| Previous Section | Back to Table of Contents | Lords Hansard Home Page |
This deception is underlined by statements from leaders of no fewer than 12 other member states that this treaty is indeed the same as the defeated constitution, as the noble Lord, Lord Howell, and other noble Lords have said. It is also underlined by what has been said by four more leaders, who assure us that the main difference is that the new treaty has been designed to be unintelligible to ordinary people. I am particularly fond of the quotation from Mr Karel de Gucht, the Belgium Foreign Minister, who said:
“The aim of the Constitutional Treaty was to be more readable; the aim of this treaty is to be unreadable ... The Constitution aimed to be clear, whereas this treaty had to be unclear. It is a success”.
Our old friend Jean-Claude Juncker, the Prime Minister of Luxembourg, said:
“Britain is different. Of course there will be transfers of sovereignty. But would I be intelligent to draw the attention of public opinion to this fact?”.
The British people, however, are not fools. Their disdain for their political class in general, and of our membership of the European Union in particular, will only be deepened by this story, perhaps, as I have suggested, irretrievably. Let us look at those two developments separately. First Euroscepticism: several recent opinion polls suggest that this is on the increase, with about 80 per cent of respondents saying that they would vote to leave the EU if that meant regaining control of our borders. Some 67 per cent say that they would vote either to leave the EU or to reduce our relationship with our friends in Europe to one of free trade and intergovernmental collaboration. Up to 40 per cent say that they would vote to leave anyway.
I believe that this is because our people are beginning to understand the Eurosceptic case and to realise that they have been deceived for 32 years about the true nature and final destination of the project of European integration. That process started during the referendum campaign of 1975, when they were assured that continued membership of the Common Market entailed no loss of “essential national sovereignty”. I remember thinking at the time, no doubt with many others who voted to stay in the market, that that meant that we would not lose any sovereignty at all because all sovereignty was essential and indivisible. But the slippery Prime Minister of the day really meant that we would retain only such sovereignty as the Eurocrats and our political masters judged to be good for us while the rest was gradually ceded to Brussels.
That process, largely hidden from the people, has brought us to where we are today, with the majority of our national law imposed on us by a secretive system in Brussels. The people have lost the right to elect and dismiss those who make most of their laws
5 Dec 2007 : Column 1759
Lord Watson of Richmond: My Lords, we have had this exchange before and there is a great familiarity to this debate. The noble Lord, Lord Pearson, has asserted, as he has many times in this House, that when we had a referendum on membership of the European Community, people were not told the implications and that, indeed, they may even have been deceived to that end. I have to inform the House that I was involved with BBC programming at that time. There was no secret of the term “ever closer union”, for example, which was already in the treaties. I was involved in three programmes that looked closely at the history and the implications of that. It is simply not true that this was hidden from the British public.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch: My Lords, I am grateful for that intervention, which I have had previously. I think that I replied before that I accept that there were a number of insiders. Some people in the House of Commons may even have read the treaties, but the vast majority of British people did not. I stick to my guns: the British people were deceived into believing that they were voting to stay in a common market.
I may be alone, but I am not sure how much good it will do if your Lordships or the House of Commons insist on a referendum and the people vote down the treaty. Of course, we would avoid its frightening provisions, but I fear that we would be left stuck where we are in the treaty of Nice and that the other countries would proceed under the present Article 43 to enhance their co-operation without us. At least the noble Lord, Lord Tomlinson, who I regret to see has left us, and I agree that that may happen, although he thinks that Nice does not go far enough whereas I think that it goes far too far.
Be that as it may, most Eurosceptics believe that we would somehow reorder our relationship with Brussels in the confusion that would follow our failure to ratify the treaty. But I see no sign of any such desire in the breast of the Government or in the Conservative Party. Although I support a referendum as being a possible step in the right direction, for me the only sure way out remains the door.
