My Lords, I am not against referendums in principle. I have long expressed my conviction that in this parliamentary democracy, referendums are justified when proposals are made to change significantly the way in which our country is governed. But this Bill has nothing to do with any fundamental alterations in the governance of the United Kingdom. It exists because the Prime Minister, through a series of lame gestures and rejected assurances, has tried to assuage the militant Europhobes in his party and has failed. He has sought to mollify them; in return he gets mockery, intensified demands and a host of Private Members’ Bills, including this one. His efforts have been as fruitless as appeasement always deserves to be.
The most celebrated manifestation of the Prime Minister’s futile attempts to buy internal party peace with concession came in his long gestated Bloomberg speech a year ago. Setting out his case for a referendum, he repeated, with apparent endorsement, some of the nostrums favoured by the Europhobes. He said that,
“many ask ‘why can’t we just have what we voted to join—a common market?’ … People feel that the EU is heading in a direction that they never signed up to”.
Of course, Mr Cameron could have answered himself by revisiting the irrefragable fact that in 1973, in the approach to accession, and in the staying-in referendum in 1975, proponents and opponents of Community membership very loudly, repeatedly and graphically told the people of this country of the significant and essential political and constitutional obligations and implications of being part of the European Community. There was no doubt—there is no doubt—about that.
Even more relevantly, Mr Cameron could have acknowledged that participation in the single market, which he says is,
“the principal reason for our membership of the EU”,
clearly and inevitably had to involve and will continue to require full political, legal and constitutional engagement in the European Union.
The reason is simple. To function properly, markets must have rules that are meaningful, and the Commission, Ministers representing our Governments and other Governments in the Council and the European Court of Justice are vital to ensure the fair application of those rules. There is no single market, no participation in the single market, without full recognition of that judicial, political and constitutional reality; to pretend otherwise is to mock the intelligence of the British people. The British people definitely—to use Mr Cameron’s term—“signed up” to that explicit condition of participation in the single market.
In response to what Mr Cameron has called the people who feel concerned at the direction allegedly being taken by the European Union, he could have recognised candidly and crucially that if in the future, as in the past, proposals are made about the EU, the euro or the banking system that would be harmful to the well-being of our country, we can and will be able to exercise our ability to secure modification, derogation or opt-out, or, if necessary, use our right to veto. He could add that we can and must use the same powers, derived from full engagement, to secure the necessary reforms of the European Union and its operation.
Those truths, all supported by evidence and experience, would have been fitting weapons for a Prime Minister who sensibly wanted the United Kingdom to remain in the EU and the single market, as he says, and was prepared to show resilient, responsible leadership. By heeding those in business and commerce who are gravely alarmed by the pall of doubt now hanging over our country’s continued membership, by recognising the sincere concerns of allies who understand the necessity of the UK’s continuing role in the world’s most developed association of democracies, and by repelling those who seek departure from the European Union, Mr Cameron would have shown those qualities of determination and duty.
The Prime Minister has chosen not to follow such a course. Instead, again echoing the Europhobes, he declared portentously:
“It is time to settle this European question in British politics”.
It is a statement made absurd by the tortured experience of my party for years after the 1975 referendum was supposed to resolve schisms between proponents and opponents of Community membership. More relevant for the Prime Minister, it is a statement made pitifully ludicrous by the vexatious history of his own party, not for a few years but for five whole decades.
At one time, I thought Mr Cameron understood that. In 2006, as a newly elected leader, he called on his party to concentrate on,
“the things that most people care about”,
and to stop “banging on about Europe”. I thought then that the obsessive introversion of the Europhobes was to be rebuffed, as it was by Margaret Thatcher and by John Major. Instead, Mr Cameron’s appeal to
stop the “banging on” has been greeted daily by the war-drums of the unyielding Europhobes inside, and UKIP outside, his party, and to the detriment of our country, he has pranced to their rhythm.
As a result, the basic question about the Bill is why the United Kingdom should suffer the potentially huge risks and costs of an “in or out” referendum on issues yet to be indentified and negotiated, involving conditions and consequences yet to be revealed, under a Government yet to be elected, simply because the Prime Minister lacks the fortitude to lead his own party with authority. The answer to that question is, like Mr Cameron, blowing in the wind.
Let us scrutinise the Bill. Let us expose the fictions. Let us concentrate on the facts and, then, let us ensure that the people really have the information that they need to come to the right result at the next election.
12.20 pm