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I believe our report is well constructed. Noble Lords of all party persuasions and none—each of them eminent in European Union matters—produced a factual and dispassionate look at the treaty’s complexities. The report was agreed by all noble Lords and its central task was to assess whether the effect on Britain of life under the Lisbon treaty was worthwhile, compared with the status quo. I believe that it represented the genius of the House of Lords, which has always been a Chamber of sharp policy analysis. We complement the House of Commons, the Chamber of sharp political debate.

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In our report the former defunct constitutional treaty did not feature. Why? Like Monty Python's parrot, the constitutional treaty is a dead treaty, deceased, expired and has fallen off its perch. Why then do the Eurosceptic taxidermists continue to stuff the wrong bird? If it could reasonably be shown that HMG had reneged on their promise to hold a referendum on the treaty, which it cannot, the only political question is whether it is in the interest of the United Kingdom to accept the treaty before us. The truth is that the Eurosceptics prefer flak and flannel rather than a fundamental approach to the treaty.

Incidentally, the current treaty is markedly different from the constitutional essay. My belief is that the ambition that we originally had to simplify the many treaties, about which the noble Lord, Lord Leach, spoke, has been lost. We could have presented a simplified version, which would have been readable, even to Giscard d’Estaing, but that is a loss attributable to the Eurosceptics.

Today, I want to excite people—not fears—about the treaty, whose central ambition is to give to a union of 27 countries—not six—the means by which the big challenges of globalisation, climate change, stable financial markets, jobs and prosperity can be tackled. I want to explore, in the phrase of the noble Lord, Lord Hurd, some of the nooks and crannies of the European Union. Incidentally, my own malapropism is that the single market, which constitutes the European Union, gives free rein to the crooks and nannies of the European Union in the way in which we promote the free movement of workers such as nannies, nurses, doctors and so on, but we have to dissuade others who can take advantage of the single market, the crooks, the terrorists and the traffickers. That is why we need to work together as parties in the European Union, something which is foreign, I believe, to the Eurosceptics.

Some of the new powers include the right of a nation to secede from the Union, which I would have thought the Eurosceptics would have enjoyed; an increase in the United Kingdom’s weighted voting, reflecting our size and population; a right of national parliaments, including your Lordships' House, to put in the sin bin unwanted proposals from EU legislation by waving the yellow and orange cards—is that not a good idea?—rectifying the democratic deficit by making the European Parliament co-decision-makers with the council; and giving Britain the right to wrest from other member states the veto to block positive legislation within the single market, a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Jay.

Just look at some of the extensions to the single market competences now under QMV: competition policy; energy policy; intellectual property rights; the tourism industry—Europe's biggest employer; and a handle on fisheries and CAP reform. Are those not all items that are of benefit to the United Kingdom? There is also formal recognition of EU anti-fraud offices, like OLAF. Perhaps I may remind noble Lords that the United Kingdom Government secured the red lines. If ever a country was given the benefit of having its cake and eating it, it is the United Kingdom within the European Union. Of course, the noble Lord, Lord Leach, cites Giscard d’Estaing and others. I ask him

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to consult my former German colleague, Elmar Brok, in the European Parliament, who is incandescent with the rage at how well the United Kingdom Government succeeded in negotiating the red lines and the treaty that has emerged. Why do the Eurosceptics resent these sensible changes which so clearly benefit Britain?

There are other, smaller areas which are still significant and that I want to mention because I fear that they will not be mentioned in today's debate. On social affairs, the concept of children’s rights and the protection of children are now enshrined in the treaty, something that many of us have thought about for a long time. The protection of sports is also enshrined in the treaty, which is a hugely important and dynamic area of the European Union. So we avoid some of the unintended consequences of EU legislation. Those who are soccer fans will recall the Bosman legislation which many of us thought was not the proper way forward when employing the free movement of workers. We will now have the appropriate impact assessments and be able to say, “Hold on, let’s just temper what we are planning to do”. On public health, we delimit the areas where public health can be extended, but there are common areas, and mental health is singled out in the treaty. Mental health is an affliction across the European Union and prevents people from having gainful employment throughout the Union. How much better it is to try to work together with colleagues to rectify that. On young people, we had a European Parliament meeting in Liverpool for young people to encourage them to meet with colleagues. Of course, Liverpool is currently enjoying its year as European Capital of Culture.

