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Lord Howe of Aberavon: My Lords, it is a great responsibility to take part in this debate following immediately on from the speeches to which we have just been listening. It is a remarkable contrast between the voices outside this House, as they reacted to the events of the collapse of the summit meeting—stridently and rancorously, as the noble Lord, Lord Thomson of Monifieth, said—and the extraordinary bond of harmony and sanity that has characterised all the speeches in this debate.
The collapse of the summit meeting provoked many people who were disposed to draw the worst conclusions about the European Union, particularly those who have never liked it, to proclaim not only the death of the constitution but also the death of the union. It is quite clear from the tone of the speeches made so far today on all sides that so far as we are concerned, that is not the case.
I had the privilege—if that is what one says—of spending some time last September in what we would call the intensive care unit of a French hospital. I was rather entranced to discover that the French for intensive care unit is Département de Réanimation. If the European Union has been, or is, in an intensive care unit, it is also clearly in a Département de Réanimation.
The thinking that has characterised all these speeches accepts as the premise that the European Union is there for keeps and something to which we belong, not just because it is our neighbourhood but because it has so many other positive outcomes for us. The irony is that all this momentary confusion springs from the rejection by the people of two founder members of a text that was intended, although certainly not designed, to make the Union more acceptable, more attractive, more intelligible. It resulted in a document which I dare say a number of us were preparing to have to defend in a referendum, if such had taken place, but about which we may now speak with rather more candour. It was in truth a parody of the worst faults of l'acquis communautaire at its worst. It was a parody on such a scale that l'esprit communautaire—the spirit that draws us together, the aspiration that we have—was being submerged to the point of becoming almost invisible.
I had some sympathy—indeed, precise agreement—with Gisela Stuart when she said that whenever the word "Giscard" appeared in a message, the spell check
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on her PC immediately said "Discard". But if the treaty of the constitution is to be dealt with in that way, the agenda to which the constitution-mongers were addressing themselves, remains. It is now the task of our government—our Prime Minister and our Foreign Secretary; I emphasise both components of the government and, indeed, the whole government—to address the agenda which the constitution was trying to tackle. On what basis? There are two objectives: to restore, or try to restore, the mutual confidence which has characterised the Union at its best and which has taken us through some very difficult confrontations; and to set about implementing the decisions that have already been taken but not put into effect.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Dahrendorf, and others that the Lisbon agenda is not an agenda for the Union. Nor, in a curious way, is the Stability and Growth Pact an agenda for the Union, because it simply spells out the implications of economic sanity, which the markets will in the end enforce come what may.
The third item which has to be a part of that agenda was identified also by my noble friend Lord Lawson. It is a great pleasure to be sitting alongside my old confrère in this debate on this topic. He emphasised the need for stability. The need for stability should be more recognised in this country. We have far too much uprooting of institutions and change for the sake of change at a pace with which people cannot keep up, but stability is certainly an objective now for the European Union.
The task facing Her Majesty's Government in their presidency should be seen not as a business of winning an international battle, but of helping to put back into working order a unique multinational coalition. Success for the European Union—I think this is common ground between all of us—remains a crucially important British interest.
It could be seen more clearly if there was a proper understanding, as others have explained, of Britain's so-called rebate. The British rebate is not a privilege which can be taken or bargained away; it was always, and remains, an agreed and enduring means of correcting an earlier injustice—the misshapen original system that was a result of our non-membership. It is part of a deal between, and in the interests of, all the member states which, as others have pointed out, was achieved under the leadership of my noble friend Lady Thatcher, who is sitting beside me.
The contemporary history of the achievement of that settlement is worth considering a little more closely. First, it happened only after five years. So the idea that we are going to be assured of a settlement of the budgetary problems during the British presidency, as the noble Lord, Lord Dahrendorf, pointed out, should not be taken very seriously.
The details which in the end laid the foundations for the conclusion were actually hammered out during the French presidency in two successive weekend meetings at Chevening between Roland Dumas, the French foreign Minister and me; and between Guy Legras, from the French side, and the noble Lord, Lord Hannay
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of Chiswick, from our side. It was that work offstage by foreign Ministers and advisers which, if I may put it like this, put flesh on the bones which characterised my noble friend's powerful presentation of our case time and time again.
