European Union Bill

I am afraid the noble Lord is describing a situation which might, at a stretch, have described European decision-making 30 or 40 years ago but certainly does not describe the way in which co-decision works today. In addition to the European Parliament, there is also a need for a stronger role for national Parliaments in European decision-making. The previous Government did a great deal to push this: the treaty of Lisbon introduced the yellow card procedure on subsidiarity; and the Act of 2008 strengthened the accountability of Ministers to Parliament for their conduct of European business. We should have a serious debate about how we can strengthen parliamentary accountability. The Commons could learn a lot from the excellent work of the European committee of your Lordships’ House under the chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Roper, the reports of which are listened to across the European Union. What you get instead in this Bill is not a serious debate about these issues but an attempt to insert a sovereignty clause which has been described in the debate as irrelevant, dangerous, spurious, futile and as a grubby political compromise. What is the point of it? We look forward to the explanation of the noble Lord, Lord Wallace. The Bill has failed to decide what it is all about; it is a fundamentally confused Bill. Is it about increasing parliamentary accountability, with the added possibility of occasional referenda on issues of fundamental constitutional importance; or is it about a powerless Parliament, with weak leadership, where the most trivial subjects are decided in multiple referenda? Is the latter really the coalition’s vision of the future direction of our democracy? It is reality TV democracy, as the noble Lord, Lord Howell, described it, as against representative democracy. If we can justify the approach to multiple referenda on Europe, why not referenda on everything from hanging to dangerous dogs? It is a fundamental constitutional point. On the question of whether these referenda matter, the present Government clearly think that they do not because there is no likelihood, they say, that they will ever call a referendum in Parliament under their own legislation—they say that there will be no transfers of powers to Brussels in the present Parliament—so what we have here is not relevant to the present Parliament; rather, it is a crude attempt to bind future Parliaments. This is contrary to our normal constitutional practice, and that is why the Opposition will support a sunset clause in the Bill. We look forward to the unanimous support of the Liberal Democrats on this issue, which the noble Lord, Lord Taverne, promised us. I hope that that promise will be fulfilled. The noble Lord, Lord Wallace, must know that if the Bill is accepted as permanent it would have a disastrous impact on Britain’s position in Europe. We would have no room for manoeuvre as the EU develops. We would see the gradual emergence of a two-tier Europe, a situation that the Foreign Office has fought for 30 years to prevent. This is in an age when a stronger European Union is needed. Last week I was in Brazil, speaking at a conference on globalisation. A distinguished Brazilian ambassador told me something that is relevant to our whole thinking about the European Union. Until 1928, Britain was Brazil’s largest trading partner. From 1928 to 2009, it was the United States. In 2010, it became China. After the devastation of the Second World War, Europe, in Alan Milward’s famous phrase, came to the rescue of the European nation state but because Britain had never been occupied or defeated, it never saw quite the same need to be rescued. Now, the huge challenge for Europe is globalisation. For all the nation states of Europe, including Britain, globalisation poses the need for another European rescue of the nation state. Yet instead of thinking big about the issues and how these questions are to be addressed, the Government come forward with this miserable, pathetic little Bill. This is a coalition not of leaders but of panderers. The House has shown today why the Bill is simply not good enough.