European Union Bill

My Lords, I hope that I will be forgiven if I say that I have a faint feeling of having been here before—and forgiven also for not responding to every strongly held view and argument put forward in this debate that was put forward again and again in the past. The Government and I regard some of these arguments as deeply flawed and consider that they do not understand or come to grips with the realities of political life today, either here or in the rest of the European Union. I will also deal briefly, as is the custom, with the Motion—it is not the custom to make long second speeches on a Motion—and with the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, which goes very much further than anything standing against the Government’s Motion that the amendments be resisted. On the decisions involved in Clause 6, none is in the grey or insignificant category. They are all there for very strongly established reasons that are largely supported by many other countries. Many vetoes are maintained because the signatories to the Lisbon treaty did not want them to go into the QMV category. They are there because their use could only ever provide for a transfer of competence and power from the UK to the European Union—for reasons that we have explained from this Dispatch Box and that many of my noble friends have explained again and again—and so should be subject to the referendum requirement. It is difficult to accept that any of the decisions in Clause 6 would not be significant in constitutional or economic terms. Those who say that it stretches their imagination to understand the significance of the measures listed in Clause 6, or Schedule 1, which springs from it, surprise me. Surely a decision on whether to give up our vetoes on, for instance, the multiannual financial framework, border controls or joining the single currency—I refer now to the amendment of the noble Lords, Lord Liddle and Lord Triesman, not to the main one that accepts them—would all fall, under Amendment 13B, into the bracket of something that had to be judged according to whether or not it was significant. This is a completely unnecessary process. Clearly they are of the most profound significance. I know that the shadow Minister for Europe said on Monday that he considered other items in Clause 6 to be not so important. He exempted the important three—border controls, the European currency and one other—but dismissed the others as paperclips and minutiae. We do not accept that analysis. We firmly believe that the other issues are also of great significance and, when understood in terms of their impact on jobs, work and the processes by which our law system operates, certainly could be subjects of conversation in the pub in Burton-on-Trent, where the noble Lord, Lord Lea, has been listening to conversations. On the European public prosecutor, I know that it is regarded by some of my noble friends, and by some noble Lords opposite, as not being of constitutional or economic significance. However, it is because it involves affording a supranational body the ability to prosecute citizens of this country within the scope of its own criminal justice system in respect of alleged crimes affecting the EU's financial interests. Someone must decide what that financial interest is and whether the crime has been committed. Is that a paperclip or minutiae issue? What about the vetoes listed in Schedule 1? Why are they not significant when they all relate—that is why they are there—to the red lines adopted by successive Governments, fought for very hard by the previous Government and sustained by this Government, covering foreign affairs, security and defence policy, economic and tax policy, including issues of the EU's budget, which all of us admit is a red-hot issue, social security, employment policy, justice and home affairs policy, and citizenship and elections? Are these all minutiae, paperclip decisions and things that are never discussed in any pub? I have to ask where some of my noble friends, and some noble Lords, have been if they think that these matters are of no significance, because they include not only domestic issues, where after all Parliament can make and unmake laws, but transfers of power, sovereignty and competence that would almost certainly be irrevocable—in fact, they would be irrevocable. The amendment before us would, for instance, allow the British Government to relinquish their veto over decisions relating to the multiannual financial framework without first getting the consent of the British people. That is a hugely important decision that Members in the other place were particularly concerned with, and rightly so. The Minister for Europe rightly pointed out that the forthcoming decision on that framework will in effect set budgetary decisions and ceilings for the next five to seven years of the EU's life and development. Are these minutiae, paperclip decisions or matters that people will not understand? I ask my noble friends and noble Lords who think that these matters are insignificant to think again. Their significance is obvious. It is vital that these matters remain subject to unanimity and that whichever British Government are in office—this matter should be above party—continue to have the right of veto. Similar views are taken in almost every other country in the European Union. We all know what happens when one gets casual about the veto and lets it go. This was the case in the surrender of the veto on Article 122 of the TFEU, which opened the way to fearsome, huge and titanic new financial commitments to the funding of Europe in its present financial difficulties. The amendment before us would reduce precisely the clarity that we all seek. It would also risk the possibility of judicial review on a decision by the Minister not to consider one of these clear-cut decisions to be significant. The so-called pragmatic flexibility that the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, keeps reminding us about and seeks could well be impeded by his own amendment. He would end up in a quagmire of pragmatic flexibility of his own making. It was too much of this pragmatic flexibility approach in the past that caused antagonism—the turn-off, if you like, of popular support for the European Union and for Ministers’ actions. The ministerial discretion that some of my noble friends and noble Lords call for has become the ministerial indiscretion and undermining of trust and support for the European Union that we are trying to correct.