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On the EU high representative, Mr Blair said that he was not going to have an EU Foreign Minister at any costs, but that is what we have in all but name. Furthermore, against Mr Blair’s express wishes, this person, although a member of the Commission, is going to take the chair at meetings of EU Foreign Ministers. Is it really a matter of little account that a bureaucrat, a civil servant, an official, is going to preside when the democratically elected representatives of the member states meet? I do not think so. Nor do I, like Mr Blair, think it of little account that where the EU has agreed a common position the UK will be under an obligation to ask the high representative to present the EU position in the Security Council.

Incidentally, the former Prime Minister thought it “simply unacceptable” that there should be majority voting on proposals made by the high representative, but that is what we have. We also have an EU diplomatic service, which—surprise, surprise—Tony Blair said he was totally against. Noble Lords may remember that Mr Blair was also against the European Parliament electing the President of the Commission; he was against a treaty being amendable without a formal treaty negotiation; and he was against the ECJ being given jurisdiction over justice and home affairs matters, over the criminal law and policing. But, in the end, he signed up to it all, and that is a matter of constitutional significance.

As for the EU getting explicit legal personality, it can already sign up to agreements in so-called first pillar areas such as trade, but surely it is not a mere formality, a trivial tidying-up, that it will now be able to sign treaties covering every aspect of foreign policy and defence and even crime and judicial matters. By the treaty, the EU has acquired another of the attributes of statehood; it is another constitutional step.

One does not know whether to laugh or cry on the subject of the Charter of Fundamental Rights. First it had no more significance than the Beano; then it was merely declaratory; and then it was very dangerous and on no account was it to get into the treaty. However, it is in it and the protocol, which is so much boasted of, ensures that British people get the worst of all worlds. British citizens cannot go to court if they think that their rights under the charter have been infringed but they will be bound by decisions of the court in proceedings brought by citizens of other countries. There is no mystery about this and I hope

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that it is said plainly by a few other speakers. The interpretation of the charter from the European Court of Justice will become part of European law and, as European law has primacy over our law, our courts will follow the European Court’s rulings in cases brought by citizens of other states. That is why I say—and it really is as plain as a pikestaff—that as a result of the protocol we will get the worst of all worlds.

Then there is the alleged significant increase in powers of national parliaments. On examination, that proves to be nothing more than mere window dressing. We will get notice of draft EU legislation, but for what purpose? What is the use of that if there is no real possibility of parliaments being able to reject such legislation? What possibility is there of nine national parliaments in an eight-week period all voting to claim a breach of subsidiarity? The answer to that is precisely nil. If a miracle were to happen, the Commission could reconsider and then proceed anyhow. How dare anybody boast that the treaty is about giving power to Parliament, when Parliament is being shorn of power through a vast increase in majority voting in areas such as internal security and criminal law—areas central to national sovereignty?

The Government could have done so much. They could have fought to prise from the Commission its almost total monopoly of the right to initiate legislation and reminded the other heads of government that the whole object of the exercise, according to the Laeken declaration, was to bring the EU closer to its citizens, not to grab more power for the bureaucrats. They could have demanded a clear division of power between member states and Brussels to stop the relentless drift of power from member states to the EU, which the Laeken declaration suggested had to be stopped, but they have done precisely the opposite. They have given up the veto in anything between 40 and 60 new areas, depending on interpretation, as page 49 of the report says—and 26 of those extensions of majority voting were opposed strongly by our Government. They have agreed to it being made much more difficult for Britain to block legislation under QMV and agreed to most powers being shared, which is a ludicrous and insulting description of national Governments being allowed to do only what the Commission has graciously decided not to do.

If the Government had rejected this treaty, they might well have triggered a genuine rethink about the future of Europe, but we proceed as if we had no option but to surrender on every point and to go along with the majority. That has always been the view of the Europhiles: one has to agree with the majority, as failure to do so could precipitate a crisis or, even worse, show a lack of commitment to the project, which would mean that we were isolated. We hear that sort of nonsense spoken every day. What it means is that, although everybody is supposed to agree to a new treaty or to a change to a treaty, we must always agree because if we do not we will be isolated. As a result, surrender has become a habit and, through surrender, we have robbed our citizens of the right to hold to account and sack those who make most of our laws. The Government have signed up to a treaty that

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is bad for Britain and bad for democracy and they have ratted on their promise to give the people a say in a referendum. They have behaved disgracefully.