However, in the hope that a referendum might lead to more radical change, perhaps I may point out one of the flimsiest arguments advanced by those who do not want a referendum; namely, that referenda were not granted on previous EU treaties after 1975, so there is no need for one now. This does not make sense because clearly there should have been a referendum on each of them. After all, the Single European Act 1986 handed over all our commerce
5 Dec 2007 : Column 1760
Amsterdam in 1997 handed over our social and labour policy to Brussels and let the Eurocrats into human rights, asylum and immigration, and police and judicial co-operation in criminal matters, and 24 more areas were moved to qualified majority voting. So it went on at Nice in 2003, with a further 46 areas given over to majority voting in the Council. Clearly, all those treaties should have been put to the people, as should be the proposed treaty of Lisbon, which cedes a further 61 areas to qualified majority voting and surrenders most of our remaining power to govern ourselves. Five wrongs do not make a right.
The other main plank in the Eurosceptic case is that membership of the EU is cripplingly expensive in cash and to our economy and that a great many jobs would therefore be created if we left and carried on our free trade with the single market. Against that, the Government claim that the EU is good for peace, whereas we hold NATO responsible for peace in Europe since 1945. The Government also claim that our EU membership allows us to do more on climate change, energy, cross-border crime, counterterrorism and the environment. We have heard a bit on that today.
If the EU is such a good thing for the environment, perhaps I may ask the Minister one specific question about fish. Why is the common fisheries policy not changed to allow our fishermen to keep all the fish that they catch so that we can eat them, instead of millions of tonnes being thrown back dead into the sea? I understand that the Eurocrats who designed the policy did not realise that most of the fish are dead when the nets come up and therefore were foolish enough to try to conserve stocks by limiting the amount landed at port. Why can that not be changed? If the Minister does not have a satisfactory answer at her fingertips, perhaps I may suggest that the Government raise this question at the Council next week and that then we have an answer.
I have one further question on the specifics of the treaty. I understand that most of the difference between the former constitution and the proposed treaty is accounted for in the fact that the symbols of the Union—the flag, the anthem, the motto and Europe Day—were in the constitution but have been left out of the treaty. However, this was not accepted by 16 countries, which yesterday tabled Declaration No. 52 saying that for them the symbols continued to express their allegiance to the European Union. As the UK is not among those signatories, where does that leave our legal position towards those symbols? I am aware that the Government have passed some questionable legislation allowing the EU flag to be flown in this country, whatever its EU legal status.
5 Dec 2007 : Column 1761
I said that I fear that the Government’s behaviour over this treaty will widen still further the gulf between our political class and our people, who already hold us in very low esteem. One can see their point. Over the past 50 years, we have brought this country pretty low: 40 per cent of our children leave primary school, and 15 per cent leave school, unable to read and write properly; our health service is in crisis; our police are overwhelmed; our prisons are bursting with the mentally ill and the illiterate; our transport system is inadequate; our Armed Forces are underfunded, overstretched and undervalued, and even their morale is beginning to crack; our border controls have been deliberately abandoned, so that our inner cities are increasingly uncomfortable and explosive places; and, most worrying of all, Islamist terrorists are on the march, many of whom are home grown.
Amid all this encircling gloom, I see only one light—the UK Independence Party. Only UKIP is telling the people the truth about so many of these issues, particularly about the extent of our ensnarement with the project of European integration and why the only answer is for us to leave it. That is why I joined UKIP earlier this year. I had given up hope that the Conservative Party would ever come clean and reach this conclusion in the time available. It seems to me that those who now lead the Conservative Party are guided largely by focus groups and that they lack vision. Where there is no vision, the people perish.
If Conservative spokesmen think that I am being unfair, could they answer one question? I am not sure which Conservative spokesman will wind up this debate, because there is not one on the speakers list. I can hope only that they have not fled the field already. Conservatives constantly tell your Lordships and the wider world that they are in favour of reform of the EU. They want it to be less interfering, less bureaucratic, looser, more open and ready to compete with the emerging economic powerhouses of the East, and so on. We have heard quite a bit of that today. My simple question is this. Given the need for unanimity in the Council for any treaty change, how will the Conservatives achieve this, assuming that they come to form a Government? How will they even achieve their stated aim of repatriating our social and labour policies? Are they not being naive, almost to the point of dishonesty, when they pretend that any reform of this project that meets the country’s urgent needs is possible? I hope that I am being unfair to my old friends and I look forward to their answer.
