European Union Bill

My Lords, I would like to speak very briefly in support of this probing amendment, not because I am in total agreement with every detail of it but because I think that it addresses a very serious problem to which I alluded at the end of Second Reading, when I said that the effect of the Bill if passed unamended would be to lock the door and throw the key out of the window. I believe that that is an accurate description of what this Bill will do if not amended. These amendments are a sincere and quite well thought-out attempt to keep the key in the hands of the Government and the majority in both Houses of Parliament to some extent, subject to the reporting of a committee and so on. I think that this issue should be taken a bit more seriously, frankly, than it is by those on the other side of the House. If the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, will forgive me for saying so, about the piece that she quoted—I hate to have to construe somebody else’s coalition agreement, which has nothing to do with me—the sovereignty issue to which she referred and which she read out is dealt with in Clause 18, not in the clauses that we are discussing now. We will probably have the delights of spending a whole day discussing that next week but it has nothing whatsoever to do with referendums. No one has ever suggested that it should be. The suggestion was that you should inscribe in the Bill some test of what the basis for European law in this country is. Anyway, I suggest that the Government really ought to think about this enormous multiplicity of referendums which are provided for and which cannot be dealt with just by casual remarks such as, ““Oh well, don't worry—they won’t ever happen””. Perhaps I might commend to the Ministers on that Bench the extremely eloquent speech made from those Benches all of an hour and a half ago by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, when he rejected the request for a referendum on the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill. He set out the essence of the arguments that are being put against the large number of referendums called for in this Bill and the reasoning of this House’s Constitution Committee, which explained carefully why referendums should ideally be limited to matters of major constitutional import. He listed some of the main examples of those—none of which, other than joining the euro, are contained in this Bill. That really deserves serious consideration before we move to Report. At the moment, those of us who have been putting forward amendments have indicated a degree of flexibility and I am sure that there will be a willingness to demonstrate that flexibility when we move to Report,but on the Government’s side there has been no indication of any flexibility whatsoever. In his contribution to the debate on our last committee day the noble Lord, Lord Howell, very reasonably talked about the big five. For one moment, my spirits rose and I thought, ““Gosh—light is breaking through. The sun is going to shine around on the government Bench and they’re going to understand that there are very important issues in their list and less important issues””. Alas, it was not to be because he went on to say that although there was a big difference between the big five and the others, the prescription for dealing with them was identical: a referendum. I am afraid that that was a bit of a false dawn. However, I hope that the Government will think again about this in the light of these amendments and others, which we will discuss when we come to Schedule 1, to reduce somewhat the number of issues which are put to a referendum. From anybody who has tabled any of these amendments, there is no disputing that the Government’s insistence on greater parliamentary scrutiny of any changes made in Brussels is accepted. All the amendments that are being spoken to, including these, accept that. That is to say: primary legislation will be needed in place of the Lisbon arrangements—which this House ratified and which the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, voted for—which said that only a resolution of each House was needed. Okay, we have moved on from there and there is no contest about that, so those of us arguing against excessive referendums are doing so in the name of enhanced parliamentary scrutiny. Finally, I do not share the contempt that the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, has for the decisions of all British Governments of about the past 30 years or the belief that they all sold out—or contempt for all the Houses of Commons and Houses of Lords which voted to ratify those agreements. I worked for quite a number of those Governments, including the ones in which he served. I do not believe that Mrs Thatcher sold out the national interest when she agreed the rebate or when she agreed the Single European Act, so we really should not treat these matters in quite such a negative way. I do not remember serving a British Government that sold out the national interest.