4.59 pm

Lord Jay of Ewelme: My Lords, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, will forgive me if I do not follow precisely the lines of his intervention. There will be opportunities in Committee to go into the details of the treaty and the Bill. At this stage, I would like to explain briefly and in broader terms why I support the treaty and the Bill and oppose a referendum.

There is a rather curious tendency at the moment to want to set on one side the achievements of the European Union over the years as being somehow out of date or irrelevant to today's debate. That is a bad mistake because the past has lessons for the future. Let us briefly recall that the EU was instrumental, alongside NATO, in cementing peace and security in western Europe. The EU was instrumental in ensuring democracy in southern Europe in Spain, Portugal and Greece, which was not at all evident some 20 or 25 years ago. As the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, argued so powerfully just now, the EU was also instrumental in bringing democracy and market economies to the countries of east and central Europe, although of course there is still unfinished business there.

Let us also recall that the EU has been instrumental in creating a market of more than 400 million people, in which the increasingly free movement of goods, services, capital and people has contributed greatly to Europe's prosperity. There, too, there is unfinished business. In my view, the United Kingdom has benefited greatly from these developments. However—and this is the point that I really want to stress—the United Kingdom has contributed greatly to those developments as well, under both Conservative and Labour Governments. I join my noble friend Lord Kerr in saying how glad I was to see the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, in her place this afternoon, for whom I worked for many years.

As I said, the UK has contributed greatly to these developments under both Conservative and Labour Governments. It has contributed greatly to the creation today of a European Union of 27 variegated nation states—I stress that—governed by an increasingly flexible set of arrangements. I would argue that that set of arrangements reflects what the noble Lord, Lord Howell, referred to in his opening speech as the “dignity of difference” among the member states. That is indeed what the European Union of today is increasingly about.

Today’s European Union of 27 variegated nation states is light years away from the centralised, homogeneous Union that was the dream of many people in the EU’s earlier years. That is simply not on the agenda any more. Nobody wants it; certainly not the east and central European countries who have recently joined the European Union having escaped the Soviet yoke—a point powerfully made by the noble Baroness, Lady Quin.

The lesson from all that is surely that engagement by Britain in the development of the EU—even engagement that has, at times over the years, been a little grudging—has been in Britain’s as well as the

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European Union's interest and that we should have the confidence to recognise that the more that we engage, the more we will get the European Union that we want and that we are comfortable with. At a time when the challenges that the European Union faces are so great, a policy of disengagement or even partial disengagement would be a huge mistake.

Those challenges are indeed, as other noble Lords have mentioned, great. They are: to complete the single market, particularly in energy, so that the European Union is better able to meet the challenges of China, India and other emerging economies; to take a lead on the big global issues and notably on climate change—unlike some other noble Lords, I really do think that that is an important role for the European Union and one in which it can play a leading role; to strengthen the European Union's external policy so that it can play a bigger role in fighting poverty and helping to meet the millennium development goals; to deliver humanitarian aid, as the EU is a major deliverer of humanitarian aid after conflict and natural disasters; and to strengthen its foreign and security policy—for example in Iran, in the Middle East, in Africa’s conflict zones, and towards Russia, where the incoherence of the EU’s approach is now so damaging. If ever there was a case for a stronger European foreign and security policy it is to ensure a more coherent policy towards Russia.

Will the Lisbon treaty help the European Union meet those challenges? I share the view of noble Lords who have said that it will. Like all treaties it is imperfect; at times it is incoherent, and at times it is incomprehensible. But, as the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, said, it is certainly not a great leap forward towards some centralised European state. As I have argued just now, I truly believe that that is now a mirage. The Lisbon treaty is rather a series of changes that will make the EU more coherent, for example in its external policy and in replacing the now outmoded six-month presidency. It will strengthen national parliaments’ role in the conduct of EU affairs—not automatically; parliaments will have to make that work, but there is an opportunity. It will strengthen the UK’s voting weight in decisions taken by majority voting. Let us not forget that majority voting stops others vetoing things we want and not just the other way round.

Those seem entirely sensible changes which I suspect will, when the treaty is in force, seem far less dramatic than they seem now in prospect. Surely the right thing to do now is to ratify the treaty and for the United Kingdom to work hard in its implementation so that we have the arrangements in place that can ensure the EU can more effectively meet the challenges which I believe all of us see as important for the future.

