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Lord Waddington: My Lords, the Government have made this proposal necessary because they spent so much time before, during and after Nice trying to persuade people that Nice involved nothing more than minor changes which were necessary in order to allow enlargement to take place. Our debates in Parliament have been worthwhile if they have exposed what complete nonsense that was.
During our debates, we have been able to point out that, among other things, the Nice treaty proposes that qualified majority voting should take the place of unanimity in a whole range of matters which the Government have not sought to pretend have the slightest bit to do with Nice or that they are changes needed in order to make enlargement possible. Simply because of all these other matters dealt with at Nicethe replacement of unanimity by qualified majority voting in a whole range of matters, the European Charter of Fundamental Rights, and all the proposals surrounding the controversial issue of the European defence force and the restit is necessary to put them on paper and for the Government to explain why they
are important. That would be beneficial and would help the Government to explain to the people what Nice is really all about.
Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, Nice is about reform for enlargement. In particular, it is about reforming the European Union's institutions for enlargement. That is what the changes under discussion will deliver.
I would just say to the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, that I do not believe that anyone speaking for the Government has ever claimed that it is not an important treaty. Others may have done so. Others have said that it is a treaty which is far more far-reaching and radical than any treaty before. I am bound to say that I think that the truth lies somewhere between the two. It is not nearly as radical as some treaties, but it certainly is an important treaty. It represents, in the view of the Government, a good outcome for the United Kingdom. It will deliver a stronger Britain in a wider Europe.
Let us enumerate what has happened during the course of the treaty. We have opened the door for enlargement. We have won more relative voting power for Britain. We have delivered a more efficient Commission, securing more QMV where this is in the United Kingdom's interest and preserving our veto where we said we would. We have achieved a more effective system of justice in the EU that will help cut down delays and have secured a more flexible EU, while safeguarding the interests of all member states. That result meets all the objectives that we set ourselves at Nice. It is further evidence that the Government's policy of positive engagement in Europe is really working.
The amendment tabled by the Opposition calls for,
The White Paper proposed in the amendment is unnecessary. The Government have kept Parliament fully informed of the negotiations on the effect of the Nice treaty. A White Paper, Reform for Enlargement, was published in February 2000. It clearly set out the Government's position on the 2000 IGC. Parliament is debating the implications of Nice right now.
I recall other treaties. Noble Lords are now suggesting that we should publish a White Paper in the wake of Nice, but when the Conservative Party was in power, there was no White Paper to follow up what many of your Lordships would regard as a far more radical treatythe Treaty of Maastricht.
We shall continue to keep Parliament informed of developments in the European Union as they occur. We have a good record on that. There is no evidence on which to doubt the Government's word on that. Indeed, yesterday we laid before Parliament and published our latest six-monthly report of developments in the EU. In addition, Parliament will have ample opportunity to contribute to and debate the future of Europe in the lead-up to the next IGC in 2004, as we have just discussed.
All the changes agreed at Nice will be about delivering the modernised and reformed European Union that we all want. It will be an EU better equipped to deal with enlargement. Parliament has been kept fully informed of those changes, and the electorate has supported themas we saw in June. That is why we stand by them, and why we cannot support the amendment.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, there may be one flaw in the amendment. It states:
Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, as for the shortcomings, alleged or actual, of the amendment, that is not a matter for meit is not my amendment, it is that of the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford. As for the current position regarding Ireland, I have no further news to deliver to your Lordships beyond what I have already said about how the issue is being tackled.
Lord Howell of Guildford: My Lords, I shall not pretend that I am anything but disappointed by the reply of the noble Baroness. The amendment represents a perfectly clear and modest request that Parliament deserves to have answered in the affirmative.
I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, raised the question of the whole ratification process. The amendment mentions ratification by Her Majesty's Government, which is of course a narrower concept. In a sense, the treaty has already been signed by the Government, and in the Government's mind it is just a question of getting it through the two Houses and onto the statute book, and that will be their business done. As the noble Lord pointed out, ratification of the treaty as a whole is very much on hold. We need a White Paper not least to explain to the British public
what is plan B, supposing that the Irish do not so reorganise their system that they can have another referendum that will come out a different way. Let us suppose that, maddeningly, the people continue to speak in the same tone. What happens then? Have we worked in vain? Will another treaty be designed? Will we return to our original plan, which was a treaty to deal with the mechanics of enlargementin so far as they needed to be dealt with by a treatywhich would have long since been passed without any problems in Ireland or anywhere else? Or are we to try some new avenue?Those are matters that deserve an answer in due coursenot now, obviously. Parliament deserves an answer, which, among other things, should be included in a White Paper. However, apparently that is not to be. We feel deprived, but we have made known our views. Having done so, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury moved Amendment No. 18:
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I should emphasise that this amendment is proposed in a purely impartial spirit as regards the content and utility of the Treaty of Nice. It is not about whether I am in favour of or against the treaty, it is to do solely with democracy and the effectiveness of democracy vis a vis the European Union. Whatever our view of the future of the Unionwhether or not we want it to proceed step by step to up to ultimate unificationshould not affect our desire to ensure that, so far as possible, the democratic content is maximised as we move along the road.
It is surely no secret that the British public are more ignorant of and confused by the European Union than they are of any other great political project during the lifetime of anyone in this Chamber. That it is a great project, I am sure that we all agree. Some may wish that it was less great; some may wish that it was greater. But that it is of the most profound importance to every man, woman and child in these islands, there can be no doubt.
