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Lord Moran: My Lords, a number of notable speeches have been made in this debate. I was interested in the 14 points made by the noble Lord, Lord Howell, but for me the highlight was the brilliant and stimulating speech of the noble Lord, Lord Lawson. Those of us who have not shared the dream of a single European state were naturally cheered by the "No" votes in France and the Netherlands. These were obviously a major setback to the inexorable drive towards an integrated Europe. That project is now in deep trouble. I was going to say that it has "hit the buffers", but the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, has gazumped me on that simile. Nevertheless, it would be rash to assume that an ever-closer union is dead. Even now the bureaucrats in Brussels are apparently pushing ahead with integrationist steps, provided for in a treaty which is supposed to be dead, or at any rate suspended. New buildings are going up in Brussels as if nothing had
 
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happened. Those who put them up are a little like those who continued to build monasteries during the reign of Henry VIII.

Why did the constitution come to grief? Surely the main reason is that those who devised it showed a complete disregard for the views of the people of Europe. Giscard and his acolytes transformed what was supposed to be an adjustment to the EU machinery to accommodate new members into a blueprint for another giant step towards a single European state. Gisela Stuart and David Heathcoat-Amory, who were there, described the process vividly in the booklets they have written. Charles I said on the scaffold:

Giscard and those in Brussels who run the EU share the king's view entirely. With luck, they may escape the same fate.

I believe that the Prime Minister was right to say in his Statement yesterday that the crisis is about the failure of Europe's leaders to reach agreement with the people of Europe about the issues that concern them. But Mr Blair is one of those leaders who signed the treaty. Evidently he had not read the Economist, which long ago said that the constitution should be put in the bin.

The Commission, the continental heads of government and their advisers, the European Court of Justice and the whole apparatus of the EU's directing élite have always thought: "We know best and the ordinary man or woman in the street cannot understand these mysteries". They should now realise that ordinary people do understand. Whatever you may say about the French, they are not stupid—and they do not like what they are being presented with.

But we in this country are in no position to throw stones at the high and mighty in Brussels and in continental governments. Our political leaders are just as much to blame. Who can forget the way the then Conservative government forced through the Maastricht Treaty and, on 14 July 1993, bussed in scores of backwoodsmen to ensure the defeat of an amendment—moved from their own Benches by Lord Blake—which called for a referendum on that treaty. When it was debated, I said:

The Conservatives won the vote but lost the confidence of the people. No wonder the present Government have been reluctant to put the issues of the euro and the constitution to the country, knowing what the probable results would be.

Political leaders in all three parties have continued to claim that the aim of the EU is not to create a European superstate when it is obvious to everyone that that is precisely what the machine in Brussels is seeking to do.
 
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I am afraid that in this House we have been no better. In 2003, 50 Peers—a number with real distinction in politics, in business and in other fields, including the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, who was in her place earlier—found that there had been no authoritative and impartial report on what detachment from the European Union, in whole or in part, would mean for the United Kingdom. They argued that such a report was overdue and ought to be produced by a Select Committee of this House.

But the establishment in this House—the Liaison Committee, on which the leading figures in the House sit—rejected this reasonable proposal on very largely spurious grounds and the Chairman of Committees ensured that when the matter was debated we were well and truly stitched up. The establishment did not want such questions seriously examined or the public enlightened. Its attitude was the same as that of the leaders the Prime Minister has now denounced.

What should we do now? I think the Government are right to seize the opportunity of their forthcoming presidency to work for real reform of the EU, political as well as economic, difficult though that will certainly be. We need the building of new methods of co-operation, an end to "ever closer union", an end to the mass of maddening, detailed regulations—and of the scores of officials who devise them—an end to fraud and unsatisfactory accounts, and the return of control of agriculture and fisheries to nation states—in fact, a root and branch reform. If with the support of new members and others we can achieve this, or make a real start in that direction, it will be a great achievement.

If we cannot, then it is no use our simply wringing our hands. We should move firmly to an associate status which, as some recent studies have shown, could give us the benefits of continued trade and sensible co-operation without the excessive costs and burdens of full membership. It would also be stimulating and, indeed, exciting to be once more untrammelled and to a large extent on our own.

7.54 pm

Earl Ferrers: My Lords, participation in a debate on Europe seems to require an extensive knowledge and intellect that, regrettably, seems to escape some of us. It is always a daunting exercise.

It is sad to see Europe in a state of ideological chaos. After all, the European Economic Community, as it then was, was the brainchild of politicians after World War II trying to stop the endless wars that had engulfed the continent for the previous 500 years. I was not wildly in favour of the European Economic Community when it first started, but when I had the privilege of being a junior Minister, of going to Brussels in the early 1970s and of seeing all the countries sitting around a table, talking and arguing—even castigating the United Kingdom for raising the price of milk by one shilling a gallon without telling them—I thought it was wonderful. It was talk, not war. That must be encouraged, for that can only be good. My noble friend Lord Lawson said that that part of it had all worked, and so we have to move on.
 
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Events have turned me—as they have, I fear, a number of other people—against the Europe ideal. While so many people saw the value of trade and equal conditions among states as being wholly beneficial, the European Union took on a momentum all of its own and took off in directions both unseen and unexpected. Now we are talking about a European Union with a continuing president; a permanent foreign secretary; a European army; a national flag and even a European national anthem; and endless diktats designed to ensure uniformity within the states, which guarantee collective antagonism. All that—not the diktats but the rest—might have been a twinkle in the eye of European leaders a few decades ago, but it never featured in the aspirations of those who were happy to go along with uniformity of trade.