Finally, on the referendum, perhaps I am a little gullible or naïve. I have been a member of your Lordships’ House for less than two years but I had been increasingly persuaded in that time of the need for a stronger role for parliaments in our parliamentary democracy. Against that background, it seems rather odd that there are such strong voices arguing for the cession of parliamentary authority to what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe, described as the gamble of referendums. I accept that referendums have a role in our constitutional settlement if there is a genuine

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transfer of authority and genuine change in the constitutional arrangements—as would have been the case, say, if we were genuinely ceding responsibility for our foreign policy—but I do not believe that we are, as the Select Committee report made clear and the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, and the noble Lord, Lord Roper, argued. I cannot imagine any future Foreign Secretary of any Government, and certainly not any Foreign Secretary for whom I have worked, being prepared to give up Britain’s independent foreign policy. I find that simply inconceivable.

I do not believe that the original constitutional treaty would have justified a referendum, and I believe that the Government were wrong in promising one. But all the more so would it be wrong to offer one now on the Lisbon treaty, not least because with the special provisions negotiated for the UK it really does differ from the original, now defunct constitutional treaty. My conclusions are that it is in Britain’s interests as well as those of the European Union to ratify this treaty and to put its provisions into force and that we should oppose a referendum.

5.08 pm

Lord Tomlinson: My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Jay, because it gives me the perfect alibi for not following the noble Lord, Lord Waddington. But I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, will catch my eye on one or two occasions during my intervention and I might have a word to address to him. The only thing that I would say to him immediately is that it is a complete fiction to say that the Government objected to 90 per cent of the outcome of the Convention on the Future of Europe. With the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, I had the privilege of representing your Lordships’ House on that convention. We regularly met the then Prime Minister and he was largely in agreement with the main thrust of the outcome of the convention. There was one point of disagreement with him, however, because all the way through that period, the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, assured us that there would never be a referendum on the outcome. When he changed his mind, I said at the earliest opportunity in your Lordships’ House that he was as right in his earlier assurances to the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, and me as he was wrong in his change of mind.

I welcome the European Union (Amendment) Bill; I welcome the EU Select Committee report; and I welcome the Constitution Committee report. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, on the exemplary way in which he has taken us through that extremely complex document. It was his usual tour de force. I concur with him on the excellence of the report’s analysis.

I shall briefly refer, however, to the much less examined—though it has been discussed frequently in our debate today—report of the Constitution Committee, which has made several clear and unambiguous statements, the first of which is:

“The House of Lords Constitution Committee has concluded that the Lisbon Treaty and the European Union (Amendment) Bill are likely to have no major damaging impact on the constitution of the UK”.

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It is a clear conclusion, and I concur with it.

The report goes on to state:

“The Committee concludes that the Treaty would make no alteration to the relationship between the principles of primacy of EU law and parliamentary sovereignty; and would have no constitutional implications for UK citizenship”.

That is equally clear, and I equally concur with it.

The report then states:

“The Committee also reports that the new arrangements with respect to the European Convention on Human Rights and the Charter of Fundamental Rights would have no significant impact”.

The noble Lord, Lord Waddington, should take note of that.

The final points that the report cogently makes is that the introduction of a,

“provision explicitly confirming Member States’ right to withdraw from the European Union underlines the point that the United Kingdom only remains bound by European Union law as long as Parliament chooses to remain in the Union”.

That has now been made explicitly clear, and I would hope that people such as the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, welcomed that clarity. I commend the noble Lord, Lord Goodlad, and his committee for their excellent work.

I was reading the minutes of evidence of the report of the committee of the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, in a period when I did not have a great deal to do. I came across the evidence of my old friend, John Palmer, the political director of the European Policy Centre. He said to the committee that he thought that debate on the treaty was,

“much ado about not a great deal”.

I even thought that that might have been a good title for the report by the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell. John Palmer went on to say that,

“it is the modesty and maybe the adequacy in some respects of this Treaty, rather than its ambitions that strikes me as important”.

He was followed shortly afterwards in giving evidence by Professor Damian Chalmers, Professor of European Union Law at the London School of Economics and Political Science, who gave us the benefit of his view that,

“it is probably the most limited reform, with the exception of the Treaty of Nice, that we have seen in the last 20 years”.

