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1 Apr 2008 : Column 970
7.55 pm
Lord Vinson: My Lords, it is a great privilege to follow the wise humour of my noble friend Lord Ferrers.
When the history of our times comes to be written, this momentous Bill will be recorded as surely one of the most cynical and deceitful proposals ever made to Parliament and the people of this country.
Other noble Lords have illustrated how both the Government and the Liberal party promised a referendum on the constitutional treaty, realised that they would probably lose it and have continued to hide behind the fig leaf of an excuse that somehow the Lisbon treaty is different. Old true Liberals must be spinning in their tombs.
But a referendum is needed not just because it was promised but because the British public, most of whom are not aware of the effect of the proposals, have never been consulted, let alone properly informed—a point well made by my noble friend Lord Ferrers.
This Bill is not just about Europe’s constitution but the effect on our own constitution and the ultimate transfer of power and sovereignty which has been salami sliced from us over the last 30 years. The end of sovereignty is the end of democracy. This is the theme of my speech. It is important to look at what the Lisbon treaty does. It abolishes the European Union and replaces it with an entity which is actually a new body and, unlike the old, has an international legal personality. It can sign treaties and be represented on international organisations. This is the key that creates a political entity and the basis of statehood. In this respect it is totally different from previous treaties and it is a lie to say otherwise. It is a road that leads this country to be a province of the republic of Europe. National parliaments and foreign policy become subordinate. We become citizens of Europe and the position of the Queen is deeply compromised. We in Westminster may continue to strut the stage like peacocks but real power will have passed to the EU where every Community law takes primacy over our national laws. Foreign policy moves from our hands.
I find it difficult to understand why so many Members of this House and the other place want to diminish the very powers they were elected to administer. They, of course, live the eternal dream that somehow tucking ourselves under a huge EU umbrella will lead to better government and a more stable world. But they fail to take into consideration the major unintended consequence of their intentions—the destruction of our democratic framework. Democracy is a very frail plant. It is difficult to establish and very easy to uproot. It has, over the centuries, given this country a social cohesion on which our economic prosperity has been built.
However imperfect the present system, people tolerate their Government, even as of today elected on a minority poll, because they know they stand a chance every five years or so of effecting change. They can sack the Administration.
The whole relationship between people and the state is changing because consent given to the Government today is based on a residual belief in the democratic
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Today it is virtually impossible to rectify European legislation once enacted. Noble Lords will need no reminding that the American War of Independence triggered on the expression, “No taxation without representation”. Today we have its successor, “Regulation without rectification”, and the same frustrations are leading to the growing dislike of the EU and all its works and a burning sense of resentment which we in this House should not ignore.
When we ran our own affairs, if a citizen had a justifiable complaint, his MP would arrange to see the Minister and talk the problem through. Laws got amended, regulations got adapted and there was a democratic safety valve. That has all gone. Now how easy is it to get, through a maze of EU committees, the unanimous agreement of 13 other members to effect change? It is near impossible. We are assured that the Lisbon treaty will hand more power back to Governments; but if we believe that, we will believe anything. What happened to the promise of subsidiarity last time around? It has been neither seen nor heard. The EU is unreformable.
Meanwhile, we are informed that our scrutiny committees in both Houses are where we influence EU legislation before it is enacted. That is where the democratic deficit is meant to be rectified and will be rectified in future. Noble Lords may have seen the Parliamentary Questions that I have asked recently as to how often the European Union has altered legislation as a result of recommendations from Select Committees of either House of Parliament. Each time, the relevant Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Malloch-Brown, who is not in his place, has given the same Written Answer:
Finally, I asked whether any example could be given of where we had influenced EU legislation. After some weeks, I was told that we had managed to alter the EU audio media directive. The scrutiny committees labour and toil, but they bring forth a mouse. By deeds, not words, should they be judged. The scrutiny committees, like much of the EU, are one big exercise in democratic self-delusion. The democratic safety valve is near non-existent, the process is a sham, and this treaty will not change it.