I do not want to enlarge more than a little on the degree of ignorance, non-involvement, non-engagement and disconnection that exists. We need only consider a single statisticthe electoral turnout at the last European electionto have put before us a measure of the apathy, alienation, confusion and lack of relatedness of the public towards the Parliament of
If we add to that the knowledge that roughly one-third of voters aged 30 and under were not registered to cast their vote at that time, and pursue an analysis of whom among that 23 per cent turned out by age profile, we end up with the statistic that only about one in 10 of voters aged under 25 voted in that election. Given that the younger generation are supposed to be the standard bearers for the future of this country, and given that I have heard a great many assertions that the young are much more in favour of that project than are the old, that should give us all immense pause.
I want to say one other thing about democratic engagement, which relates to social exclusion. I give the Government great credit for their attempts to grapple with social exclusion. Your Lordships may remember that soon as the Labour Party was elected to power in 1997, the Prime Minister immediately set up 18 teamsI think it was 18to engage different aspects of social exclusion. All those efforts came down to one overriding principle, which was set out clearly in the report of policy action team 10: the motive force of self-help. That team said, on behalf of all the other teams, that the most important element in raising communities out of exclusion was self-help. It is manifestly apparent that self-help is the most important element of a vibrant democracy. Self-help starts with voting.
The sense of being excluded from the European Union partly because it is so complex, partly because it is so distant and untouchableand its aspirations is felt by far more of our fellow citizens than just those whom we normally think of as socially excluded. If we are concerned about the quality of our democracyas we are, for we had a great debate for two days last week about how democracy would be best served by the reform of the Houseand about the malaise that is apparent in our democracy, the first thing that we must do is to reach outI repeatreach out to those who feel themselves to be excluded from the political process.
We may say that they should not feel excluded. We may say that there is information available on the Internet. We may say, as the Government have said about the Bill, that a White Paper was published last spring, at a cost of £11.50. We may say that it is on the Internet and that anyone with a bit of gumption and effort can have access to the Internet. We may say that a leaflet has been publishedas it hasand that they can get hold of it in their public library. I have the leaflet here. Any noble Lords who have seen it may agree with me that it is about as unenticing to the sort of people about whom I am concerned as it could conceivably be. There are no headings and no illustrations. It is in small type. It is dense and abstract.
All the arguments have a certain currency, but a limited one. The facts are the facts. I do not accuse the Government of wilful indifference to the thirdor
We often hear those who support the European Union most strongly parade the argument that the whole project has been derailed because the tabloids have misrepresented the European Union again and again, giving partial and wrong facts and stupid examples of the malfunctioning of the Union. I have sympathety with that argument, to a degree, but that stops at the point at which one realises that wein any governmenthave done absolutely nothing to inform people and get round the back of the rubbish that is sometimes published about the Union. If we were really concerned about it, we would have been informing the public in a popular, plain English way from the beginning. The only time that we really connected with the public was in the referendum of 1975nearly 27 years ago.
To those who say of the amendment that we should have had this for Maastricht, I say that I agree. I also agree with those who say that this is not the most important treaty on Europe that there has ever been. However, we must make an urgent start. I would have preferred it if we had had a series of popular, plain English information communications decades back. We did not, so let us start. There is no advantage to anyone in the House or beyond in leaving the British publicin particular, the bottom third or so, in socio-economic termscompletely out of the debate.
Sometimes, in politics, we need to make gestures. It is not enough to say, "It's on the Internet; go and get it" or "Go to the library and read it". It is just like election time. I do not think that Jack Straw or the noble Baroness, Lady Symons of Vernham Deanwere she allowed to fight an electionwould be content to say to the electors of wherever that the information was on the Internet or that they should go to the public library. We all endlessly stuff leaflets through people's door at election time to show people that we care about their vote. It is the only way of imparting information that carries the message that we want people to read it, and we care about that because we want them to vote for us. I have exactly the same sense about the EU and the state of Parliament in our country today.
There are people who think that the European Union and the Government do not care a toss about them and that the elite in this country has no interest in what they thinkor, indeed, whether they think. We must show them that that is untrue. The only way in which we can do that is by putting through every door
Jack Straw wrote to me, saying that the Government's costings said that it would take £5 million to print all the leaflets and get them into every house. I have done a costing with the Royal Mail and with a newspaper; it was £1.5 million. Be that as it may, it is tempting to say that we should bear the cost of engaging the public wholeheartedly in this great project, even if it were £50 million or £500 million ordare I say it?£5 billion. The costs of the present situation will be incalculable further down the roadthey may be incalculable already. It might cost £5 million. That is the cost of a few smart bombs rained on Afghanistan. It is the cost of six MEPs. Against the background of what we are discussing, it is of no great account.
I was struck by what the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville, said in Committee. He likened the European Union to the building of a great cathedral. For too many of our countrymen, the great edifice of the European Union is reminiscent of an underground bunker. I want to engage people's hearts and minds. Democracy grows from the ground up. Unless we engage hearts, as well as minds, it will be useless. I do not want that. I beg to move.
"PUBLIC INFORMATION
(1) This Act shall not come into effect until Her Majesty's Government have communicated to every household in the United Kingdom the constitutional and governmental effects of the Treaty of Nice.
(2) A communication under subsection (1) shall be
(a) in writing,
(b) in plain English,
(c) in popular form, and
(d) impartial."
"It is simplistic . . . to say that only a certain percentage of households are connected to the internet".
It is not simplistic; it is a fact. It is simplistic to assume that those who do not have access to it will get access to it for the purposes of reading a relatively indigestible White Paperindigestible to the sort of people about whom I am concerned. If they read anything, such people will read a red-top tabloid newspaper.
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