The European Union is strongest when it highlights its pulsating diversity and yet underpins its firm, common base of shared and civilised values. I have one final, domestic question to my noble friend and I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, will reflect on this. The treaty of Lisbon will come in. As the House of Lords, and a House of Parliament, we need to shape up and respond to the responsibilities which have been vested in this House. We need to be athletic in responding to the legislation that comes from the European Union by the use of the yellow and orange cards, and so on. Parliament can no longer have a three and a half months layoff when the activities of the European Union continue. We must change, as I hope the Leader of the House understands. We must now begin to think how to respond to our new duties under the treaty of Lisbon.

5.58 pm

Lord Sewel: My Lords, it is always a delight to follow my noble friend Lord Harrison, partly because of his direct personal experience of the European Parliament, but more importantly because of his graphic turn of phrase. Looking at the speakers' list I see that the noble Lord, Lord Willoughby de Broke, that well-known Eurosceptic taxidermist, speaks after me, although I doubt that he will follow me. Let us wait and see.

We are reaching the stage in the debate when Members of your Lordships’ House tend to start their speeches by observing that much of what they wanted to say has already been said. However, that never inhibits them from ploughing on and saying exactly what they

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were going to say in the first place. I want to avoid that trap and focus on a relatively narrow, but important, issue of how the treaty affects agriculture and whether the treaty makes reform of agriculture more or less likely. I make no apology for doing that. After all, the common agriculture policy was one of the founding policies. Although agricultural expenditure is set to decline as a proportion of the overall budget, it will remain the largest single element within the budget. I also have the privilege of chairing Sub-Committee D of the Select Committee of the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, which is specifically charged with looking at agriculture, fisheries and the environment; the most distinguished member of that sub-committee, the noble Lord, Lord Plumb, is due to speak later.

The present way of dealing with agriculture through the Brussels institutions is, frankly, less than satisfactory. Currently, decision-making lies wholly with the Council, where agriculture Ministers act as members of something akin to a closed, cosy club with little accountability. Members of your Lordships’ House will not be too surprised to know that the vast majority of European agriculture Ministers see their primary task as securing bigger and better incomes for their farmers. Pursuing reform, getting agriculture closer to the market and looking after the interests of consumers come somewhat lower down the list of priorities, if they figure at all.

At the level of the European Parliament, things are even worse. At present, the European Parliament is merely consulted on agricultural policy, and the effect of that has been twofold. First, the agricultural committee of the Parliament does not enjoy a high level of prestige or esteem within the Parliament itself. It has been effectively captured by producer interests and pretty much ignored by the Council. On agricultural expenditure, the current classification of agricultural spend as compulsory expenditure means that the Parliament only has an advisory role, so there is little oversight and scrutiny of agricultural policy within the European institutions. Everything is centred on the cosy club of the Council.

What will the treaty do? It makes two important changes. First, agriculture will be subject to co-decision. The cosy monopoly of the Council will be broken; it will disappear. Secondly, on expenditure, the abolition of the distinction between compulsory and non-compulsory expenditure will mean that the Parliament and the Council will have to come to a final agreement on the whole budget, including agricultural spend.

Those are the proposals in the treaty. What are the likely effects? Again, the committee of the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, helps us with that. It says:

“The move to co-decision in agriculture and fisheries is significant. It will bring more transparency and accountability to the policy-making process, allowing third parties to raise concerns more easily with policy makers and facilitating national parliamentary scrutiny of agriculture and fisheries decision-making”.

Furthermore,

“the weight of evidence suggests that agriculture and fisheries committees of the European Parliament will in future represent and be closely overseen by a wider range of interests than the narrow producer interests that have historically dominated those committees. For these reasons, we expect that the change is likely to assist rather than impede further reform of the common agricultural and fisheries policies”.

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I join with all those who say that both the common agricultural and common fisheries policies are in great and urgent need of further reform. Some progress has been made, but more needs to be done.

I do not want to overstate the likely effects of the Lisbon changes in these two areas of policy but, overall, they are significant, helpful to the process of reform and ought to be supported. In the end they will be beneficial to efficient and effective farmers, who are closer to the market, and to the process of decision-making, with greater openness and accountability. They will be good for European citizens as a whole. For these reasons I support the treaty and commend it to the House.

6.05 pm

Lord Willoughby de Broke: My Lords, I do not know what I have done to deserve being singled out by the noble Lord, Lord McNally, who, in his opening remarks, accused me of shooting a fox. The noble Lord, Lord Sewel, has said that I am a taxidermist or a bird-stuffer. Of the two I would probably choose to be a bird-stuffer. I do not know; I will ask the noble Lord, Lord McNally, about that.

