European Union Bill

My Lords, we have had a long debate on this set of amendments. We on the opposition Front Bench strongly support this group of amendments, spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay. I shall focus our debate on Report on the essence of these amendments, which is to reduce the 56 varieties of referendum lock that the Bill contains to referenda on new treaties and three major issues: joining the euro, joining Schengen and the setting up of a single European army or force, as my noble friend Lady Symons mentioned. What people who accuse us of proposing a set of wrecking amendments have to take into account is that the Bill as amended would be a substantial step forward in public accountability as far as the European Union is concerned. There could be no major new treaties containing the kind of proposal that former Prime Minister Tony Blair floated last week—for an elected president of the European Union—without a referendum. We could not join the euro, which clearly might now mean significant steps towards a fiscal union, under the amendments in this group. We could not join Schengen, which would certainly mean abolishing our own border controls and replacing them with border controls at the EU frontier, a common set of asylum rules, burden sharing and so on. Under the amendments that we are proposing, that would be subject to a referendum, as would a major step towards common defence. Therefore, these amendments do not wreck this Bill; they just make it more sensible and get rid of the huge number of referenda in it. That is wholly in line with the spirit of your Lordships’ Constitution Committee’s recommendation that referenda should be confined to matters of major constitutional significance. One of the curiosities of the many days of debate that we have had is that we have never heard why the Government think they can set aside in this way the recommendations of your Lordships’ committee on these specific matters when it comes to the European Union. On all these other matters—on which, if this amendment were passed, there would be no need for a referendum—there would still be a need for an Act of Parliament. That is an enormous change from the position that we are in now. We are not wrecking this Bill; we are trying to improve it. I hope that on that basis the Government might be prepared to show a flexibility that they have so far lacked in these debates. One of the very wise contributions to this discussion was made by my noble friend Lord Rowlands. In a distinguished career in another place, he was a sceptic in the proper sense of the word and had to be convinced about the case for Britain’s membership of the European Union and the pooling of sovereignty that it involved. However, as he said, we are setting up a far too overcomplicated process of accountability with the plethora of referendums proposed. What I find difficult about this is why the presumed lack of legitimacy of the European Union is seen as being so peculiar and special compared with the huge problems that our democracy as a whole faces in today’s world. I looked at the Eurobarometer opinion poll for October 2010—that poll asks people questions about trust on a regular basis—and found that a very depressing 64 per cent of the British people do not trust the European Union. That is why we accept that there is a legitimacy problem. However, it seems that 66 per cent do not trust the British Parliament, 67 per cent do not trust the UK Government and 82 per cent do not trust political parties in Britain, so what is so peculiar about the lack of legitimacy of the European Union compared with the rest of our democracy? It is argued either that confidence in Europe has been destroyed by so-called competence creep or that we face lots of threats to our sovereignty in future. As my noble friend Lord Triesman has said many times, if you are in government and do not want to do something, you just say no. The noble Lord, Lord Lamont, made a very interesting speech in which he pointed out that there is a very distinctive issue about the irreversible nature of the surrenders of sovereignty that take place in the European Union and the problems of a Union that moves by a process of intergovernmental compromise. Many of us who are pro-Europeans have been worried about this issue for many years and have wanted to think of ways of closing that democratic deficit. Certainly, we should have a debate about the role of the European Parliament, which plays a much bigger role now than it did 15 years ago, largely because of the treaties that the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, when she was leading for the Government, put through this House. However, I presume that the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, would not regard those treaties or the strengthening of the European Parliament as being good things. I agree with him that we have to think of ways of addressing that democratic deficit, but I suspect that he is not prepared to accept these kinds of remedies. There is a problem of legitimacy vis-à-vis Europe that is particular to Britain, because over decades we have failed to establish a cross-party consensus about our membership of the European Union and failed to argue the case for British membership with a united voice. Amendment 31—which we shall discuss later; the noble Lord, Lord Radice, moved it in Committee—will try to address that problem in part. However, there is another explanation of why the EU has run into problems. The explanation is, as I said at Second Reading, that there are two ways of looking at legitimacy. One is to think about it in terms of how decisions are approved, but the other is to think about whether the institution is effective at doing the job that it is supposed to do. One of the problems with Europe is that it is not as effective as it could be, and this causes public disillusion. I looked at a poll carried out last November about attitudes to the European Union. If you ask a general question—do people think that we should co-operate more or do they want us to loosen the links with the European Union?—only 21 per cent want us to co-operate more, but 49 per cent would have us loosen the links. However, when you ask people questions about specific areas such as climate change, attacking terrorism and crime, regulating banks, minimum rights for workers, or minimum levels of tax on business, a strong majority in Britain want the European Union to do more. I therefore argue that it is not a question just of how decisions are taken, but of how we make Europe effective. That is what we ought to focus on in our debate. Finally, in support of the amendment, perhaps I may say that we have had a good and long debate, but one of the depressing things about it is a tendency to be historical, to look back to the past, to take trips down memory lane, and to look at the debates in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. I am very prone to that tendency, and this is therefore a self-criticism. When we think about Europe, we really should remember that the world of which the European Union is part is transforming itself at enormous speed. Since the Maastricht treaty, communism has fallen and that aspect of the world has changed enormously, the Arab world is in revolution, China has risen enormously as a power, and the weight of the European Union in the world is decreasing at a rapid rate. Our weight in the world as the United Kingdom is decreasing at an even more rapid rate. Yet, in response to these extraordinary developments of the past 20 years, this Government have come forward with a policy on Europe that is essentially, ““Thus far and no further””. In other words, ““We have no imagination about how the European Union might develop. We are saying there should be no change without a referendum””. This is a depressing attitude that destroys the flexibility that a British Government should have to respond to an unpredictable and unknowable future. I urge the House to support these amendments because they confine referendums to the really big issues on which the people ought to decide.