European Union Bill

My Lords, I shall comment briefly on the important set of amendments which the noble Lord, Lord Hannay of Chiswick, has put forward, and focus on two important points. The first concerns Amendment 15, in which the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, recommends that after ““defence”” we insert the words, "““that permits a single, integrated military force””." As I understand the amendment, this would trigger a referendum. The second point concerns Amendment 16, in which the noble Lord recommends that decisions on common defence and security policy be referred back for an Act of Parliament. It is immediately of interest that the supporters of this amendment, led by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay of Chiswick, have, in a sense, given a concession: they have agreed that if Amendment 15 is incorporated, there should be a referendum on a single, integrated military force. However, in their second amendment, Amendment 16, the noble Lord has ceded that although the issue of common defence and security policy is very important, it should be referred back to Parliament, in contrast to the purpose of the Bill, which is to seek the approval of the British people. I should like to comment first on this welcome opening-up as regards the potential for a referendum on the single, integrated military force. My problem, however, is that I cannot really understand what that phrase means. I do not find ““a single, integrated military force”” a phrase that is commonly—or ever—used in treaties or Acts of this nature. In fact, I have not been able to recall it at any time during my decade or the decade previously in the other place. I cannot help but wonder precisely what it means. Does it mean, for example, the single, integrated military force that I saw and worked alongside in the south of Iraq in 2003 to 2007, when we had a number of military forces that co-ordinated themselves under UK command? We had the Poles, who were superb; we had the Italians—a little bit more questionably perhaps; we had the Romanians, who were very fierce fighters; the Bulgarians, over whom hung a little bit of a question mark; the Danes, who were superlative; and one or two others. On top of that, of course, we had Australia and the US. What does a single, integrated military force mean? Does it mean a command under one structure, leader and nation state? Does it mean all 27 member states? Well, I think that that is unlikely. Mercifully, the ones that do not belong to NATO are now very few, but they are very unlikely to offer troops for a single, integrated military command. Does it mean, say, the Franco-British military command, which is getting stronger and whose strength I and others most warmly welcome? I may be correct in saying that at least until recently we had had at least 32 different actions going on with the French on the ground somewhere, some of which were training. We are strengthening that duality in military terms all the time. Although the referendum proposed here for a single, integrated military force is a welcome admission that a referendum for the British people on common defence and security policy matters, at least in this perspective, is of high value—high enough for the proposers of the amendment to accept that a referendum would be required—none the less, the phraseology is with great respect too loose, too weak, too open and too imprecise to allow this amendment to be adopted. In Amendment 16, on the other hand, the common defence and security policy is important enough to the proposers of the amendment to bring it back for an Act of Parliament. But how does that differ from now? Parliament has primacy in any event; if we wish to have an Act of Parliament on anything to do with EU legislation or policy, we can do that now. We have the primacy; it has been restated in Clause 18 and it has been there since 1972. The purpose of this Bill, which I support, is to put it to the people, which is why I cannot accept Amendment 16, which brings it solely back to an Act of Parliament. That is no different, in essence, from the situation that we have today. Another amendment that the proposers have put forward, led by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, and the last on which I will comment, contains the proposal that we should lose our potential veto for the multiannual budget. Is that truly sensible? I draw noble Lords’ attention to a highly possible situation, whereby in Brussels there could easily be today a time, not far distant, when the discussion on the multiannual budget was about the 40 per cent of the common agricultural policy expenditure. Noble Lords will know how difficult it is to get reform; it is almost possible—it has so far proved impossible to grasp the common agricultural policy by the tail and pull it into the reform network. It is rather like The Hunting of the Snark; it just has not been possible. It is easy to imagine that reforming the common agricultural policy would be an expensive business. How might that be paid for? Suppose that it would be paid for by the British rebate. It would be very hard indeed to obtain a majority against that for the United Kingdom. We might not be in a minority of one: others who are net contributors and who also wish the reform of the common agricultural policy, such as the Netherlands and Poland, would perhaps be with us; I am not sure. But as sure as eggs is eggs we would lose France. In fact, we would have lost France before the argument began because France—great ally as it is, net contributor as it is—would have been arguing for just that. The loss of the British rebate as a payment for a partial reform of the common agricultural policy would be enormously attractive. Of course, as noble Lords know well, particularly those who have served such excellent times in Brussels, the key strength of Brussels—of the system and the mechanisms that have been built up over the decades; the game which everyone now plays all the time, some more successfully than others—is to find ways of isolating those members of the blocking minority. How do you do that? We know how to do that very successfully indeed: by playing the game long, by building up a whole handful of debts and by calling in those debts at the one moment when it matters to your nation or to your grouping. It would not be difficult at all to have used that technique to place Britain in the dunce’s corner in such an argument. In principle I also believe that a veto is a negative way of behaving. None the less, the European Union is not such a stable body. In fact, with Croatia, the incorporation of Kosovo as a sort of colonial item and other more difficult—by which I mean corrupt—member states coming in, Brussels is not going to be strong, stable and balanced or provide fair treatment for every single member for a very considerable time to come, if ever. I believe that the veto for the multiannual budget is an essential prerequisite, for the sake of the United Kingdom and other member states, and therefore I support the Bill rather than this amendment. Of course the imperative must be to help Brussels and the EU in general to be clear and transparent and to fight corruption much more effectively. Brussels is not well co-ordinated—none of us would suggest that it is—with other enormously important global players with whom it has to link, such as the World Bank or the United Nations. Through this Bill, we must tackle the waste that Brussels represents in the eyes of the British public and is in fact true in many instances. Our job must be to force Brussels, in a positive way, to tackle its waste management, both financial and administrative. Perhaps the best way of doing that is by transparency. We should ask Brussels to focus on project delivery and proper budget management, through the means of openness, transparency and as full as possible an involvement of the people of the United Kingdom. Our objective must be to reassure the British public that money spent in the European Union goes further and is better spent because of British involvement than would otherwise be the case. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, immensely for putting forward such interesting amendments. Unfortunately I cannot give him and his fellow supporters my support.