| Previous Section | Back to Table of Contents | Lords Hansard Home Page |
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, before my noble friend Lady Symons of Vernham Dean responds to the debate on this important matter, will she allow her mind to brood over the undoubted fact that the treaties themselves are largely unintelligible? That has been admitted on all sides. It seems odd that we shall, no doubt, again discuss Nice and any measures that are in force or will be brought into force. We shall probably discuss the degree of real scrutiny of proposed European legislation which comes to this House and to another place. We shall discuss all those issues and I have no doubt that the Government will give us the benefit of their latest knowledge.
However, the unassailable fact which underlies the whole concept of explanation and the validity of communication between the Government and the people—many Members are extremely friendly to the present Administration and the whole concept of Europe, as has been explained to us—is that the documents on which everything stands—the treaties from the Treaty of Rome onwards and the amendments which have been made—are admitted to be largely unintelligible. Until that fact is dealt with, there can be no thorough discussion either of the Treaty of Rome or any of those that have been past since.
5.30 p.m.
Lord Waddington: My Lords, I have great sympathy for much of what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Sudbury. He will agree with me that, even allowing for the problems which are bound to arise when one is legislating for a number of countries using different languages, the language used by the
Commission and in European legislation is often almost entirely incomprehensible. The exercise which the noble Lord proposes would be useful if it only compelled officials to try to write in words which ordinary people can understand.Luckily for the purposes of this debate, a classic example of that occurred in the past few days. When we previously debated the Bill, we discussed the funding of European parties. I drew attention to Article 191, which refers to the funding of European political parties, and to the power which was to be granted to make regulations governing the funding of such parties. I drew the attention of the House to Declaration 11 on Article 191 of the treaty establishing the European Community. That declaration reads:
- "The Conference recalls that the provisions of Article 191 do not imply any transfer of powers to the European Community and do not affect the application of the relevant national constitutional rules".
Obviously, the first part of the declaration was absolute rubbish. How could one have any funding of European political parties unless there had been a transfer of powers to the European Community? Unless someone had given the EC the power to use our taxpayers' money to fund political parties, why on earth was it doing so in the first place?
Secondly, I questioned what on earth the words,
- "do not affect the application of the relevant national constitutional rules",
Today I received a courteous letter from the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, for which I am grateful. However, lo and behold, she states that the wording which I quoted, and which I have quoted again today, was proposed by the United Kingdom. The Government are responsible for that wording. According to the noble Baroness, the purpose of the wording is to make it plain that Article 191,
- "does not in any way affect the right of member states to regulate national political parties in accordance with their own constitutional rules".
If our officials are dishing out that kind of rubbish to be included in declarations which are then incorporated in the annexes to treaties, we really are in a mess. I therefore hope that the fact we have spotted some of the nonsense which our officials are feeding out to the Government will be a stern lesson for them. I repeat that Declaration 11 does not mean what the noble Baroness says it means and it is complete nonsense in the context of Article 191.
Let us learn a few lessons from that. I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Sudbury, is on to a rather good thing. I do not want to see too much money spent on it, but I think it would be good if for once officials were required to explain in plain English, rather than European nonsense, what some of the measures to which we are supposed to subscribe really amount to.
Lord Maclennan of Rogart: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, helpfully reminded us that the sin of obscurity in legislative documents is one of which we in this country are as guilty as are the drafters of legislative instruments in Brussels or other capitals. I am grateful to my noble friend for introducing the amendment. It is important that the communications of the EU should be resoundingly clear when they are intended to set out fundamental changes in the balance of authority between nation states and the EU.
With the benefit of historical hindsight, it may be true that early EU documents were not designed with that in mind partly because they were the instruments of those who were playing a game of grandmother's footsteps. They were slowly, but none the less surely, developing institutions the full significance of which they understood well but which they were not ready to trumpet in every quarter.
Therefore, what my noble friend says is particularly timely, not so much in the context of the Treaty of Nice, which he admitted is not the right document with which to start the process, because of its textual obscurity, its legislation by reference and the relatively minor changes that it makes compared with some of the previous international agreements—the Treaty of Maastricht, the Single European Act and so forth—but, as we embark on the preparations for the 2004 IGC, it is certainly right and timely to have the necessity of clarity of communication with the citizens of Europe very much in mind.
It is not necessary to rest the case for that on the somewhat equivocal evidence of poor turnout at European elections. The turn-out at all elections has been declining notably, not, I think, because people have not been able to comprehend the issues at stake, but perhaps because they do not see any great issues of principle dividing those on either side of the argument. Alternatively, perhaps they are simply content or, perhaps, the sheer complexity of the issues that face modern governments and their electorates make it difficult to come down firmly and clearly on one side or the other.
Personally, I think that it is wrong not to exercise the democratic right to vote and thus to choose that which has been so hard fought for. Indeed, the other day perhaps I was guilty of a slight indiscretion in criticising a speech made by the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell, in the debate on the future of the House of Lords for not having attached sufficient importance to the right to vote. However, I believe that my noble friend is right to say that citizenship and the casting of the vote should be encouraged by the comprehensibility of the documents we put before the public.
