European Union (Amendment) Bill

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Howell, for warming-up the audience for me in that way. Both when I read him and when I listen to him, he always brings to mind a cartoon from the early 1960s which showed the leaders of Europe in a sports dressing room getting ready for a football match. There was de Gaulle putting on his boots, Erhard pulling up his socks and, framed in the doorway, pristine in his whites and his cricket cap and holding a bat, was Sir Alec Douglas-Home. The title of the cartoon was Joining the Game. These days, whenever I hear the noble Lord, Lord Howell, and Conservative spokesmen, we get the usual finale in the peroration about their commitment to European co-operation, but every twitch of their body language is hostile to the kind of Europe being built. It would be more frank to say that the present Conservative policy is a plea and a bid to anti-European sentiments and an attempt to stave off being undermined by UKIP. Let me put in context the debate we have today. In some ways, there have been two constant themes over 60 years of British policy. The first has always been too little, too late. We did not go into the coal and steel community because, as it was put at the time, the Durham miners will not have it. There are no Durham miners today. We did not go to Messina because the Foreign Office predicted that the talks would collapse, so we were not in Europe at the beginning. Even as late as the early 1990s, when I was advising the Corporation of London, it was advised not to go to Brussels for talks about a single currency because the Treasury believed that the talks would collapse. That strain of policy was best termed by my late noble friend Lord Jenkins, who always said that the British were like men on a railway platform waiting to catch a train. They would dither about whether to get on it and then, as the train began to move, with as much dignity as they could assemble, they would get onto the train. Then, as Lord Jenkins always used to say with some passion, when they got on the train they found that all the seats in the dining car were occupied. Those of us who know of Lord Jenkins’s appreciation of a good meal, know the passion with which he gave that example. The other constant theme that I have experienced is that in the two main political parties there has been a willingness to make Europe work in office and a willingness to play the anti-European game in opposition. To give balance to this speech, perhaps I may remind my former Labour colleagues that when I joined the Labour Party it was hostile to Europe because, in the words of Hugh Gaitskell, ““It would give away 1,000 years of history””. When Labour got into government, Harold Wilson and George Brown would not take no for an answer. When we were in opposition again, it was no to Europe on Tory terms. When we got back into government, it was renegotiation and yes in the referendum, as advised by the Cabinet. That pattern has now been repeated by the Conservative Party. As it has gone into opposition, it has gone into anti-Europeanism. That playing of short-term politics by the major parties has done grave damage to Britain’s long-term national interests in Europe. I am proud that these Benches have a 60-year, consistent commitment to Europe. I have been asked about our attitude to this Bill. First, as with all Bills, at Second Reading we will give our broad views and we will look at amendments as they arise, but let there be no doubt that we on these Benches want to see the Bill passed and the treaty ratified. On the referendum pledge in the general election manifesto, I know interpretations have been made but that commitment was to the constitution. As the noble Lord, Lord Willoughby de Broke, in a flash of honesty a few weeks ago, said, unfortunately the Dutch and the French shot our fox. So they did. That commitment to the constitution died with the constitution and, along with 26 out of 27 member states, we have taken the view that this is an amending treaty, as the Leader of the House pointed out, like all the other amending treaties and should be carried through by the parliamentary process. Let me make one other point about this. The Conservatives have gone on about a referendum, but when my colleagues in the other place offered an in or out referendum, they ran away from it. I have listened carefully to both Mr Cameron and Mr Michael Gove on ““News 24”” explaining Conservative policy. The policy is that if the Conservatives won a referendum which said no to the treaty, they would continue in Europe on the basis of Maastricht and Nice. I had a look at the spontaneous demonstration that assembled a few weeks ago—it looked like the Countryside Alliance on a day out—but the smartly-dressed ladies and gentlemen who were asking for a referendum on the treaty wanted Britain out of Europe. I did not hear any Conservatives going out there and saying, ““Look, folks, what we want to do is carry on under old treaties””. It really is dishonest to start whipping up public anticipation. We have seen all the e-mails—