European Union (Implications of Withdrawal) Bill [HL]

No, my Lords. The noble Lord should certainly not think that everything that Conservatives say is agreed policy because we are not yet in government. We are formulating and thinking about these things. I shall have a thing or two to say about his party’s rather strange policy on these matters in a moment. The noble Lord can take it that we are seriously thinking about better ways in which to control this flood of instruments and legislation and to bring before Parliament and the people certain decisions before they gel or are formed in concrete and it is too late to change them. I believe that this may be one way of doing it, but I shall not go further than that at the moment. The second matter—national security and defence—raises even deeper issues on which, frankly, we are not being kept up to date in either Parliament. Our fear continues to be that NATO is being damaged by EU military aspirations and duplication. On the soft-power side of security and defence, there is the development aid issue, which is not mentioned in the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Pearson. As my noble friend Lord Liverpool rightly said, it is common knowledge that the EU aid processes are bureaucratic and inefficient and that they fail totally to focus on the lowest-income countries. There really is a case for urgent review in that regard and for reclaiming our national aid and development policies, given the general sense of failure and betrayal from all the high-flown promises for Africa at Gleneagles and elsewhere and at various EU summits. The Bill does not say anything about the latest EU passion for binding targets on the climate and global temperatures—targets which will not bind anyone in the end and will distract us from many more practical measures to upgrade our environment. Nor does it say anything about energy, which we will no doubt debate further in the future. I forget which of my noble friends mentioned it but the EU continental system declares that it wants to reduce dependence on Russian gas. In fact, there will be a vast increase in dependence on Russian gas, and we should be very careful not to become caught up in the extremely vulnerable systems that will then emerge. We need to look for other ways of ensuring our energy security. Then we come to the third issue: the constitution. On that, our position is clear, which is more than can be said for that of the Government. We say, quite simply, that a new transfer of powers from the UK to the EU should be subject to a referendum. That is what the Government used to say as well, but now they have reneged on that and I do not think that the British people will take kindly to this particular U-turn. We obviously need to keep a special eye on criminal law powers, labour relations and, above all, foreign policy, but keeping a special eye is extremely difficult because, as the noble Lord, Lord Monson, and others said, we are being kept in the pitch dark about what is going on. Even the Foreign Secretary will not tell the House of Commons Select Committee what our approach is to be at the meeting in a few days’ time to determine the whole pattern of constitutional reform. We know what Mrs Merkel in Berlin wants; we know what Mr Sarkozy in Paris wants; we have a pretty shrewd idea of what the British people want, if they are allowed a say; but we have no idea what the Government want. Frankly, that is disgraceful and a total snub for all the talk about open government and transparency which so fills official rhetoric. Then we come to the subject of hard budgetary economics, which I think is the main interest of the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, who has produced a great many papers and done a great deal of work in this area. Under the current less-than-brilliant budgetary deal secured by UK Ministers, the UK will raise its net—I repeat ““net””—payment to the EU annually by £2.5 billion to £6 billion over the period from 2006 to 2013. This compares—it is a comparison near to my heart—with around £40 million a year which the British Government pay to support the Commonwealth. The disparity—at a ratio of about 100:1 or 150:1—is so vast that it makes one pause when one thinks that the Commonwealth network is probably more valuable in terms of British influence than anything that the EU can offer today. The contrast really should make policy makers pause, and make the dear old Foreign and Commonwealth Office remember the second and third words in its title—and Commonwealth. Until there is more evidence of that, we shall not regain the balance in British foreign policy that we have so tragically lost over the past 10 years. By contrast, along the way, the EU's administrative costs alone involve more than£4 billion a year, and that is now set to rise by a further 20 per cent. We also know that the UK will be paying 20 per cent more to the EU budget than France and get back less EU money per head than any other of the EU’s 27 members. These are matters about which we must pause and think very hard indeed. Even if setting up a new committee, with a feverish, almost snark-like search for independence, is going to do the job, those are nevertheless matters on which we should remain intensely focused at all times, particularly in the coming weeks and months. There are all sorts of other profound issues about the EU situation and the current trends that we obviously need to discuss. In fact, we will be returning to the constitution issue next Thursday on a Liberal Democrat Motion. That is perfectly acceptable, and we will no doubt deal with it thoroughly. However, I find the Liberal Democrats’ wish that the UK can be defeated in the coming negotiations—that England should be defeated, to use their words—leaves a very unpleasant taste indeed. I hope that we will hear no more of that in the coming debate. However, as well as doubting the efficacy of a Bill or a committee on such momentous matters, we in this party do not favour a withdrawal strategy at all. We see that as defeatist. Obviously the EU’s nature will be transformed. The noble Lord, Lord Watson, mentioned Moldova. Turkey is in the wings along with Ukraine and Georgia; and even countries beyond Georgia, including Azerbaijan, are seeking to join a wider European—by then it will be Eurasian—Union. That transformation is going on slowly but all the time. Secondly, the people of Europe at the grass roots are beginning to speak. Until the referendum defeats of a couple of years ago, one could say that they had never spoken yet, but then they did speak. It was not the people of Britain—who got such stick from the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, as though we were the only offenders—but the people of the Netherlands and the people of France who spoke out and said they did not wish any further centralism and that the whole doctrine of bigger, larger and more remote blocs and more remote systems of government, undermining people’s identity, closeness and intimacy, was one that they rejected. They were the people who spoke out. We favour vigorous and extensive EU reform and the confining of EU activities and ambitions to sensible, reasonable goals which we can achieve by working together with our neighbours, as good Europeans, as we always will be and always have been. Today, the EU has its place—its local place—but there are much wider worlds to conquer, and by whom we may be conquered if we do not look out.