EU: UK Membership

I thank the noble Lord. In this Motion for debate, we have put a deliberate emphasis on British national interests and the contribution which active engagement within the European Union can make to their pursuit; that is, as Ed Balls has been quoted widely as saying, our hard-headed interests in European co-operation and in the management of global problems through European co-operation. Climate change, as a great many Members of the House have said; energy security, on which our dependence on gas imports necessarily locks us in to very close co-operation with our continental partners; the whole complex issue of economic transformation; how we manage globalisation, including the rise of China and India; the problems of crime, which are increasingly trans-national; the problems of migration; the problems of terrorism, and the underlying interests of our foreign policy and of our security with regard to Russia, the Middle East and even the United States. There has been a colossal failure of nerve by successive British Governments in their hesitant approach to making the case to the British public of where our national interests lie. That is closely linked to the unresolved questions of Britain’s identity and of our self-image of our proper place in the world. We all recognise that English nationalism, unionism and our attitude to Europe are very closely linked. I was very pleased to see that the Bruges Group the other week held a dinner to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the Anglo-Scottish union. Unionism together; a Protestant nation against the wicked Catholics of the Continent is, of course, the whole underlying theme. Gordon Brown, in his British Council annual lecture two years ago, recognised that the confusions over Britain’s national identity have inhibited Britain’s engagement in the European Union. I hope that, as Prime Minister, he will link together the two debates. He has been active on the question of national identity but not yet very active on the question of Britain’s involvement in the European Union. There has been a long history of governmental dissimilation on the implications of Britain becoming a member of the European Union. Harold Macmillan, after all, insisting that in spite of the Suez débâcle we were a great power, talked about the Common Market as being less important than our links with the United States and the Commonwealth. Harold Wilson downplayed the significance and abdicated political leadership and party leadership by accepting that there should be a referendum, rather than providing a clear lead that it was in Britain’s interests to stay in. Mrs Thatcher revelled in the old image of Britain standing alone but, as a number of noble Lords, including the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe, have remarked, she contributed a great deal to the development of the European Union through the single market. For those of us who were there when it was made, the Bruges speech was not an anti-European speech; Bernard Ingham made it one in his briefings to the press that evening. That is how it is remembered. John Major set out to take Britain to the heart of Europe and then drifted back, as a weak Prime Minister, to the margins. Now we have the question: what will be Tony Blair’s European legacy? Will it merit comparison with John Major’s and Harold Wilson’s? The past10 years, after all, have been marked by a widening gap between the realities of close co-operation within the European Union and the public presentation of British Government policy. A real hypocrisy of a Government who have recognised what Britain’s interests are but have spun policy in a different style, or, at least, allowed the media to spin developments differently. It did not, of course, begin with this Government. I remember reading about the occasion when the question of what symbols the European Community should adopt was under discussion. The British delegate said, ““She will never agree to a flag, but if you agree to a common badge and then put it on a flag, that will get past the British Prime Minister””. I can assure the House that that is part of the origins of the European Community flag. Let me give two examples of what has happened under the present Government. First, defence co-operation was a British prime ministerial initiative in the summer of 1998, taken by Mr Blair to St. Malo, where the British and the French took the lead, with President Chirac reshaping French forces on the British model and calling on others to follow. In the two years thereafter, British Ministers and officials led in developing the common policy. But when the Daily Mail two years later began to talk about a ““European army””, wearing jackboots, of course—““jackboots”” being a favourite phrase of the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch—the Downing Street machine went silent, as if all this had nothing to do with us. So we now have in Brussels a Foreign Policy Secretariat, working to Javier Solana, led by a senior British diplomat; a European Union military staff led by a British general; and the European Union Defence Agency led by someone on secondment from the British Ministry of Defence. But, of course, it has nothing to do with us and we are really not doing anything there, are we? It is an absurd contrast. Ministers do their best to keep our active engagement secret from the British press. The same is true of police co-operation and immigration. When I was chair of your Lordships’ European Union Sub-Committee on Justice and Home Affairs, we visited the National Criminal Intelligence Service and found ourselves faced with enthusiastic British policemen saying how useful to their pursuit of crime the new initiative was. On extradition, we now discover that when one of the suspects in the London bombing was arrested in Milan, we could get him back to Britain in a week, instead of the six to 18 months that it took us a few years before. When British citizens are ripped off by fraudulent holiday rental schemes in Spain, we can now do something about it. When British criminals hide in Spain, we can now do something about it. When the flow of smuggled illegal immigrants from southern China and south Asia is diverted through West Africa to the Canaries and across the Mediterranean to Libya, that is where Britain's interests in controlling immigration and people-smuggling are at stake. Again, successive Home Secretaries—and there have been a great many of them—have said nothing about that, and the media focus only on threats from Brussels. We opted out of Schengen formally and then quietly opted back into as much of it as we possibly could. When it comes to the new treaty, no doubt we will try to opt out officially of those dimensions and then slide back in without the Daily Mail noticing. In his speech to the Reuters Institute in Oxford, the Prime Minister attacked the feral media. He has bitten the hand that has fed him for the past10 years—too late, I suggest. His legacy will be marked by the Faustian bargain that he made with the Murdoch and Rothermere press. As several noble Lords have said, we must hope that our new Prime Minister will be more honest and provide firmer leadership on European issues both at home and on the Continent. I appreciate the comment of the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, that he hoped that the new Prime Minister will surprise us. So do we all. Of course we have to negotiate hard to promote our national interests and we do not always win. I agree with much of what the noble Lord, Lord Jay, said about those areas in the European Union where British interests are not well served. We have some hard budget negotiations to begin next year. We have not yet entirely won the battle against the protectionist strain among the southern member states. Fisheries policy remains an area in which implementation is extremely poor, but that is an area where British interests would be served by stronger EU-level powers to ensure that policies are properly implemented on the high seas and in international ports. We are rarely outvoted in the Council. QMV is not a threat to Britain. Germany is far more often in the minority than France or Britain. Multilateral negotiations are about compromise agreements, not about victory or defeat. The style of the House of Commons—which is all about victory or defeat, all or nothing, Governments and Opposition—does not prepare British politicians very well for the coalition politics of Brussels. We have talked a little about the constitutional treaty and the amending treaty. I think that all of us here find ourselves in the pragmatic camp, as against the old believers who still will want to pursue the old project, but some amendments to the treaty are in the British interest: a more effective foreign policy; a smaller Commission; even more qualified majority voting among 27 member governments. The Liberal Party has always been a party committed to international co-operation. We believe that international co-operation starts with European co-operation. If we cannot work closely with our neighbours, it is unlikely that we will manage to work closely with other more distant states. It is in Britain's hard national interest to work for a more effective European Union. That requires Britain to play an active and constructive part, not to bump along behind the others, reacting to their proposals. That also requires Her Majesty's Government to explain clearly and consistently to their domestic public, through the domestic media, how British national interests are best pursued through co-operation with our European partners and neighbours.