This is what the debate about the European constitution is all about. What control do we have over our destiny and how do we call those who govern us to account? No one denies that membership of the EU has transferred sovereignty from Westminster and Whitehall, but it is easy to lose sight of how substantial that transfer has been and of its effect on our constitutional arrangements. How ironic that the Government want to embark on a programme of radical constitutional reform, as though they and we had any real control over matters here any more. Meanwhile, our membership costs us some £10 billion a year; enough to halve the rate of council tax. We receive back the lowest of any member state and half
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The strength of the old unwritten British constitution was that, by and large, the governed believed that they had some control over the Government through the ballot box. Now they feel powerless. Why else has election participation fallen so dramatically? It has little to do with the difficulties of voting, but it is to do with the fact that our most fundamental right has been surrendered; the right to hold those who govern us to account.
Those who dream the dream of Europe will ultimately pay the consequences of failure to recognise this fact; it is so much easier to be idealistic than realistic. Those who believe that we can reverse the ongoing process of the transfer of power to Brussels should remember how the so-called Social Chapter opt-out was rapidly undermined by the abuse of health and safety powers under the treaty. That point was well made by the noble Lord, Lord Howell. That abuse was, of course, sanctioned by the courts. We should never fail to remember the passerelle clause, which gives overriding legal precedence to the interests of the EU; a clause that the Government have never challenged.
The inescapable fact is that we are subject to Community law and to the European Court’s interpretation of treaties. No red line or agreements limiting the powers of Europe can be safely relied on, because they will be reinterpreted by the EU courts over time to expand those powers again. The average man in the street may not know of these legal niceties, but he is in the front line of the endless costly EU regulatory stupidities. He increasingly does not recognise the Britain he knew, and he does not like it. Every survey shows that the British public want a referendum. If they do not get it, far from this constitutional treaty binding Europe in harmony, it will, by weakening the European Union’s democratic legitimacy, accelerate its disintegration.
That should not divert us from the need to look beyond the treaty to the more fundamental issues of the right relationship for Britain with the EU in the 21st century. The Government should welcome a referendum, should abide by its results, and should use the outcome to renegotiate a new relationship based on trade and co-operation; a relationship that would be right for this country, popular with the British people and politically feasible. That would be a positive path to the future. The alternative, if this treaty is ratified without a referendum is, I fear, that we will have to learn the oldest and most basic of lessons; that power does not give legitimacy, that might does not confer wisdom and that an organisation based without common consent can never survive. We need a referendum.
8.05 pm
Lord Watson of Richmond: My Lords, it is a challenge to follow the noble Lord, Lord Vinson, in this debate. His vision of this country reduced to being the province of a European republic is, of course, horrendous and entirely inaccurate. I was encouraged when looking up his entry in Dods just before the debate to find that
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At the beginning of the debate, my noble friend Lord McNally identified two aspects of Britain’s political relationship with European integration. First, there is a tendency in opposition for the two larger parties to be anti-Europe and in government in practice to be somewhat pro-Europe and, secondly, there is a predilection to be late in terms of European developments. That has been consistent, from the Coal and Steel Community to the former Prime Minister, John Major, famously describing the euro as a rain dance. The pattern has been initial hostility, then hesitancy, then half-hearted support and above all miscalculation. Both those unfortunate tendencies have etched themselves in this debate, and I am sure that they will do so again in the days ahead.
There is another tendency which, frankly, has always puzzled me. It is the fundamental timidity and lack of self-confidence that appears to motivate so much Euroscepticism. Why do we need to protect ourselves from Europe when we have such proven significant influence in it? Why are we shy of debates that we win and have won? Why do we insist on distancing ourselves from dialogue from which we benefit? I was particularly struck earlier in the debate by the speech made by the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, and the way in which he described issue after issue and development after development where the British case or perspective had substantially carried the day. I also liked his phrase “super sovereignty”, which I had not encountered previously. That is a better term than “shared sovereignty”, because it enables us to reach to sovereignty in common action that would otherwise simply not be available to this country.