As to the Government—I know that this is a waste of breath—I urge them not to sign this treaty. Immense damage may result to this country if they do.
7.10 pm
Lord Harrison: My Lords, it is a great honour to follow in the wake of the noble Lords, Lord Forsyth and Lord Pearson. I am reminded of the old
5 Dec 2007 : Column 1762
Mention of the red buses and the red lines brings me to the conclusion that the Euro-Glums will never find anything satisfactory about the European Union.
The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, has now left the Chamber and is no longer in his place, but I should like to take him up on one point in his otherwise strong but misguided contribution to the debate. He parodied Peter Hain MP for describing in another place the constitutional treaty as a “tidying-up exercise”. The truth was that an element of it was tidying up in an attempt to simplify the raft of European treaties that we had had hitherto. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, in quoting my former colleague Karel de Gucht, said that the resulting reform treaty was less readable than the original one. This perhaps points to the fact that we have missed an opportunity to perform a service to the people of the European Union, and to simplify and explain better the conglomeration of treaties that we have had over many years.
I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth. He is in the Chamber.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean: My Lords, what I said about Mr Hain was that he had justified not having a referendum on the constitution because it was just a minor tidying-up exercise and there was no need for one. I said that the Government then changed their mind and decided that there should be a referendum. I was comparing that to the position they are in today and said that both positions represent a deceit. In the previous situation the Government changed their position and I live in hope that they may do so again.
Lord Harrison: My Lords, I am grateful for that intervention, but my charge is that often the noble Lord and other Euro-Glums refuse to talk about the elements of either the constitutional or the reform treaties and simply refer to their genesis. In purporting to defend British values, the Euro-Glums are calling for a referendum, which is itself an un-British circumvention of established and well tried parliamentary practices, including those in your Lordships’ House. The red Benches are best fitted to examine the red lines of the reform treaty.
I notice also the invocation of various dignitaries from political life in the European Union. The noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford, mentioned Valéry Giscard d’Estaing. I heard him on the “Today” programme and he was less than keen on the British Government’s view of what had happened. He is, of course, a Euro-federalist and it is surprising that
5 Dec 2007 : Column 1763
In other words, Great Britain won the lot. That was a clear view from another country which is simply not reported or allowed for in the thinking on this important subject.
I congratulate Her Majesty’s Government on defending the red lines so assiduously. It is true that some tidying-up and clarification are still needed. The noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, helped with the question of the passerelle. But we need some assurances on that, on the charter of fundamental rights and on the status of the United Kingdom’s opt-outs and some of its opt-ins; we would like to know about any possible expiry dates.
My main purpose in speaking today is to say to Her Majesty’s Government that it is time to move up a gear from defending the red lines to defining the green lights—to tell the people the good things about the reform treaty. Her Majesty’s Government should celebrate sweeping away the defunct bureaucracy of institutions that were constructed principally at the time of the original six pioneering states. This is sensible reform which enables 27 EU countries to concentrate on the real issues confronting the European Union and the wider world that the noble Lord, Lord Howell, referred to—economic reform, terrorism and climate change. I heard a pleasing story the other day that the Champagne country in France would, as a result of climate change and global warming, move to Britain and we would be responsible for growing the grapes and making the wine in our own country if matters were not taken into hand.
