European Union Bill

I think that by a ““no-brainer”” the noble Lord means giving the same answer to any question that is asked in any context whatsoever: that we should never have gone into the European Union. The noble Lord is fundamentally flawed in his analysis of the national interest in this area, but if I actually addressed his comments I should be making a speech about the reasons why we are in the EU. All I will say is that we have kept control of our borders. We have not joined Schengen although—and we should never forget this—we have a common travel zone with the Republic of Ireland, so we have a mini-Schengen. That is another reason why we cannot simply suppose that we can draw up the moat here and do what the devil we like; we need to discuss with the Republic of Ireland what it is doing in relation to Schengen at any one time, otherwise we should have to set up a border between Northern Ireland and the Republic or something of that sort, which would have all kinds of consequences that we would not want to contemplate. I mention this to the noble Lord merely because, while I was not very optimistic that I would persuade him about anything, these matters are extremely complex and we cannot act as if we are in isolation in this world. There is a whole range of interdependencies—I was going to say ““interdependabilities””—that we have with countries that surround us. That is a natural part of things and we should not reject it. We should be prepared to come to sensible, common-sensical, mutually advantageous arrangements with our partners on a pragmatic basis and we should not cut ourselves off from the possibility of reaching agreement with them—but that is exactly what the Bill does. What would happen if there were a pragmatic, sensible solution of this kind dealing with, say, provisions concerning passports, identity cards, residence permits and so forth? The British Minister would be paralysed and would not be able to take part in the discussion at all. If the British Minister even started entering the discussion, he would immediately be guilty of bad faith. Everyone around the table would say, ““This guy’s not serious; he’s not for real. Il n’est pas sérieux. He’s not going to have a referendum on this but he can’t agree it without a referendum, so why’s he sitting in the room at all? What’s this guy doing wasting our time?””. No one would be so rude and undiplomatic as to say that out loud, but that would be the effect. We would be sending Ministers to Brussels to find themselves in that extremely embarrassing situation. Do we really want to conduct our international relations, let alone those with such important partners and neighbours as our fellow members of the EU, on that basis? It is extraordinary. Let us look at police co-operation, covered by Article 87(3). It does not need very much imagination, for people who have had some experience of public life like ourselves, to know that out of the blue you can suddenly have a very nasty threat. It can be something to do with terrorism, and clearly we are all concerned about that; there is a Bill going through the House at the moment. I sit on a Joint Committee with the House of Commons examining the contingent terrorist detention Bill, as noble Lords will know. We are rightly concerned that something will happen out of the blue. I will give way to the noble Baroness; I am just finishing my sentence.