European Union Bill

My Lords, I do not believe that the noble Lord, Lord Radice, was suggesting that there should be a legal obligation on Ministers to say nice things about the European Union. What he was trying to do is to get at long last a more balanced perception of the pros and cons of our membership of the European Union, for which I profoundly commend him. Of course there are many things wrong with the European Union, as there are with the United Nations, with our special relationship with United States and with many other aspects of international institutions, one recently mentioned being NATO. Nobody argues with that; we live in a world of real politics where it is clear that most institutions have substantial flaws. Nobody denies that the same is true of the European Union. But what I find so sad is that, for 40 years now, this country has gone on missing opportunity after opportunity to lead and profoundly to influence the European Union because of its obsession with constantly trying to run it down, even when it does things which are obviously in the interests of this country, of the European Union itself and of the world. Neither your Lordships nor I have got time to go back at great length, but such an attitude dates from our refusal to have any part in the Coal and Steel Community of 1951, our refusal to take part in the 1957 treaty of Rome, with our dismissal of the enterprise as being unlikely to succeed, our failure to recognise the astonishing achievement in bringing Spain, Portugal and Greece, all of them dictatorships, into a framework of democracy which has been sustained, undoubtedly with some difficulty, right up to the present time—which is an amazing achievement—and our total lack of interest or great concern with the European Union’s extension eastwards into central Europe, the Baltic states and elsewhere, countries for which the European Union, alongside their membership of NATO, were the guarantees of their future democracy and stability. They still have a long way to go, but they have come a very long way since 1989 when the Soviet Union collapsed. We turn aside time and again from the fact that the European Union is the single greatest giver of aid to developing countries, exceeding any other country on the same scale such as the United States, China or India. We take very little notice of the tremendous efforts made by the European Union to do something serious about emissions, greenhouse gases and the environment. At the most parochial level, when we look at the cleanness of our beaches and at the fact that the Thames river now has salmon all way up to the Pool of London, we see that that is due directly to European Union directives, though nobody is ever prepared to say it very loudly in this country. I could go on—I shall not—but what I find so sad is that we in this country have failed to give a constructive lead to the European Union and spend almost all our time carping about it. We are right to criticise it—yes—but to carp, to sour and to change and distort the facts in the way that happens in the British press is astonishing and not copied in France, Germany, Spain or most other major countries of the European Union. It is a unique aspect of a certain kind of British moaning about the great opportunities that it has decided not to follow up. The noble Lord, Lord Radice, spoke about the Murdoch press and Associated Newspapers. Those newspapers do not simply produce balanced and constructive criticism of the European Union; they continually emit a series of distorted statements, falsified facts and false scandals which rarely come home. One should compare them with the one newspaper that I think everybody in this House would recognise does not grind very strong party axes and attempts seriously to devote itself to society and the public good, in providing the nearest thing to truth that can be provided—I refer, to your Lordships’ surprise perhaps, to the Financial Times. The indications, the outlines, the descriptions and the analysis in the Financial Times of what is actually going on in Europe are unique in being genuinely international, genuinely global and genuinely objective in a way that most newspapers do not pretend or even try to be. One reads in that newspaper lots of criticisms and worries about the eurozone and so on, but it provides a picture of what is happening that is far better balanced than that which one gets from most of the other major tabloids or even for that matter, sadly, some of the major broadsheets. Our future as a country lies in working closely with the European Union. It is not just me who says that; it is people such as President Obama and the leaders of China. Our major neighbour nations recognise that the UK’s future as a serious player on the world stage is very closely linked to the extent to which we can co-operate with our neighbours in Europe. That is very strongly the view of the United States; it has been over several presidencies—I do not doubt that we shall hear anything very different when the present President of the United States comes here on Wednesday. Should we not at least give a moment’s pause for some of our closest friends and best allies when they say to the United Kingdom, ““Please, think constructively about what you can contribute to the future, and think about how the Commonwealth and Europe together could create a world of greater peace and greater balance””? Just for once, let us move away from the negative position that we in this country so often take and look at the prospects for our children and grandchildren. Let us notice that they inevitably require us to work, not uncritically, but thoughtfully and constructively, with our European neighbours to make the world a somewhat better place.