My Lords, today’s version of the Government’s Motion asks your Lordships to approve the block opt-out of 133 JHA measures. It also asks us to approve the rejoining of measures that are in the national interest and now suggests, without quite saying so in the Motion, that these are the 35 measures set out in the Command Paper. The Motion also invites your Lordship’s EU Select Committee to report on the matter before the end of October, when negotiations with the EU institutions will start—which is, perhaps, an unusual way for the Government to communicate with a Select Committee.
The Government, or some parts of it, seem to have got themselves into rather a tangle over all this. This tangle seems to have led them into, at the very least, discourtesies to Select Committees here and in the Commons and, by extension, perhaps to both Houses as a whole. The very long delay in providing the promised Explanatory Memoranda is a case in point, as is the failure to respond to the report of your Lordships’ EU Committee in the agreed timeframe.
Perhaps the most important and straightforward interpretation of the events of the past few months is the following. The Prime Minister seems to have decided, on or before the date on which he made his now famous Rio speech, that he would exercise the block opt-out. That was on 28 September last year, 10 months ago. There followed a series of not wholly convincing denials that the Government had in fact made up their mind to exercise the block opt-out, and not wholly convincing assertions that they had an open mind on the issue. It seemed pretty clear that the Prime Minister and, perhaps just a bit later, his Conservative colleagues in the coalition had in fact decided to opt out. The moment this became clear—and it was pretty immediately clear—the real political task was not to try to prevent the block opt-out but to agree a sensible, comprehensive and coherent package of rejoin measures. I doubt that, despite the overwhelming evidence against opting out, it was ever going to be possible to persuade the Prime Minister not to do exactly that. The Prime Minister had committed himself and his colleagues far too early and much too clearly.
It is easy to see that the Government were almost certainly not going to be moved. They were going to exercise the block opt-out, come what may, as it were. That meant that the real political debate would be over which measures to apply to rejoin. I know that there has been very extensive debate within the Government over exactly this. The Government’s original Motion appeared to be coy about exactly what these measures might be, but today’s version of the Motion is pretty unambiguous. The rejoin measures for negotiation are the 35 set out in the Command Paper. These rejoin measures proposed in the Command Paper represent the outcome of negotiations within the coalition. On any objective reading, this list of proposed rejoins seems to be entirely satisfactory. In fact, the Lib Dem
negotiators, and Danny Alexander in particular, should be congratulated on what they have persuaded their Tory colleagues to accept. It may be, of course, that to pass the Commission’s legal requirements for coherence we will have to add to this list one or two other minor and technical measures. However, this would not be difficult and would certainly not be harmful to the national interest.
One of the oddest things about this whole imbroglio is that the Government have not been able to demonstrate that any of the measures they do not want to rejoin is harmful to the national interest or damaging at all. I repeat that the list of proposed rejoins set out in Command Paper 8671 seems to be entirely satisfactory. We must acknowledge that we are where we are but we must also acknowledge the time pressure. It is critical that we get on with this so that we absolutely reduce the chances of any interregnum where we are out of 133 measures and not yet back in to 35, or however many it turns out to be.
I hope that the House will agree with this and will agree to the Government’s Motion. I look forward, as a member of your Lordships’ EU Sub-Committee F, to examining and reporting on matters as they will then stand.
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