I agree with my noble friend Lord Waddington that it is not surprising that people are now jumping off the vehicle and are saying, "This bus is out of control. It is going faster and faster. We do not know where it is going—the driver does not seem to know where he is going either—and we do not think we want to go wherever it is that we are going". I regret to say that it is the leaders of the Community, mostly on the continent of Europe, over the past 10 to 15 years who are responsible for that. The blame rests with them entirely. They have gone too fast. They have not carried their people with them. Rather than filling people with excitement, their wild aspirations have filled them with fear. Where are we going? If we get there, what next? That is why the exasperation expressed to me by a lawyer some years ago is rapidly turning into reality; that it will all end in tears.

The European Community started off with six countries; it then went to nine, then 12, then 15 and now 25. Where do we go after that? Is the pot full or is there no limit to membership? What happens when everyone has joined? Presumably we begin to break it all up. There seems to be no long-term goal to be achieved but merely a desire to be on a moving and unstable belt.

We do not want to be ruled by Brussels. It is one thing to harmonise for the common good; it is another thing to be dictated too constantly and on every subject. Why should one not be able to buy what are called food supplements—pills that people have taken for years—simply because Brussels has wiped them off the list on the altar of uniformity or harmonisation? As someone has said already, we can ask any banker about the diktats affecting his industry coming from Brussels and how a simple two pages that the customer can understand becomes eight pages of incomprehensible verbiage.

Farmers used to farm as individuals with the support of government. Now it is the Government who farm and farmers get paid if they do what the Government want. Plant more hedges, and you get more brownie points. The more brownie points you get, the more you get paid. That is alien to the life of British people, whose individuality has made the country and the countryside what it is.

There were 3,000 million people in the world in 1960. In 2025—which is only 20 years on—there will be 12,000 million people in the world. The world
 
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population will have multiplied fourfold in the lifetime of some people alive today. That is an alarming prospect. All those people will need to be housed and accommodated in cities, with schools, factories and roads, and they will have to be fed. But politics is short-term: we do not want food now, we want wildlife, and we want farmers to become industrial gardeners. It is no wonder that people who live in the countryside are appalled and distraught.

The noble Baroness the Lord President was right to remind us that the common agricultural policy consumed half of the budget of the European Union. That is a colossal sum. Why is it that no one in or out of agriculture feels the benefit? It is always said that you cannot have a successful European Union without a common agricultural policy. I have never understood why. We do not seem to have a very successful European Union with a common agricultural policy, so why not try one without it? If that kind of money is being spent, as it is, farmers in Germany, France, Italy and the United Kingdom ought to feel the benefit. So ought the citizens. But no one seems to.

There seems to be little that is common about the common agricultural policy anyhow. When the price of milk in England was 13 pence a litre, in the Netherlands, I think, it was about 25 pence. What is common about that? The countryside is disfigured with set-aside—we all understand why—but one never seems to see set-aside in France. There is nothing common about that. The common agricultural policy was supposed to produce uniformity of conditions and prices. It has not.

I was so glad that my noble friend Lord Lawson said, as did the noble Lord, Lord Moran, that the right to sustain the agricultures of the Community ought to be returned to the countries of the Community. They are right, and I agree. Can Europe not manage without a system that seems to infuriate everyone? Can no one find an alternative, or is it that they can find an alternative but think that they will not get a majority of their fellows in Europe to agree to it?

Now, the Government have introduced the single payment system, which is so unbelievably complicated that no one understands it. About two weeks ago, the noble Lord, Lord Bach, said with some pride that the Government had produced 32 road shows and 1,200 videos in order to show farmers how to complete their forms. What kind of stupid system have the Government produced that requires 32 road shows and 1,200 videos to show farmers how to fill out their forms? Even then, they do not understand it. That is bureaucracy gone made, and the European Union has created it, even though I am told—horror of all horrors—that it resulted from a British initiative and that it was the British who conjured up the idea. It is no wonder that people want to jump ship with that kind of stuff going on.

I am glad to see that the Prime Minister is standing up robustly to President Chirac and is refusing to be told that there is only one European solution and that he has to sign up to it. The Prime Minister is right on that, and he is right not to surrender the British rebate. He is also right not to have a referendum. He is lucky
 
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too: he has been let off the hook. Had there been a referendum, the constitution and the Prime Minister would have been roundly rejected, but as the constitution has to be accepted by all countries and as two have already rejected it, it is virtually dead. Continuing with referenda would be pointless, as total agreement is now impossible.

Despite the fact that two months ago the Prime Minister said that, if elected, the Government would hold a referendum and would campaign vigorously for a "Yes" vote, they have decided to do a volte-face, which is perfectly understandable. However, they have broken two of their election manifesto commitments within eight weeks of being elected, which is not bad going.

Who would have known in a referendum what it was for which they were voting? A constitution of 511 pages is grotesque and incomprehensible. If you have not read it, how can you cast an opinion on it? If you have read it, you cannot understand it. How can you say in all honesty that that is what you want? What way is that to run a vital part of our future history? In some countries, the constitution is not even written in their own language. How on earth do they know what is going on? The 10 commandments had at least the advantage of being short, succinct and understandable; the constitution as a document is impossible. As long as Brussels and the leaders of the Community continue to be bureaucratic, verbose and incomprehensible and to use funny language, so long will people dislike them and distrust them. The leaders have only themselves to blame for that.

The United Kingdom ought to be, and is, part of Europe. We want to trade freely and fairly, but we do not wish, nor do we need, to be part of a United States of Europe. We have our own sovereignty, which we continue to use for the benefit of ourselves and for the benefit of the Community. We do not have to surrender it for the doubtful benefit of Europe and to the unquestionable disadvantage of ourselves. I just hope that the Prime Minister and the Government will take advantage of this hiatus to realign the direction of Europe and to realign the direction of the United Kingdom.

8.5 pm

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