We should celebrate giving continuity to the European Union councils by the longer two-and-a-half-year renewable presidencies, and having only one high representative—in foreign affairs—who is free to act only when all 27 states have spoken with unanimity. Also, reducing the size of the European Commission to make it more athletic in the way it responds to the changing world outside must be a sensible reform. Indeed we should celebrate your Lordships’ House and other national parliaments, which have new and strengthened powers, referred to again by the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, to intrude on Brussels law-making and not only to emphasise those elements of subsidiarity which would require national parliaments to make decisions, but—this is often forgotten—to make a judgment about whether proposed EU law is proportionate to the requirements that challenge and face us all. Do the Euro-Glums reject this giving of powers to the national parliaments to be able to scrutinise legislation? Indeed, as I understand it, the new treaty, which we should celebrate, enshrines
5 Dec 2007 : Column 1764
We should celebrate the extension of QM voting to take us from the sclerotic to dynamic and vital areas such as the creation of energy policy, humanitarian aid and realising a common and foreign security policy that was agreed as long ago as 1992. I celebrate, and I ask the Government to do likewise, the double check on safeguarding Britain’s vote within the Council by the new form of what I call double-entry voting in the Council, thereby making Britain, as a large country, less vulnerable to the Lilliputian states that might otherwise circumvent our views. We should celebrate the extension of co-decision-making. Earlier in the debate the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, emphasised the role of the European Parliament. We should not hide the increasing of the democratic element of the European institutions under a bushel, but should celebrate it. I remind those who reject the European Union and the European Parliament, and there are too many of them, that when I was last voted into the European Parliament by the good people of Cheshire, I received over 100,000 votes.
I say to the Minister, who is batting—and battling—on the front foot, that the treaty is a good thing that will bring about its own rewards. The EU story is a good one. I shall give noble Lords an example from Sub-Committee F of the European Union Select Committee, chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell. We went for a tripartite meeting with other national parliaments and the European Parliament, and we heard about the European Union arrest warrant, which was so berated in this country. We learnt from the director-general of the European Commission Justice, Freedom and Security department, Jonathan Faull, that 7,000 arrests had been made in the past year, a number that has doubled. That number reflects our increasing ability to catch the criminals and potential terrorists who might otherwise threaten the people of the European Union. Let us shout that from the rooftops and say, “This is because Europe has decided to get together to demonstrate and help the people of Europe not only to enjoy their freedom, but to create the prosperity that they deserve”.
When we come to the end of this Council and the reform treaty is signed, I would ask one other thing of our Prime Minister. This is only a little point, but I will say it. No one would describe the Prime Minister as a champagne socialist, but the next time the glasses are raised to celebrate, with champagne, the coming of another treaty that marks an advance for the British people within the European Union because such a treaty is signed, he too should get up and celebrate.
7.23 pm
Lord Leach of Fairford: My Lords, three questions should be asked of the forthcoming treaty: is it different enough from the constitution to discharge the Government from their promise of a referendum; will it bring Europe closer to the people, as the declaration that launched it required; and will it make Europe more prosperous?
5 Dec 2007 : Column 1765
The offer of a referendum was not casual. Tony Blair frequently repeated it in the most categoric language and all the main political parties put the promise in their general election manifestos. I do not suppose the Liberal Democrats did so under Rupert Murdoch’s instructions. In any case, promises that prove inconvenient still have to be kept.
In even debating the new treaty we are implicitly accepting a fiction: that the treaty is significantly different from the rejected constitution. It is not. There is virtually no difference between the treaty and the constitution. As many of my noble friends have pointed out, almost every leading continental politician, including those who wrote the constitution, has admitted—or boasted—that the two treaties are substantially identical. Almost every independent academic study has reached the same conclusion.
You do not have to be an expert on the text to see that. All you need know is that 240 out of 250 new clauses are the same in the constitution and the treaty and that the constitution transferred 61 powers from member states to the Union, of which the new treaty replicates 60—and adds a couple more for luck. Even the red lines are the same. The only thing that is really different is that Tony Blair thought he could win a referendum if he explained the constitution properly, whereas Gordon Brown evidently thinks he would lose one. The Government have therefore suspended their trust in the people and have preferred parliamentary brute force to keeping their word.
| Next Section | Back to Table of Contents | Lords Hansard Home Page |