The noble Lord, Lord Williamson, described yesterday the excitement when the agreement was reached. Characteristically, perhaps I may add this detail. My noble friend Lady Thatcher, the noble Lord, Lord Williamson, Sir Michael Butler and I went into a little room containing four gold chairs off the main palace in Fontainebleau. President Mitterrand placed before us the approach that we were hoping for; that is, a 65 per cent settlement of the problem. We looked, we thought and we talked. It was my noble friend Lady Thatcher who said that that was not good enough and that it had to be 66 per cent. President Mitterrand said that if that was what we wanted, we would have to go to the Council to get it. I dare say that the rest of us were a shade less confident than my noble friend at that time, but into the chamber we went and we got 66 per cent. During the following decade, that was worth £120 million to the British Exchequer. So it was quite a remarkable achievement.
The point is that the rebate was achieved within the framework of Anglo-French partnership within the broader framework of the European Union for the sake of the Union. When my noble friend came to present the results of that summit to the House of Commons a couple of days later on 27 June 1984, she said:
"I pay tribute to President Mitterrand and Chancellor Kohl for their help in getting this arrangement through the European Council".—[Official Report, Commons, 27/6/84; col. 1000.]
I hope she will forgive me if I go on, because she had also said:
"We should not have got this agreement unless it had been known that we were very pro-European and that Britain makes considerable contributions to the life of the Community and believes that it is right to be in the Community".—[Official Report, Commons, 27/6/84; col. 998.]
Our views have parted in some respects on that matter since then, but the essential features—
Lord Howe of Aberavon: My Lords, I expected that reaction. I hope that I may still say that the broad agreement within this Chamber that we should be maintaining a position within the European Union and addressing the important agenda items that have been set out is one on which we have to concentrate. That view can be very well distilled out of the contributions that have been made in this debate.
Britain certainly need not be adopting a feeble, negative, red-line approach to this issue. Provided others will do the same—and that must clearly involve effective reform and curtailment of the CAP within the confines of an overall smaller budget—we should be ready to play our full part in promoting the success of an enlarged European Union, not by enlarging its power, but by making it less pervasive, less dominant, and more accountable to the peoples and parliament alike. As others have said, there should be more open
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law-making and transparency in the Council. The European Union should be more ready to listen to, and be bound by, the representations of parliaments of the member states. As my noble friend Lord Howell acknowledged, it needs a longer-serving presidency, simply for managerial purposes and so that it might work effectively.
Where I dissent from the noble Lord, Lord Dahrendorf, and my noble friend Lord Howell is in believing that real benefits can and should flow from the establishment, if possible, of a common European position on as many aspects of foreign policy as can be achieved. After all, we get enormous benefit from having an integrated trade policy in a world where the World Trade Organisation requires organisations to represent all the countries in one way or another. We are able to do that because we have a working partnership with our European partners.
I do not proclaim the need for a common foreign and security policy as a means for challenging, above all, the United States. I do not subscribe to the narrow view which is attributed to President Chirac in that respect. But I should have thought that nobody, least of all the United States, could wish to see the emergence of a world in which the only accompaniment of the United States' input to foreign policy came from China, Russia and India. There is a need, for the sake of the world's talents—for those of the United States as well as our own—for the countries of Europe, with our common cultural background and our common political aspirations, to make an input into that debate for all our sakes. I do not think in terms of a mechanical arrangement, with a single, authoritarian European foreign Minister. It is not an area in which the treaty proposed majority voting, binding us to objectives that we do not want, but an area where we should work as hard as we can to achieve an integrated and effective contribution to foreign policy. That is the agenda which the British presidency must carry forward, not theatrically, but practically.
I shall remind the House of the words of the predecessor of the noble Lord, Lord Williamson. What a great achievement it was, incidentally, for us to secure a British successor to the first Secretary-General of the Commission, Emile Noel. He lived up to our expectations dramatically. We are delighted to hear his testimony here along with those of so many others. Emile Noel said that our task should be not posturing, but problem-solving. That is the way in which we should be attacking the issue. Perhaps I may be even more Europhile in my closing sentence. As Jean Monnet would have wished, we should be displaying a preference for,
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