EU: UK Membership

My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Lord, Lord McNally, on the timing of this debate. He is a very good man to do business with. I accepted his offer that if I spoke in this debate he would support an all-appointed House of Lords. I thought that a reasonable deal. Actually, he would probably find the second bit of that commitment easier to deliver than some of the issues in his party regarding the referendum, but I wish him well. I have also been glad to hear all the other authoritative speeches. I picked up a new phrase for popular consumption from the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Kerr: a square-root voting dilemma needs to be addressed squarely to get to the root of the problem. That is one that I will add to my speaking notes in the future. The central paradox that I see in this debate is one which has not been touched on fully although it has been hinted at. If we are not to have the sclerotic Europe that everyone says they do not want, there will endless changes over the next 50 years in how it works. Are we going to say that every three years over the next 50 years, 30 countries will have to have a referendum? Let me work that out with a little mental arithmetic: 50 years times 30 countries is 150; three divided by 50 is about 18; 150 times 18 is about 1,500—no it isn’t, but it’s a big number. Seriously, however, a number of subtle changes need to be made. Can we have a two-tier Commissioner arrangement whereby some of the bigger countries always have a Commissioner, or some of the countries within a region share a Commissioner? How can the Commissioners work without introducing ridiculous portfolios whereby, because 35 people need a portfolio, someone will be dealing only with mousetraps and associated industries? It is not remotely conceivable that the public—this is another argument against a referendum—whipped on as they will be by Murdoch and the Daily Mail, will think it sensible to ask their judgment on this issue. Moreover, as has rightly been said, general elections and parliamentary democracy are what we do in this country. There are 400 million, rising to500 million, inhabitants of Europe. That is not 10 but 100 times the size of Switzerland. So analogies with small countries really do not stand up. Like the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, with whom I am on the committee chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Roper, who has already contributed to the debate, I echo the fact that, in the foreign affairs, defence and development fields, each month a new issue arises—whether it is energy, Russia, Africa or whatever—which has to be addressed coherently by the European Union. Incidentally, in the world community, the EU is quite different from London, Paris, Madrid, Rome and Berlin because it is not an ex-colonial power. I am sure that there would be suspicions of the British, the French or whoever from India through to parts of Africa, but the European Union has a different reputation. I am very pleased to see that Gordon Brown will be meeting President Sarkozy next week before the summit. I am sure that there has been gross exaggeration and mischievous speculation in the press about how No. 10 and No. 11 are at cross-purposes in the approach to the summit. I should have thought that Gordon Brown would get on very well with President Sarkozy and particularly well with Angela Merkel, who comes from the same Roundhead end of the spectrum. The noble Lord, Lord Jay, who is not in his place at the moment, was totally unrealistic on one point. He said that we cannot look at the question of a referendum now but can do so only after negotiation, but I am 100 per cent sure that he would not have advised anything remotely along those lines six months ago while he was still at his Foreign Office desk. The name of the game is as follows. Where is the line? It is where there is a notice saying, ““Don’t cross this line. If you do, there’s a danger of a referendum””. That is what everyone is thinking about this weekend. So the situation is the total opposite to what the noble Lord, Lord Jay, said. I think that escaping from his harness—one leap and he was free—has left him out of touch with that particular reality, although I agree with everything else that he said. It follows that we need a clear statement at the end of next week about where we are going. In other words, we need to be told, ““This is where we are going: no referendum””, and then there will be no wobbling. We cannot allow there to be a period of speculation on the question of a referendum. The argument about parliamentary democracy is clear, and it is clear that this is part of the regular revision of arrangements to make the whole Community machine work properly. It is not a question that needs to be looked at separately from many other far more important matters—for example, peace and war, to make a minor comparison. We will be having a general election and, on the present way of looking at it, despite all the excellent speeches that we have heard so far from the heavyweights of the Conservative Party who have experience of these matters, we expect Mr Cameron to hold his party together by demanding a referendum. That is obviously how the Conservative Party works. I am very pleased that the noble Lord, Lord McNally, is offering us hope and some degree of confidence that the Liberal Democrats will not let us down. A mistake is being made by those who think that, as long as we can convince each other about this, the problem is fixed. The need for a popular campaign is as necessary if there is not a referendum as if there is a referendum, and I shall explain why. Even if there is not a referendum, there must be a popular campaign for not having one because, as sure as eggs are eggs, the tabloids will run a campaign saying that there should be one. We live in an English-speaking country—an Anglo-Saxon country, as the French call us—and the publishing industry does not like working with people who speak other languages. I once dealt with Robert Maxwell in getting a book published in four different languages: English, French, German and Spanish. While getting the publishers to sort it out, I discovered that the length of sentences is totally different in English, French, German and Spanish, and we could not design a cover for the book which would be the same for the all the different language versions. Here, I am telling people in the publishing industry how to suck eggs, but there is a gross bias in the English-speaking publishing industry against all these different languages being spoken on the continent. It does not suit their commercial interest. However, the idea that the fourth estate can determine the future strategy of this country on international affairs is ridiculous. We have to look to our laurels. Samuel Johnson said: "““Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel””," and it is difficult to counter that. I remember campaigning against having a referendum on the restoration of capital punishment. Petitions were organised in pubs and clubs and all the usual people were on the other side of the argument. Patience was needed in putting across our views but it had to be done. As a trade union official manqué, I have some experience. I wrote a pamphlet with a colleague called Europe and Your Rights at Work. People should write pamphlets on ““Europe and your environment””, and so on. We have to make people out there understand. I am glad to see that the City of London is convinced of the importance of London’s success in the financial services industry, but what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. The fundamental position in the Labour Party is that it was the Social Chapter, following the Delors visit in 1988, that convinced people to turn to workers’ rights coming out of Europe. That is still as important as support in the City of London, and both those constituencies must be borne in mind. I shall be interested in the Minister’s comments, particularly on how we are going to lead the campaign and on how a legitimate resource can be used to explain these hugely important matters. They are negotiated in Brussels but there is no way of telling the British people anything about them. I hope that, this time next week, we will have some clarity.