European Union Bill

I shall speak to a number of the amendments in the group which are in my name and support the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Kerr. I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, got in ahead of me, because he has enabled me to realise that he has neither understood what the amendments are trying to do nor understood what they are not trying to do. So I shall try, since that is the spirit of Committee stage, to say a little bit about them. I hope that I shall not be totally out of order if I express some regret that so many of these amendments have been bundled together when they are completely contradictory. There are amendments in the group which add more to the list of 56 referendums with which we are threatened and there are amendments, such as those which I support, which subtract. They are not two branches of the same subject; they are two completely contrary views of how to pursue Britain’s national interest in Brussels. However, having said that, I am happy to address all the amendments, particularly those in my name. The reasons that we have to take seriously the need to reduce the number of subjects on which there might be referendums are numerous. The proponents of the legislation have simply ignored the views of the Constitution Committee of this House. I have not heard a single word from the government Benches answering the committee’s report in which it said that referendums should be used in the EU context only when matters of major constitutional importance are at stake. I shall not go through the whole list in Clause 6 to show which matters are and are not—most are not—covered by that; the euro clearly is, which is why there is no question of trying to suggest there should not be a referendum on that matter. However, that is one reason for shortening the list. The other is that if you have 56 items—or, as some speakers on later amendments in this group will no doubt urge, more than 56 items—which could trigger referendums, you are chopping at the base of representative parliamentary democracy and the sovereignty of Parliament, because you are handing over huge chunks of it to a different process which does not involve Parliament. That is another reason for cutting down. A further reason for taking this matter seriously, as I hope the Government will, is that given by the noble Lord, Lord Kerr. So far, the Government’s response to these criticisms of this great cascade of potential referendums has been totally inadequate. Their response has been what is now described in the argot as ““Calm down, dear””. They say, ““Don’t worry, it won’t happen. None of these things will happen””. The noble Lord, Lord Howell, said the other day that there will not be all these decisions in Brussels that require referendums; they will all be bundled together into a big package. As the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, pointed out, that is fundamentally against Britain’s interests. I do not wish to accelerate construction of a large institutional package of measures of the sort that was passed in the form of the Single European Act or Maastricht or Lisbon. It is not in our interests to do that, but that is precisely what we will end up doing. Alternatively, and it is really quite serious, we will end up having serial blocking in Brussels, which is what I think some noble Lords opposite would like; that is, when each decision comes forward, the British Minister will block it because they will not want to have a referendum on it, either for opportunistic reasons or for perfectly substantial principled reasons. Together, they will all add up to a situation in which Britain’s good faith will be queried. Our partners will then be propelled either into the large package, which is not in our interest, or into enhanced co-operation. By definition, since we are talking about matters that require unanimity, they will have been brought around the Council table to a point at which 27 of them—or more if there are more members of the Union than now—have said that they are prepared to go ahead and one, Britain, has blocked it. That is the absolute perfect building block for enhanced co-operation—for marginalising ourselves and being completely ineffective. Therefore, I am arguing that we truncate the list of matters on which there should be a referendum. I now turn to the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton. This is certainly not removing the whole meaning of this legislation. No one from these Benches is contesting the completely new innovation; namely, that the Government will submit to a referendum any measure that is negotiated in an intergovernmental conference and results in a new treaty or a treaty amendment reached through intergovernmental conference. That is the meaning of Clause 2. No one is contesting that. No one is contesting the referendum on the euro. Those of us who are moving amendments in this block need to be clear about what we are not doing as well as what we are doing. Thirdly, we are not challenging the coalition agreement in any way, which merely stated that there would be a referendum on treaty change. No one here is contesting that. It is probably not formally covered by the Salisbury convention, but the Government have a majority in the other place and have the right to have their legislation. However, the Government have added a huge amount to that coalition agreement in this case and these amendments address that. That is why we should take them seriously. Finally, these amendments do not take us back to the position that this Parliament agreed when it ratified Lisbon. At that time, it subjected these matters—the Article 48(6) matters and the passerelles and so forth—to resolutions in the two Houses but not to primary legislation. In the Bill, the Government are introducing a requirement for primary legislation in all these matters and some others too which are not required for referendum. None of these amendments contests that shift, which is a shift to increased power for the Westminster Parliament in ratifying things agreed in Brussels. That is not being contested. Those three things that are not being contested are important to understand as well as those things that are being contested, which I argue are also important. I hope that these amendments can be treated seriously and not considered to be wrecking amendments. They are not wrecking amendments. If the Bill is passed with these amendments it would still be a major constitutional innovation in this country. It would still institutionalise the holding of a referendum whenever an intergovernmental treaty were agreed in Brussels. No one should try to tell those of us who tabled these amendments that we are not accepting the spirit in which the coalition was founded and the spirit in which Parliament conducts its business. The amendments are perfectly legitimate. They would put Britain in a much stronger position in Brussels because Ministers will still have to say, ““I can give only political agreement to this unanimity requirement. I cannot give legal agreement to it. Before I can give legal agreement to it I must go back to London and seek an Act of Parliament to enable me to give legal agreement to it””. That is how these amendments will leave the situation. That is a strong position for a British Minister. But it does not involve a whole cascade of referendums. I believe, along with others, that it is frankly a sick joke to suggest that this will improve Britain's relations with its partners in the European Union. Alas would it were so, but it will not. It will organise a whole series of difficult moments which may well lead to our marginalisation. We all know from last week that that is what referendums are in this country. They are confrontations between two schools of thought. They are bitter and lead to hard feelings. Anyone who tells me that organising a series of referendums in this country will improve the way that people think of the European Union cannot be stating that with any seriousness of purpose. It cannot be so. We have all known in the history of Britain's membership of the European Union that when we get into a confrontation over European issues, support for Europe drops sharply. When we have a period of relative calm and tranquillity and of reaching agreement in Brussels in a sensible way, sometimes striking compromises, support rises. Please do not tell us that this Bill will improve support for the European Union in this country. It will have the exact opposite effect.