Lord Pearson. The noble Lord reminds me a little bit of Arsène Wenger—and I am sure that he will not take offence at being compared with a Frenchman. The Arsenal manager never quite loses a match; he always has some complaint, either about the referee or the opposition. I can tell the noble Lord that the truth of how the game works is that he can put his views to the British people in a democratic election and, if they approve of what he puts to them, they will elect him to this Parliament and he can form a Government and take us out of the Common Market. The Labour Party stood on such a commitment in 1983; it was the last time that a major party stood with a specific manifesto commitment to take Britain out of the Common Market. Noble Lords will recall—although I do not want to hurt the Minister by recalling it—that Labour got its worst election result since 1918. Part of the modernisation of the Labour Party involved its realising that that kind of proposal to the British people just does not wash. The fact is that all the various Acts to which the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, referred during his various interventions have gone though both Houses of this Parliament, and those who have voted for them have had to put their judgment to the test in elections. I would like a greater show of the European flag. I was involved in the referendum in 1975, and I remember people saying then that by this time we would all be one great amorphous mass and nobody would have any national identity. Of course, that is all codswallop. It was codswallop then and it is codswallop now—the various national identities have remained and will continue to do so. I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Howell, is associated in such rough company, because I found some of his earlier comments very encouraging. I suddenly realised why, probably, the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, has jumped ship. I suspect that the Conservative Party is changing from its position a few years ago of rabid hostility; it is now having some interesting thoughts about the modernisation of Europe, which I think are welcome, not least from such an experienced source as the noble Lord, Lord Howell. Let us fly the flag. I have no problem with that. As I have always said, I can cheer for Blackpool at football, England at cricket and Europe in the Ryder Cup. I will wave the appropriate flag on each occasion and still be robust about all three.