I do not think that it is quite fair to suggest that either this or the previous government have not taken some steps in the right direction. We have seen the domestic innovation of the publication of Explanatory Notes to accompany legislation, although I have to say that, not infrequently, the Explanatory Notes are as incomprehensible as the Bills themselves. Nevertheless, it has been an encouraging attempt. We have also seen leaflets produced. The leaflet flourished by my noble friend is a somewhat paltry affair, but then some might criticise the document itself as being somewhat paltry.
However, although it would be possible to say a good deal more about the Treaty of Nice than has been attempted in the leaflet, and although it would probably be easier to describe many of the underlying principles—as has been done in several speeches made during the course of our debates on the Bill—which the treaty seeks to incorporate, the detail of the legislation does not lend itself easily to a pamphlet which would be readily understood by the general public. That is not to adopt an exclusive attitude; rather it is a comment on how the document was drafted and, indeed, on how so many of our international agreements are drafted nowadays.
Returning to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, I fear that it forms a part of what might be described as the "British legislative disease", which we are exporting to Europe, rather than importing European gobbledegook into our own way of doing things. So far as concerns constitutional documents, I would prefer to travel much further down that road and incorporate the kind of language used in the Code Napoleon, because its meaning is a great deal clearer. The great constitutional documents of the 18th century, such as the Declaration of the Rights of Man, as well as the more modern European Convention on Human Rights, are pellucidly clear to the lay person and thus highly suitable for circulation as aspirational documents. They encourage the highest expectations and the best urges of those seeking to explain and elevate our democracy. But a document such as that before us, one that requires the experts to undertake a good deal of digging in order to be precisely sure of the meaning, is very unsuited to the kind of treatment that my noble friend wishes to initiate.
I hope that he is not successful in persuading the House that this is the right time to embark on such an exercise. I do not doubt that a right time will come—I do not advocate the doctrine of "un-right time". Rather I would advocate that the next major European constitutional agreement should very much reflect the kind of thinking expressed by my noble friend and that those who share his view will strongly support the proposal that our citizens should be given every opportunity by their national government to follow and understand the constitutional documents being adopted by the European Union on their behalf.
5.45 p.m.
Lord Bell: My Lords, I should like to say a few words in support of the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Sudbury. I do not speak
from the high ground of a discussion about democracy or the need to include excluded people or, for that matter, in order to discuss the merits and demerits of the Nice treaty, but rather purely from the communications perspective.It is quite obvious that the Government do wish to communicate with people about the Treaty of Nice because they have set up a website and published a leaflet. I would argue that that is not a particularly competent way to communicate and not really in line either with the Government's well-earned reputation for being able to communicate effectively with the public—which they have done so successfully since they first came to power—or in the context of many other of their activities.
Last year the Government spent some £146 million on publicising various aspects of their policies: advertising careers in nursing and the police, promoting the take-up and use of working families' tax credit and campaigning against benefit fraud. Why not spend a mere £1.5 million on communicating with the public about the Treaty of Nice which, if it results in a "stronger Britain" taking its place in a "wider Europe"—as the Government state in their leaflet—strikes me as something well worth communicating to a much wider audience than simply those who have access to the Internet and those who are so minded to contact the FCO and request a copy of the leaflet. It is a fact about the Internet that it is not accessible to almost 50 per cent of the population, in particular if one includes not only those who cannot gain access, but also those who simply will not seek access or do not have the faintest idea of what to do when they do access it.
The leaflet lists five key benefits that will result from the enlargement of Europe, including increased trade, more jobs and greater co-operation, all of which seem to me to be extremely compelling. I do not think that the Government need fear spelling out in plain language those benefits in a simple leaflet to be dropped through the letter-box of every household in Britain. I shall give one or two reasons why I believe that the Government should adopt the amendment.
First, it is rather a good idea. I was very heartened when the noble Baroness, in summing up on a previous debate, made three points of particular relevance in the context of this amendment, one of which was that the Prime Minister wants it to be made clear that Europe is all about things that matter to UK citizens. If that is the case then it is perfectly reasonable to present the Treaty of Nice in a leaflet explaining that it will touch on those issues that matter to UK citizens.
Secondly, at one point the noble Baroness said that the Government already have in place the website and the leaflet, and that they would be willing to do more. I would be delighted if that "do more" included the adoption of the idea of putting out a well-written, easy-to-consume leaflet about the Treaty of Nice that argued the case for it and against it impartially, thus allowing the people to take a view. After all, if the Treaty of Nice is a force for good, then more knowledge and information about it would enhance
the good things it will do for British citizens. If, on the other hand, in their opinion it turns out to be a force for bad, then it would enable British citizens to make clear their concerns about it. The Government would then be able to address those concerns. I see nothing lost by following that route.Furthermore, it is a very low-cost idea. I spent some 40 years in the communications industry, much of that time in advertising. These days advertising is no longer regarded as the ultimate method of communication. The media have fragmented and the commission system is abolished, so no longer is there any reason why advertising agencies should propose very large advertising budgets. It does not increase their incomes. Media fragmentation has resulted in the development of direct marketing, which is, basically, what is being proposed here. A leaflet dropped through the letter-box of each household is a direct marketing approach. It is cost-effective and efficient; it can be measured; and it is modern. I know that the Government like to do things that are modern.
I believe that the Government could easily accept this amendment and I urge them to do so.
Next Section
Back to Table of Contents
Lords Hansard Home Page