European Union Bill

My Lords, just to take any possible lingering tension out of the highly charged environment of this Chamber—I would hate to wind up everybody inappropriately—I will tell you now that, in a few minutes, I will withdraw the amendment. Before I do so, I have to say that, from an intellectual point of view, these have been some of the more depressing arguments that I have heard. I do not mean to say that in order to be rude. I just think that we must allow ourselves the courtesy of being a great deal more rigorous. As the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, pointed out, it is plainly the intention of the amendment to provide a means whereby, in circumstances which are very pressing and where we need potentially to adjust our capacity to act—this is about our capacity to act and the mechanisms that we can use to act—we do not deny ourselves the opportunity to do something if it is in the national interest. I cannot imagine that it really needed any presentation to us, but I readily accept that what constitutes the national interest will not be determined by some objective basis, as would a demonstration of Boyle’s law of gaseous volumes. This is not a point that I have ever attempted to make. The national interest will be defined by the Government of the day, whether a single party or a coalition. We may or may not all agree with one another, but it is in the nature of our parliamentary democracy that the power to arrive at a conclusion about what the national interest is is vested in a Government that enjoy the confidence of the House of Commons and can proceed on that basis. In that sense, from a political point of view, it is a completely objective test. I know whether the Government of the day enjoy the confidence of the House of Commons precisely because I know what would happen if they did not. It is a very simple matter. Let us not deal with this kind of discussion as though it were incumbent upon us to do something like Boyle did, in showing the way in which the volumes of gases under pressure react to it, which can then be set out in a textbook to be tested to kingdom come in any laboratory in the land. Let us deal with it as political people—I was going to say, if the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, was in his place, as humble members of the political class. Let us deal with it as political people—with a small p—who understand perfectly well the convention which decides what the national interest is at any time. I am sorry, but I cannot buy that kind of argument. I do not think it treats us credibly. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Flight, that it was never my intention in moving this amendment that the Bill should be watered down. I do not like that interpretation being ascribed to what I have said. I have always tried in the House, whether on the government Benches or on these Benches, to be very candid and very frank—it does not always win you friends—about what I am doing and why I am doing it, because it seems to me that life is a lot easier if you try to do it that way. The reason is not to water it down but to make certain that Ministers in any Government have the kind of authority and ability to act in circumstances which come along that we cannot predict. I am not omniscient, and I cannot say any more than anybody else in the House what I know will happen or what kinds of competence we may require at a particular time to deal with those issues. I will be candid with the House: I did not expect the collapse of Lehman Brothers; I was astonished to know that we were within two hours of the Royal Bank of Scotland collapsing; and I notice that sovereign debt crises are occurring more rapidly and are likely to occur more rapidly. I just say to the House no more than that it is extremely likely that we will face more such circumstances. I do not want to feel that we do not have all the levers at our disposal in order to deal with them. The decision would plainly be taken by the Government putting a proposition to Parliament about what is urgent in those circumstances, and Parliament would decide it. That was the question that the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, was asking. It will unquestionably be what the Government of the day judge to be urgent. I am perfectly confident, knowing our incapacity in the United Kingdom to speak other people’s languages generally, that we will mean urgency to mean urgency—ce n’est pas le même mot de l’urgence en français. We will know exactly what we are saying and why we are saying it, and we will not need to borrow anybody else’s dictionary in order to translate it. In lots of legislation, we leave ourselves with emergency powers for circumstances we cannot predict in relation to national security and a wide range of other matters. We do that because we are sensible, and we take the precaution of allowing ourselves the room to be able to act. I come to the conclusion that I put to the House, but it relates to a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, which, again, I understand. Of course, it would be great in all circumstances if we had sufficient notice of anything that happened to be able to go through every single process and feel that we had interrogated it to the nth degree. Of course that would be desirable. I understand that, but we do not live in a world which affords us that luxury on every occasion.