During Madame Sarkozy’s successful visit a couple of weeks ago, her husband was interviewed on the “Today” programme about the implications of the reform treaty for Britain. He said:

“No one is asking Britain to change its real identity. Keep your language, your culture, your interests”.

That is very big of him, is it not? He conspicuously did not say, “Keep your parliamentary democracy and powers”. Of course he did not say that, because he knew that it would not be true. It simply cannot happen. In the very next breath in that interview, he said:

“Thanks to the ... treaty we are going to have a common immigration policy ... the very first thing I am going to do”—

presumably he is talking about the French presidency of the EU—

“is tackle the European migration pact”.

There we go. We can keep our language and customs, yes, but we cannot keep our parliamentary democracy. That will be elsewhere.

I am sorry to say that the powers of Parliament have been substantially surrendered to Brussels. I remind your Lordships of one or two of those areas. Immigration, as has been mentioned this afternoon, is already largely an EU competence. None of the 27 members states has powers to control immigration. Indeed—referring to the “crooks and nannies” of the noble Lord, Lord Harrison—we have no power to deport any crooks from the 27 members states. Witness the sad inability to return the murderer of Philip Lawrence to Italy where he was born. We are unable to do that because of EU law to which we have signed up. Crooks and nannies, nooks and crannies; we cannot do anything about it.

Our trade policy is decided in Brussels, negotiated on our behalf by the European Commissioner for Trade, currently none other than our very own Peter Mandelson. We have lost control of our fishing industry. That has been wrecked by the common fisheries policy,

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which is repeatedly condemned by the Select Committees of this House. I served on Sub-Committee D at one stage, and eventually got tired of standing up and saying how awful the common fisheries policy was. Actually, nothing has changed; the noble Lord, Lord Sewel, was honest enough to admit that. Equally, agriculture and environmental policy is still dictated by Brussels. We have just heard that nothing has changed, or is likely to change. There is a pious hope that things may change, but it remains just a hope. I ask the noble Lord, Lord Sewel, whether it would not be better if we repatriated agricultural policy and decided for ourselves what it would be, rather than let it be done in the dark, misty corridors of the Brussels comitology.

We have managed to lock ourselves into the absurd EU biofuels policy, notably the renewable fuels transport obligation. I saw that that was criticised as “insane” by none other than Defra’s chief scientific adviser, Professor Bob Watson, last week. Even the Commission is starting to think that, but we cannot do anything about it because we must rely on the Commission to change it: we have already signed up to it. We have no say whatever in that field. Perhaps that is no more insane than our aspiration to meet the EU-imposed renewable energy obligations which the Government’s own advisers have already said are almost entirely unattainable. We just will not get there: 20 per cent of our energy from renewables by 2020 is not going to happen. However, we cannot decide that for ourselves. This Parliament—our House and the other place—has no say whatever in our own achievements or what we want to attain in renewables and biofuels. We cannot touch it. It is not there. So Parliament seems to have already contracted out much of its power to the Brussels bureaucracy and the Lisbon treaty just moves a little bit—a great deal—more away from Parliament to Brussels.

For years we have heard the soothing mood music from the Europhiles: “Don’t be alarmed, there is nothing much happening. There has been no loss of sovereignty. The treaty simply aims to make the European Union more efficient. There will be no significant transfer of powers”. That is what we have been told for years. Who here remembers that the noble Lord, Lord Hurd, called the Maastricht treaty the high water mark of European integration? I wonder whether he still believes that and could say it now with a straight face. I do not think he could.

In today’s Times we have more cooing from the Europhile doves. The noble Lord, Lord Brittan, has written an article headed,

“How piquant if unelected Lords impose a referendum”.

He repeats the soft soap stuff; the canard that the,

“purpose of the treaty is to make the EU function more efficiently”.

We have heard that a lot this afternoon. The fact is that without this treaty the EU is already producing a mass of legislation. Thousands of regulations and directives are produced every year that this House and the other place simply cannot touch. We have to rubber stamp. We cannot alter a single comma of it. We all know that, do we not? Yes, we do. Thousands of directives and regulations go through without being

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scrutinised. Well, we can scrutinise and debate, but we cannot change them, even if we disagree with them. Nothing can be changed.

In his article, the noble Lord, Lord Brittan, goes on:

“In the sensitive areas such as taxation and social security Britain will retain its veto”.