When I worked for the late and great Lord Jenkins in Brussels in the late 1970s, the European Community, as it then was, was dominated by a Franco-German axis. Its langue de travail was French. Many of its instincts were deeply suspicious of alliance with the United States. Last week in the Royal Gallery, just a few yards away, we listened to a fascinating speech by President Sarkozy of France. Although there were elements of passionate wooing involved, I do not believe that it was about Gallic charm. That speech really represented a significant shift and a tonality of great importance for the future. First, there was the President’s moving acknowledgement of the standing, status and continuing contemporary relevance of this Parliament and this democracy. Secondly, there was a moving acknowledgement of the debt that France owes Britain for what we did in the First World War, that mixing of blood in Flanders, and what we did in the Second World War, specifically the welcome to General de Gaulle and to Free France.
There was a specific and, in many ways, surprising acknowledgement that the outcome of the Battle of Britain was vital to the existence of the Europe that we have today. He made another fascinating and important assertion in which he actually spelt out that the special relationship, in which I believe and which exists, between us and the United States based on language and history is of enormous value, not just to us—he said, it
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Why is this so relevant to this debate and to the treaty’s ratification? It is because, given the degree of agreement now about the nature of Europe—a Europe built on the nation states and which respects difference—we can move to having two clear priorities. The first is to ensure that the Europe of 27—and, later, more—really works and can work with efficiency and speed. The noble Lord, Lord Kerr, was absolutely right from a practical perspective to say that the sort of negotiation that could take place in a room with six or with nine is simply not conceivable with 27. We have to find new and better ways of working.
The second priority on which President Sarkozy was absolutely specific was that this treaty enables us to move on. It enables the European Union to move on to the agenda for this century—climate change, energy, immigration, development, security and defence. Of course there is substantial similarity between the content of the Lisbon treaty and the defunct European constitutional treaty, but the intent is significantly different. I was not in favour of the original European constitution and that project, because there were people who saw a European constitution as defining the finalité européenne. A definition of the end point of the process of an ever closer union was somehow wanted. That seemed quite unnecessary and was something upon which there could, almost self-evidently, not be agreement. I see the European Union as not only idealistic, but essentially pragmatic and that point of view did not seem to be appropriate. The intent of this treaty is simply to make sure that the thing can work well in an enlarged context of 27 and later, perhaps, more.
I want to conclude by focusing on the achievement and the challenge of enlargement. The European Union Committee’s report on the impact of Lisbon clearly states at paragraph 2.60 that:
Indeed it is. The enlargement, as has been pointed out many times in this debate, is an extraordinary achievement—the transformation of eastern central Europe towards the sort of societies and economies that they are now, and will increasingly become.
I wish to share a personal experience regarding that transformational process in Romania. I was involved with the early stages of that country’s negotiations on becoming full members of the EU. A Member of this House, my noble friend Lady Nicholson, has significantly contributed to the development of rights for children and the conditions in orphanages in Romania. I was at a meeting where there was a discussion between a representative of the Commission, a representative of the then Romanian Government and my noble friend. When the representative of the then Romanian
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If we reject this Bill, we will be voting against developing the functionality and credibility of the European Union. We will be voting fundamentally against its future and, above all, we will be voting against ourselves. We will prove to be timid before opportunity, scared of shadows and unaware of substance. This has been an interesting debate and I conclude by pointing out three fascinating matters.
First, I am not uncritical, as this Bench knows, of the way in which the Government have pursued their European policies, but the noble Baroness the Lord President of the Council’s speech was a fine example of what I sense is a strengthening of the European commitment of this Government. Secondly, no one should doubt the resolution of the European commitment of these Benches. Thirdly, it is for the Tories to decide where they stand, not least when the Bill passes. It has been a fascinating feature of this debate that even until this point, we have had six strong, authoritative, creditable and absolutely pro-European Conservative speeches. I am sure that by the end of the evening there will be more. Something is moving—and it is positive. What we have to do is vote on ourselves and vote on our future.
