EU: UK Membership

My Lords, the House owes a great debt to the noble Lord, Lord McNally, for the timing and the drafting of his Motion, and for the eloquence with which he moved it. The debate has been of a high standard, with the single exception of the reference by the noble Lord, Lord Williamson, to parrots, which was possibly in doubtful taste. I, too, very much agree with the way that the Liberal Democrats developed the theme of the Motion by focusing on effectiveness; on that, I very much agreed with the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Crosby, and the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan of Rogart. That is what we are talking about when discussing institutional reform and, therefore, next week’s European Council. This will be Mr Blair’s last European Council. I accompanied the then Prime Minister, Mrs Thatcher, to her last European Council. She was quite certain that the theme that all other member states wished to discuss was the wrong one. They wanted to discuss economic and monetary union, about which she thought there was no urgency. They had been discussing it for two years, since the central bankers’ report, and the other member states thought it was time for decisions. We tried to change the subject and no one paid the slightest attention. We failed to change the subject and the Intergovernmental Conference on Economic and Monetary Union was called. From time to time, the British press seems to advise Mr Blair that he should try to change the subject—that institutional reform does not matter very much, and can be left for a few more years of desultory discussion. I am sure that he will not do that, but if he did attempt to change the subject, it would not work. Europe now feels that it needs to crystallise and settle this debate, and I think that that is correct. There is another difference from the 1990 debate on economic and monetary union, when Mrs Thatcher may well have been right. Mr Major managed to opt out from the new provisions on economic and monetary union written into the Maastricht treaty, but there is no way that you can opt out of the debate on institutional reform, because you are debating amendment of the existing articles that lay down the ground rules, the club rules, which govern how the show works. You cannot have one set of rules for 26 member states and another set of rules—the old rules—for us. There has to be an agreement on what the club rules should be; and opt-outs are not on. But why should we want to opt out? That is what I do not understand when reading the press. Is it really the case that some believe we should not want the EU to work better? Why would we not want it to work better—because we wanted it to become more unpopular, or because we wanted to break it up or to break out of it? The noble Baroness, Lady Williams, is absolutely right—we need to think of practical ways to make the system work better. British business wants that and is looking for a more effective EU with a real single market extending into financial services and energy. If the public opinion polls are correct, the British people want a European Union that is more effective in the wider world, pursuing issues like world development, the battle against poverty and the battle against climate change and global warming. That is what people want; they want more efficiency; they are not Luddites. They want the EU to work better. They want us to stay in it, and to be more influential in it. I have never seen the noble Lord, Lord Howell, as a Luddite. However, when he contributes to this debate, I would like him to address the issue of whether anyone could really be against effective reform of the working methods of the European Union that are designed to make it work better. I shall touch on only three possible reforms. They are not original; they come from a list mentioned by several of those who have spoken already—the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe, and the noble Lords, Lord Brittan, Lord Tugendhat and Lord Williamson. I have mentioned three ex-Commissioners and an ex Secretary-General of the Commission. I never served in the Commission; I plan to speak about the Council. I would like to see the Council working better. First, I do not know what is going to happen on the voting system. The Polish proposal for a distribution of votes in proportion to the square root of population was squarely addressed, and evoked rooted objections, in the convention, as the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan of Rogart, will recall. It is a little hard to explain to public opinion why the square root of population is an appropriate measure. One of the most important things that happened in the convention, I thought, was that all member state representatives, national parliamentary representatives and European Parliament representatives agreed, and that agreement carried forward into the subsequent IGC, that the existing system needed reform. Not many people in Britain noticed that the reformed system, on which all member states agreed when they signed the constitutional treaty, would—I dare to say will—increase the UK's share of votes in the Council from 8 per cent to just over 12 per cent, an increase of about 40 per cent. Why? With each successive enlargement, from nine up to 27, the distribution of votes—done by an absurd horse-trading system—has been skewed in favour of small member states. So the correlation between voting weight and population has become ever more tenuous. The Germans have one vote now for every 3 million people. We have one for every2 million. Luxembourg has one for every 100,000. There is no obvious reason for that. Everyone came to accept, in the package that was in the constitutional treaty, that such blatant disparities threaten legitimacy and the acceptance of QMV decisions, and need to be replaced. The double-majority system is in everyone's interest. I hope to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Howell, that he believes that the introduction of the double-majority would be an advance. The second central reform—others have spoken of it—is the end of rotation of the presidency. Rotation worked beautifully in a European Union of six. It does not work very well in a European Union of 27, when the job comes round once every 14 years and thus never will come round again to someone who has done it before. The presidency of the European Council ought to be a full-time job. To travel to each of the other capitals of the European Union now twice a term, before each European Council, would take six weeks. Which Prime Minister can take six weeks off to go touring round capitals? For coherence and consistency, we do need the president. Finally, for coherence vis-à-vis the outside world, we need to give Javier Solana the authority to act as our voice. The cast in negotiations with third countries comes from a Viennese light opera. We have Mr Solana the High Representative, an expert negotiator and former Secretary-General of NATO, not allowed to speak until the Foreign Minister of the rotating presidency has spoken; then he may come in and correct, as a sort of Sir Humphrey to the Minister. That is nonsense. The Secretary-General of NATO, which is what he was, speaks for NATO. Why should the Secretary-General of the European Union not speak for the European Union and chair the Council, as the Secretary-General chairs the North Atlantic Council, and be double-hatted and sit in the Commission as the Vice-President for External Relations? It would make us more coherent. If I dare, I want to add one word about referenda. If one had an institutional reform treaty, rather short, containing measures of the kind I have described, I would not see a case for a referendum. It seems to me that adjustments to the rules of the club is a matter for decision by club members. Sovereignty is not affected by any of the things that I have spoken about. I was very struck by what the noble Lords, Lord Tugendhat and Lord Brittan, said on this subject. I would very much like to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Howell, to hear how he reacts to what they said about the absurdity of a referendum on issues of this kind. I was also very struck by what the noble Lord, Lord Roper, said, and I look forward to hearing from the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, how he reacted to what the noble Lord, Lord Roper, said about a referendum on issues of that kind.