EU: UK Membership

My Lords, like others, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord McNally, for initiating an extremely interesting debate. I am grateful for all the advice I have had on what I should say. If I were to answer them all, I would need twice the time that one is allocated. In a typically robust speech, the noble Lord said that he did not regret his youthful enthusiasm about the development of the European Common Market, then Community, then Union. Nor do I. I was one of the earliest visitors, I think, to the Commission, then in the Avenue de la Joyeuse Entreé in Brussels. It was in those days, more than 40 years ago, a wonderful escape route from the dingy, socialist, defeatist Britain which somehow was created in the post-war years. This was the route to a more bracing, balanced, market economy approach which was going to lift us out of the passenger and backslider status to which we had found ourselves drifting. I say that because I emphasise that we—I speak as a lifelong Conservative, and by ““we”” I mean the Conservative Party—are, and always have been, good Europeans, unlike the government party, which has had one or two moments of departure from good Europeanness. We want as much as anyone, and more than some, an open, free-trading Europe, flexible in its arrangements and practical in dealing with the major regional issues of Europe and beyond. One common theme that has emerged from this debate is that we should emphasise and concentrate on the practical matters. That has been reflected in the debate, particularly in the speeches of the noble Lord, Lord Williamson, and my noble friend Lord Tugendhat. My noble friend Lord Inglewood made an exceptionally positive speech and the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, spoke about the pragmatic camp. That, surely, is the right camp to be in—the camp of pragma. We should concentrate on the things within the control of our Governments and institutions and avoid airy-fairy target building and ambitions and visions which raise everybody’s hopes and then disappoint. My fear is that today, as we debate just under the lee of this new move for a new treaty, while vast new Asian capitalism emerges and billions of new capitalists are being created with immense financial and economic power, we still see a European Union that is in danger of not putting at the top of its list how to meet these new conditions but is obsessed with the minutiae of organisation and is straining at the leash to increase its central political powers. I do not know that, because we are all still in the dark on what the outgoing Prime Minister is tying up on a new constitution, and that is pretty deplorable. Will it be disguised with a new sauce poured over it and a new flavour? I have no idea. However, we know that a vital pledge is being broken. Whether it was wise or not, it was a pledge. The Labour manifesto, on which the Government occasionally like to put weight, said about a new constitution: "““We will put it to the British people in a referendum and campaign whole-heartedly for a ‘Yes’ vote””." I do not know against what background that was written, but the latest independent polls show that83 per cent of British people want a referendum, as do 75 per cent of people in the entire European Union. Some wise doubts were expressed in the debate, notably by my noble and learned friend Howe, and, in a slightly different way, by my noble friend Lord Tugendhat, about referendums. Of course they are tricky and the idea that you rush to a referendum on every issue—medium, small or large—is questionable. One has to be careful. We may see a proposal for new transfers of constitutional powers, new developments in criminal justice law and other aspects of our legal system. Maybe, to go back to the words of the noble Lord, Lord McNally, this is a game we should turn up for if the vast majority of people feel that that is the right thing to do. Of course, it is a difficult judgment and we cannot make it until we know where the ““fundamental change”” is, to use the phrase that the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, likes to use—whether that is really justified by what is going to be sewn up. If one thinks about it, two pledges have been broken. There was a Labour manifesto pledge that there would be a referendum and now, apparently, there will not be one. The other was that there would be wholehearted campaigning. I have seen no sign of wholehearted campaigning from the Government, merely a rather furtive drift which could be carrying us further back to the camouflaged constitution idea and away from the limited overhaul which is what the Prime Minister wanted. We will have to see, because we have no idea. At the moment, the stronger Europhiles and people who advised the Prime Minister earlier, such as the very able Sir Stephen Wall, say that we must ““bite the bullet”” and agree to changes for a more integrated Europe. That view is locked in the past. I sometimes feel that not only is it locked in, but someone has thrown away the key. We have heard a bit more of it today. Indeed, to turn to the Lib Dems who initiated this debate, I see that one of them in the European Parliament said that if the English can be defeated then the opposition in Prague will disappear. That is an extraordinary view to take of how we are trying to tackle important negotiations about the future shape of Europe. When will those people understand that integration and central consolidation are yesterday's ideas in Europe as much as anywhere else? The problem is not only that we are being badly treated and that a mockery is