8.16 pm
Lord Owen: My Lords, for nearly 40 years, this country of ours has been grappling with how to create wholehearted consent behind British membership of the European Union; that remains a fundamental objective of those of us who support our membership. It is a deeply unsatisfactory reality that in those 38 years there have been substantial periods of division between the parties, with considerable public dissent and often a lack of enthusiasm for the European Union.
The noble Baroness the Leader of the House has a very heavy responsibility, but she started off extremely well by agreeing to start this debate and wind it up, and by trying to show that this House can substantially improve the legislation before us and—more importantly—the acceptability of the Lisbon treaty to the people of this country. I hope that she will be supported in this by the Prime Minister, who has a good record on this issue. There is no doubt that he is a strong European, and I welcome that. But he has also been ready to understand—and he is often quite unfairly criticised for this—that it was not necessary to support membership of the eurozone to be a committed European. Now we hear very few people arguing that Britain should be a member of the eurozone. That was not the situation eight years ago.
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It is profoundly important in facing the problems of this country to recognise that we will see a devaluation of our currency. If we were in the eurozone, that would have been impossible. I say that only because the Prime Minister will, I hope, pay attention to this debate and will recognise that the debate that took place in the House of Commons was in many respects deeply unsatisfactory. I hope that he and the noble Lord the Leader of the Liberal Democrats in this House will look with great favour at doing something to strengthen the parliamentary brake. When the noble Lord was advising Lord Callaghan—then Jim Callaghan—as Prime Minister, he and I worked very hard on the European Assembly Elections Act and introduced the brake whereby an Act of Parliament had to be passed before there could be any increases in the powers of the European Parliament. Many people, as he knows, told us that it was impossible to do that. We were able to do it and we could do it again.
The Government have come some way to meet the passerelle or ratchet clause—whatever one wishes to call it—by saying that there has to be a parliamentary decision in both Houses. However, we all know—particularly people who were previously in the House of Commons—that that is not a serious brake. Why do we have full legislation and due process and take weeks and months over it? We do so because we know that it provides a real democratic safeguard. I beg the Prime Minister, in particular, to look again at this issue and to allow a full parliamentary legislative Act if we are to increase qualified majority voting in other aspects of the passerelle clause. That is of fundamental importance and it would show a measure of confidence. It would take time but it could be reciprocated as people understood that the Government were trying to carry them with them over this process. It is particularly important in relation to, say, Clause 6(3), that part of the Bill that involves qualified majority voting in foreign policy. That is by any standard a major constitutional issue. The Government say that they will not do that, but they should not ask this Parliament to give that power and not be prepared to come back with a full Act of Parliament. I hope that the Liberal Democrat party will be with us on that amendment, as it was in the House of Commons.
Secondly, the interpretation of the words of the Lisbon treaty presents a serious problem. That is not just my view. The House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, which published a very good report on aspects of the Lisbon treaty, concluded that,
- “it is regrettable that the Lisbon Treaty does not state explicitly that the new European Council President may not simultaneously hold any other office”.
I have raised that matter repeatedly and I make no exception today. If the European Council President were to be double-hatted with the high representative or the President of the Commission, that would be a massive step. The noble Baroness, Lady Ashton, shakes her head and I hope that tonight she reaffirms the Government’s position that it will not be possible to do that. However, the Dutch Government do not hold to that agreement. They have told their
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“The obvious solution would be to appoint the same person as council President and EC President, with the High Representative as his or her sidekick and ‘foreign minister’. There is nothing in the EU treaties, as amended by the reform treaty, to prevent this from happening. You would then have a genuine ‘President for Europe’ with real scope and power. For this reason alone, it will not happen”.
He may or may not be right but there is already a blog on this very subject.
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