European Union Bill

My Lords, I am reluctant to intervene, even briefly, in this marvellous ballet of Chancellors, which has taught us all a very great deal. I apologise for having stepped in before the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, because I am sure he too will have a major contribution to make. I want to raise one other issue before we move on to what one hopes will be the final remarkable occasion of this ballet, which we will all appreciate much. I want to talk for a moment, if I may, about being straightforward about the implications of this amendment. The noble Lord, Lord Kerr, talked with a degree of technicality I am incapable of following, and I am sure that he is probably right. It looks as if his former Chancellors, all of whom he managed to be a mentor to, will give him the full support that he needs on this amendment. My point reflects more on our debate up to this point. We are showing an inclination to look more at the ways in which we can escape from some of the consequences of the growing interdependency of the world economy of which we are part. Quite simply, we all know that it is highly unlikely that there will be movement under this Government towards the eurozone or the euro. It will be important to take account in the future of the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Kerr. We will not be able to escape the presence and the problems of the euro by not joining it. I recognise that most people in this Parliament and probably most people in the country at the moment would not wish to join the euro. However, I also recognise that the euro’s future and its strength are of crucial importance to this country whether we join or not. We now do something like half our trade with the eurozone. The positions taken by the eurozone are of major influence in global financial meetings. Therefore, although we may not belong to it we do not escape all the consequences of it. We should make it quite clear as we continue to discuss this part of the Bill that time and again we will be caught in the gradually increasing interdependency of the economic world whether or not we happen to already belong to some of its institutions. Why did we help to support the Irish in the desperate situation that they encountered last year? Quite simply because there were so many British interests—banking interests, shareholder interests—affected by what happened to the banks of the Republic of Ireland that we felt it irresponsible and unwise to stay out of the discussions about it. In just the same way, we will find it irresponsible and unwise to regard the possibility of a major crack in the eurozone between its richer and poorer nations as if it did not in any way affect us. We know already how close this is. Already there is much closer investigation of the European stability pact, with the possibility of mounting greater surveillance on those who are within it as well as the possibility of moving towards some degree of control over the group of countries within the eurozone. I will not go into all that now because there is not time and it is not appropriate, except to say very directly that this is bound to have implications for Britain as well. We simply cannot stay wholly outside these things. When my noble friend Lord Goodhart was talking earlier about the European prosecutor’s office, one of the things he might well have pointed out, though he was too nice to do so, was that already we in this country had been caught up in the OECD’s Financial Action Task Force very directly on the issue of when we moved and finally passed the bribery convention. We cannot escape from some of the massive international institutions—the G20, the OECD and many more—which are bound to affect our sovereign right to do as we will. To pretend that we do not live in such a world, that it is not becoming more and more that kind of world, is to live in a world of illusion which we cannot possibly afford to. I simply make the point on this discussion on the euro that we have to look all the way through at how the United Kingdom will survive, strengthen and prosper in a world which, like it or not, is becoming increasingly global, increasingly interdependent and increasingly without room for people taking pure sovereign attitudes because those are no longer possible, whether you live in China, the United States or anywhere else.