I concur with that judgment. Let us look at the previous reforms. The Single European Act—tribute has been paid to the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, for her role in that—set out the blueprint not only for completing the single market but for providing for co-operation in foreign policy, and it created the concept of the convergence of economic and monetary policies. It was fundamentally and politically important in a way with which it is hard to find exact parallel in the treaty of Lisbon. There was no discussion of, or serious commitment to, a referendum on the treaty of Maastricht, but it created economic and monetary union, the common foreign and security policy and the beginnings of co-operation on justice and home affairs. If ever there was major constitutional change, it was there. The treaty of Lisbon pales into relative insignificance by comparison and the same applies to the other

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treaties with the exception of the treaty of Nice. I remind noble Lords that if some got their wish and the treaty of Lisbon and the European Union (Amendment) Bill fell, we would be stuck with the treaty of Nice, which constitutes the most inadequate of all the treaty changes that we have had.

The amendment Bill is very clear and simple. It sets out to do four major things. It will adapt our structures and the key institutions of the European Union to a Union of 27 member states with other countries, particularly in the Balkans, being encouraged to have the ambition to join us and enlarge that number even further. It will ensure that the voice of EU member states is heard more prominently in foreign affairs. It will bring national parliaments into a closer day-to-day relationship with European Union decision-making, and it will focus the EU on big external changes. So the objectives are very clear. The British Government’s preoccupation right the way through has been with those so-called four “red line” areas. These important areas comprise the Charter of Fundamental Rights; the whole question of criminal law and police and judicial co-operation; social security; and common, foreign and security policy. As we have heard frequently in this debate, in all areas our major national interest has been defended and protected and the red lines round it have been fully secured.

All sorts of other advantages were mentioned earlier. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Kinnock for not concentrating just on the loss of our so-called veto on the extension of qualified majority voting but rather on the other aspect of the voting system which is of major benefit to the United Kingdom in terms of the weighting of votes giving proportional interest to size of population in a country.

I am positive about the treaty and therefore about the European Union (Amendment) Bill for a number of reasons. It necessarily streamlines the European Union and usefully clarifies the EU powers. It sensibly gives the EU a more powerful voice in the world. It fundamentally enhances the accountability of the European Union both to national parliaments and the Governments of the member states, and clearly improves its capacity to enhance Europe’s competitiveness. It achieves all that while fully respecting all the rights and privileges not only of the UK but of all other member states. That is a substantial achievement and a substantial list of benefits. I support the Bill.

5.18 pm

Lord Tugendhat: My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Tomlinson, as I agree very much with everything that he said. But the two speeches that I particularly wish to refer to in passing before getting on to my own are those by the noble Lord, Lord Jay, and the noble Baroness, Lady Williams. The point they made about the European Union being the most effective vehicle for the spread of democracy and human rights in today’s world is of absolutely critical importance. That is a great achievement and shows the up-to-date relevance of the European Union to world affairs. I am proud of the contribution that Britain has made to the expansion of the EU and to the spread of human rights and democracy to many

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countries which have never enjoyed them as well as to some which had them once and then lost them. This achievement is widely recognised in the United States, not least by those to whom my party feels particularly close.

The point that I want to make is that I firmly believe that this treaty is very much in the interests of the United Kingdom. It furthers British interests, and it will make the European Union work better; which in itself is a British interest. I deeply regret that in saying that I find myself at odds with so many in my party; indeed, I find myself at odds with the party line. That is not a thing that I like to do. Sadly, I believe that the Conservative Party’s present position on the treaty is not only contrary to the national interest but to its own interest. I will revert to that point in a few moments.

However, I do not want that position to be misconstrued as support for the way in which the Government have handled this matter. If I may say so, I thought that the speech by the noble Baroness the Lord President was an exemplary defence of the treaty. I very much wish that the way in which she put it had been put earlier by other Ministers. The Government’s position was exemplified by the Prime Minister’s deplorable behaviour in Lisbon. Instead of promoting the treaty, the Government have basically apologised for it and, instead of drawing attention to the virtues of the treaty, they have presented it as a threat, saying that they have saved Britain from various threats worse than death by the red lines and all the rest of it. It is no wonder that there is so much suspicion of it, and no one has done more to fan that suspicion than this Government. I find myself supporting them on the treaty on this occasion because I believe that the treaty is in Britain’s best interests, but I feel unhappy to be at odds with my party and even more unhappy to find myself in the same Lobby as some members of the Government, though not the noble Baroness the Lord President.

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