European Union Bill

The noble Lord is absolutely right. That was a powerful argument, well put, and one with which I found myself completely in agreement. These amendments go to the centre of what is wrong with this lamentable piece of legislation. It is not just a question of a lack of vision; it is a matter of selling the British people short. If there is one fundamental reality in relevant politics, it is that we live in a totally interdependent world. The job of government is to help the British people to find a place within the reality of that interdependence and to work out how the interdependence can best be handled. That should be central to our education system and to the whole message of politics. The trouble with the Bill, as we said powerfully at Second Reading, is that it does not provide any flexibility. Here I slightly differ from my noble friend Lord Liddle, who is doing a formidable job on the Bill and makes me very proud to come from the same county in England. However, it is not simply flexibility that we are talking about but leadership of the British people in meeting the realities that confront us. The trouble with the Bill—and we all know it—is that it is an effort to reassure the British people that government will protect them against the European Union. Instead of asking how we can strengthen the well-being of the British people through the part that we play in Europe, and instead of coming out of negotiations and saying, ““My God, look at what we have achieved for the people of Europe and therefore for ourselves in this context””, we come out saying, ““Look at what we’ve managed to hold off in looking after British interests””. That kind of argument is all tactical and totally lacks strategy. From that standpoint, it seems to me that these amendments are central. Not one issue is mentioned in them that can possibly be carried forward on behalf of the British people within the context of the nation state alone. They require international solutions. In responding to my noble friend’s very important intervention on piracy, kidnapping and ransom, the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, seemed to suggest that these are matters of international law. Of course they are, and they are absolutely central to the future of my children and grandchildren. Of course we have to get the international and global policies right, but surely the noble Lord does not want to align himself with the argument that establishing firmly in the European Community a stepping stone towards making that wider international policy effective is somehow unnecessary. It is vital, and we have done it with, for example, arms exports. It was in the context of the whole issue of arms exports and the damage they could do that we saw the establishment of the European code on arms exports. A lot of work is still to be done on it but it is a starting point. It illustrates to the world what can be done and it enables us to move forward practically to a wider, more successful policy within the United Nations. The issue that we must come back to is that these amendments are vital because they try to ensure that we bring home to the British people that their interests lie in strong collective action at the international level. I repeat that the trouble with the Bill is that it faces in the opposite direction. It is saying, ““We will make some concessions to Europe where necessary, but we do not see our future in international co-operation and effective international instruments: we see these as something that reluctantly we have to concede from time to time—and, my God, we will insist on the opportunity always to test public opinion if we are asked to take an obviously sensible step””. These amendments deal with the heart of the Bill. It is a sad day in British history when we have this wretched piece of legislation before us.