EU: UK Membership

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord McNally, for initiating this debate, while refraining from claiming that I am at least as antique as he is in my support for the European cause. I join the noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis, in his tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Williamson, and the late Lord Cockfield. It is common knowledge that my noble friend Lady Thatcher and I do not always see eye to eye on European matters, but it is fair thatthe noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis, should join me in paying tribute to her, because it was she who appointed Lord Cockfield to the Commission, specifically to advance the cause of the single market. It was Lord Cockfield, in partnership with Jacques Delors—I almost said Lord Delors—who achieved that objective, which was of huge importance. There is more that unites us than divides us; which brings me to my first point. The most important point of this debate is that, however difficult it may sometimes be to perceive, there is, in fact, unanimity between the leaders of all three parties represented in this House on the continuing importance of active and effective United Kingdom membership of the European Union. The shadow Foreign Secretary, William Hague, in one of his many speeches on this subject said: "““I am a firm believer that Britain’s place is in the European Union, a strong player in Europe, not at the margins””." That was echoed in a more direct way, remarkably, by my noble friend Lord Howell last Friday in this House. He said that, "““we in this party do not favour a withdrawal strategy at all. We see that as defeatist””.—[Official Report, 8/6/07; col. 1446.]" He was making that point against the background of a querulous chorus led, as always, by the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, who faithfully reproduces a similar chorus, always behind me, to that heard during the passage of the European Communities Bill in 1971 and 1972. Some decades on, we appear to be slightly ahead of him in the debate. Against that background, it is important to note that next week’s meeting of the European Council comes at a propitious moment, because for many years in the first decade of this century the Union has been overshadowed by some rather dismal clouds—first, by the overly ambitious Lisbon strategy for economic reform, which quickly stumbled, and the failure of the Barroso Commission in its early years; secondly, by the Iraq conflict, which divided the member states and poisoned the political atmosphere; and thirdly, by the constitutional treaty that confronts us. Happily, enlargement preceded that, and now there is some cause for cautious optimism and the clouds are beginning to recede because, first, José Manuel Barroso has regained confidence in his strategy for economic reform. It is looking more credible, which has been represented by the achievement, for example, of the services directive ratified by the European Parliament. That success was achieved by a proper partnership between Conservative Members of the European Parliament and their colleagues in the European People’s Party and the European Democratic Party. Secondly, there has been a formidable change in the political landscape. A Europe in which Merkel, Sarkozy and Brown are the key leaders will be much less scarred by the memory of the Iraq conflict than one led by Schroeder, Chirac and Blair. It would be better still if Brown’s place were taken by Cameron, but I shall settle with what we have for the moment. The third cloud, which is at the heart of what I want to say today, is the constitutional malaise. I remember, with some difficulty, an article that I wrote in 1996 in a booklet published by the Philip Morris Institute entitled Does Europe Need a Constitution?. I said in my essay that I was not opposed to a document consolidating the existing treaties in a shorter and more comprehensive text, bringing the European process closer to the people. With respect to the noble Lord, Lord Kerr—I might call him my noble friend—and his master, President Giscard, I am afraid that they did not quite achieve that objective. In 1996, I was certainly opposed to the idea of a constitution. En passant, I am equally opposed to the absurd idea of trying to produce a written constitution for this country. We have done badly enough in writing constitutions for Wales and Scotland. In my essay, however, I had a clear warning as follows: "““If a constitution is designed to sanction a further accretion of power at the centre, the project is doomed to fail””." I take no pleasure in saying, ““I told you so””. But now let us look at where we go from here. Under the new leadership, which I mentioned, it is clearly recognised that the constitution as it emerged in its original state, or anything like it, must be set to one side. But the scales need to fall from our eyes as well as from the eyes of those who had affection for that constitution. We have to recognise—as do the French and the Dutch, who are grappling with this problem—that the document has in fact been ratified by 18 of the 27 member states. There must be a limit on how far we can expect other member states to resile from that which they may not have expected but which they certainly endorsed. What needs to emerge now is an amending treaty that is more similar to the preceding ones, whether Maastricht, Luxembourg, Nice or anywhere else, but is without, for example, the embarrassing charter of human rights. I remember that at the time of the Single European Act there was a comparable document often being promoted called the Genscher-Colombo Act. Happily, at Stuttgart in 1983 we were able to sideline Genscher-Colombo, despite one’s respect for both those eminent gentlemen, and it did not get attached by mistake to the Luxembourg treaty. We need also to see that the document that emerges is shorn of flags and symbols of that kind. But we must have a document that includes the changes necessary to accommodate enlargement, such as a reduction in the number of Commissioners and a full-time president of the Council in place of the rotating creatures who currently do the job. We need a simpler set of rules for voting. I will not weary colleagues by trying to analyse the current rules because, with my distance from the agenda, I no longer understand them, but the double-majority approach is broadly right. Above all, we need a merger of the jobs currently done by the Commissioner for External Affairs and the Council’s high representative for foreign policy—so well done, incidentally, by Javier Solana, as he has performed so far. But, please, let us not have another Foreign Minister. We have enough Foreign Ministers already, and to have a super-creature of that kind is otiose. If the United Kingdom wishes to be, as William Hague said, at the end of all this, "““a strong player in Europe, not at the margins””," then compromise will be essential to achieve the final result. That would be as true for a Conservative Government, as it has been in the past, as it will be now for a Labour Government. If it is to be considered by a Conservative Opposition who intend to be in government, then they need to recognise that the case for compromise is just as strong. I believe that a partnership between Barroso, Sarkozy, Merkel and Cameron would be an improvement on the one that is there, but in the mean time I hope that they will be able to achieve the kind of compromise that I have been talking about. One more lesson is very important, as important for my right honourable friend David Cameron as for Gordon Brown—indeed more so. In this context, nothing could be more imprudent for any party than to allow itself to be bound by the outcome of a referendum on this issue. Referenda are dangerous weapons; they explode in the face of those who designed them. I have only ever approved of one set of referenda. It concerned a resolution that I proposed and which was passed at an annual meeting of the Welsh Conservative Party in 1962. I proposed that pubs in Wales should be open on Sundays and that the decision should be made by referenda held on a county basis every seven years. Thirty-five years later, my right honourable friend Michael Howard was able to repeal the legislation because even Gwynedd was free. That was a simple issue presented to an intelligent people, but it is not how referenda should be viewed on the scale of a European issue. It is important for Britain to be among the leaders of a purposeful European Union, working for effective partnership on the issues already identified by noble Lords: a vibrant single market, a reliable energy supply, effective policy for climate change and, in a world where Russia, Iran, Israel and Palestine and sometimes even the United States are less and less predictable participants, an effective common foreign and security policy of the kind called for by my noble friend Lady Thatcher in a document circulated back in 1983. That will be the need for this country and for Europe during the Brown years, the Cameron years, the years in between and, if we decide which years are to belong to whom, in the election that will take place during those years. Nothing could be worse for all those years and all the procedures than for all the processes to be dominated by the threat—still less the reality—of a referendum on these crucial issues. The populist tail must not be allowed to wag the policy dog. As I have often said, democracy must be led and not fed. We are entitled to look for leadership in getting the right answer to these issues rather than an attempt to feed the population, which does not deserve to be fed such rotten fodder.