being made of government calls for more transparency, openness and involving the public and so forth, but that the whole trend of thinking tends to be in the wrong direction. There are constant calls for a single voice for Europe and a single, not just a common, foreign policy, with an EU Foreign Minister. That kind of language shows no understanding of how the world now works in the information age. I was glad to hear my noble and learned friend Lord Howe warn against the adoption of the Foreign Minister label. Of course there should be co-operation on specific issues, but building up the idea of a single Minister for a single policy is a route to great disappointment, because the 27 members, soon to be 28, have a very different set of interests. I welcome the enlargement process as much as anyone, indeed more so. On the whole, it has been very well managed. There is more enlargement to come. However, those differences will not get smaller as enlargement goes further. When countries in the Caucasus want to join, such as Azerbaijan, or countries in North Africa, or even earlier with the applications of Turkey, Belarus, the Ukraine and all the others, and with Croatia just on the brink, the differences are bound to be very great indeed. In the UK's case, our interests are growing daily with the rise of Asia. Our Commonwealth network, which has been deplorably neglected in my opinion, has just as much or even more potential when it comes to pursuing our international interests as a fractious European bloc. I do not think there is much more to be said when it comes to energy policy, which has come into this debate a little. We talk about a common energy policy, but it is not entirely in Britain's interests to be totally entangled in western continental Europe's heavy and growing dependence on Russian- supplied gas. I note that there are all sorts of declarations that dependence on Russia will be reduced, but the reality—we must face realities in this House—is that dependence on Russia and continental Europe for daily gas supplies will increase to 70 per cent. Binding targets or no binding targets, that is what will happen. It is far from clear that it is in our interests in Britain to be so dependent on that system. We should possibly stick to closer and more trusted friends, such as Norway. The same goes for development and aid programmes. We all remember what Clare Short said about the EU system—that it was the worst aid system in the world. We should clearly think more clearly about who manages our aid programmes. The irony is that we probably need not a mini-treaty of the kind that Mr Sarkozy will propose next week or a camouflage treaty of the kind that ex-president Giscard d'Estaing warns about in today’s press. What we and the European Union probably need is a bigger treaty—not opting out of reform, as the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, suggested, but a bigger and very different treaty from the one that is now being partly smuggled past us. The treaty that we need is one that brings the European Union into the modern world and makes decentralisation and the return to national Parliaments of the overloaded centre’s powers the main theme and stops the relentless slide of powers to EU institutions. Obviously, the acquis needs putting into reverse—but you can bet that there is nothing in the draft that we are about to see, mini or otherwise, which refers to that. Obviously, we need to keep our social and labour market policies as close as possible to the workplace, all the more so in the information age, and at a client level. You can be sure that there will be nothing about that in the treaty. On the contrary, it looks as though the famous European Charter of Fundamental Rights is still going to be there, even though covered up by a blanket. Will this amended treaty help the smaller states? I counsel those who say that we should encourage the bigger states to be a little careful, as the bigger state dominance of Europe did not serve us too well in the 20th century. We should always think of the smaller states, but will the treaty do that? No, it will do the opposite. Will it increase efficiency—something else that the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, wanted me to comment on. If we are to have more limited ambitions and powers in Europe and a smaller acquis, let us have more efficiency in dealing with it; but if we are to have more and more powers, more efficiency in churning the endless sausages out of the sausage machine is a very questionable gain indeed. The EU is crying out for reform, and we must not underestimate our influence, as my noble friend Lord Bowness said. What I deplore most is the loss of initiative by Her Majesty's Government in all these matters. Most people have insisted that reform is required on modern lines. Indeed, the last constitution was rejected because it did not deliver that. Instead, we have let the initiative pass to those who, for whatever good reason, try to drag us back into the past and into the cruder forms of 20th century thinking. Their minds have failed to adjust to the difficult lesson that the information age, the microchip’s staggering force and the worldwide web have all dispersed power, for better or worse, and made old blocs, old centrism and old methods of top-down government largely redundant. That is the worst tragedy and the greatest change. I do not deny that a reformed European Union can benefit us and be in our hard-headed interests, as noble Lords have said, but I deny that it is our only destiny. There are much wider fields to concern us, in which we too can prosper.