In fact, tax is not mentioned in the treaty, so there is no point throwing that up in the air and then shooting it down. It is not even mentioned. As for social security, the treaty is quite clear in, I think, Article 150 or 160. It states that:

“The union may take initiatives to ensure coordination of Member States’ social polices”,

so social policy is not safe either. The noble Lord, Lord Brittan, goes on to pray in aid the protocol preventing the European Charter of Fundamental Rights being justiciable in the UK. My noble friend Lord Howell dealt with that in his opening remarks. He is quite right that it will not be up to this House or the other place to decide. Our Parliament cannot do that. It is going to be up to the European Court of Justice to decide exactly where, when and how the European Charter of Fundamental Rights is to be justiciable. The noble Lord, Lord Tomlinson, quoted Professor Damian Chalmers. I will quote him again in the context of the European Charter of Fundamental Rights.

“The protocol does not say the Court cannot apply the Charter to the UK: it just says it cannot extend it ... People who think we have some sort of opt-out are going to be in for a surprise in that regard”.

That is what will happen. It will be extended. That is what he says. The opt-out is simply not secure. Let us not dream about that.

The noble Lord, Lord Brittan, then tells us that new powers are granted to national parliaments. I like the word “granted”. Just who is granting powers to national parliaments? I thought national parliaments were sovereign. Who is granting us powers from the EU or EU treaties? It is completely absurd. Under the treaty, national parliaments will be significantly weakened, not strengthened. Half the national parliaments must object to a proposal even to begin the process of turning back or refusing a Commission directive or proposal. That is assuming that half the national parliaments—14—will be given the time by their Governments in the eight-week window which is allowed to scrutinise draft legislation. Then they can return their objections to the Commission which—surprise, surprise—can overrule them. That does not give national Parliaments any further powers; it reduces them considerably.

I do not get any confidence or comfort from getting our voting weight up in the Council of Ministers. After all, under the treaty it becomes an EU institution in its own right, so going up from 8 per cent to 12 per cent is neither here nor there. In my view, the Council of Ministers is part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Then the noble Lord, Lord Brittan, in his article, moves on to the question of referendums. He is opposed to them,

“as they are incompatible with representative parliamentary government, the true hallmark of the British constitutional system”.

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That sounds wonderfully statesman-like and unarguable as a principle, but it falls because, as my noble friend Lord Leach said so cogently in his speech, the British people have not been asked and they have therefore never given their consent for their representative parliamentary government, as the noble Lord, Lord Brittan, has it, to hand over permanently to an unelected bureaucracy in Brussels powers that were only lent to them temporarily for the term of a five-year Parliament. However, that is what has been happening over the years; over the treaties, Parliament has been giving away powers that were not its to give away. That is why people are so furious, so disillusioned with the whole EU process.

Finally, the noble Lord, Lord Brittan, tells us that,

“it would be piquant ... for an unelected House to seek to impose a referendum, the ultimate manifestation of populist democracy, where the elected House has declined to do so”.

I am not quite sure about what the difference between populist democracy and democracy is. It is probably that populist democracy is when you lose the argument and democracy is when you win it. My view is that it would be piquant, to put it very mildly, for the British people to be denied a referendum when they have been explicitly promised one by all three main political parties.

6.16 pm

Baroness Hanham: My Lords, one of the vagaries of the changes that the Government have made to the structure of Parliament was their decision to give some of the work of the Home Office to the new Ministry of Justice as a separate department. That does not accord with the terms of the Lisbon treaty, which combines justice and home affairs. In the few moments I have, therefore, I will try to untangle the Home Office from the Ministry of Justice as far as the treaty is concerned, thus leaving myself with the opportunity to speak on border control, immigration, policing and the other Home Office aspects.

At this relatively late stage of the debate—although it is only halfway through in reality—one does not want to worry the House by overstressing the generalities. However, I need to provide a reminder that at present most European Union powers relating to migration, visas, borders and asylum are carried out within the First Pillar—that is, on the basis of majority voting—while those relating to criminal justice and policing are held within the Third Pillar, the inter-governmental method that gives each member state a veto. Under the new treaty, they will be moved to the First Pillar, taking them into the area of qualified majority voting, thus increasing the powers of the European Commission to legislate.

As regards asylum and immigration, the new treaty provides a framework and a legal basis for the further development of a common asylum system and a common immigration policy. There is an end to the national veto over legal migration issues—despite the Government’s reservations about this, they failed to have it changed—and the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice is extended into immigration and asylum, an area in which, under current treaties, it has very little role.

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This is again an area that the Government twice tried to have changed, but again they failed. While asylum measures are already decided by majority voting, the new changes mean that the EU will be able to set uniform standards on how asylum applicants are received and processed and what rights they should have.

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