European Union (Amendment) Bill

My Lords, the Lisbon treaty, whose ratification by the UK we are debating today, is by no means the most significant of the European treaties this House has been called on to endorse. That title probably belongs either to the original decision to join the European Community in 1972, which marked a fundamental choice by this country, albeit one which is still sadly challenged by some in this House; or, alternatively, the title goes to the Single European Act of 1986 which triggered off the most far-reaching process of economic integration in the single market, which has hugely benefited our economy and every citizen in these islands. Or perhaps it should go to the Maastricht treaty establishing the single currency and covering a much wider sweep of policies than does the present treaty. Nevertheless, this is a treaty of real significance and nothing is to be gained by pretending it is not. Ratification of it should equip the European Union of 27, nearly five times the number of the original members and set to increase in the years ahead, to face future challenges far better than the existing treaty provisions would do. Failure by this country to ratify it would prolong and intensify the already overlong tensions over institutional reform, which has long distracted the European Union from other, higher priorities. It would bring a halt to the process of further enlargement, which has been one of this country’s principal objectives, and it would cast a deep shadow over the UK’s membership. What this treaty is not is some fundamental shift of powers from the member states to the European institutions, unlike some of the earlier treaties I mentioned. Indeed, it could be argued that the creation of the post of the President of the European Council, the clear primacy given over the EU’s external policies to the High Representative and the subsidiarity controls vested in national parliaments mark a shift away from earlier centralising and federalist trends. What this treaty is also not is the same thing as the constitutional treaty which was rejected in France and the Netherlands. Not only does it lack the latter treaty’s constitutional framework but the removal of the symbols of statehood in that document is of real significance. One has only to imagine what the opponents of this treaty would have been saying today about those symbols if they had been included in this treaty to understand that point. On the issue of the differences between the two treaties, I can only continue to commend to the House the report drawn up by the Dutch council of state, the only truly impartial study of the matter, which was clear that the two are indeed very different in their thrust. Looking at that council of state’s report is preferable to concentrating, as they did in another place, on the similarities or differences between the DNAs of mice and men. As the House begins its work on the ratification of the Lisbon treaty I should like to pay tribute to the encyclopaedic report we have received from our own EU Select Committee. I think I can do that without being accused of self-congratulation since the section of that report provided by Sub-Committee C, on which I have the honour to serve, represents a relatively modest part of the whole. Suffice it to say that in terms of clarity, comprehensiveness and objectivity, I do not believe it can be faulted even though some might criticise it as lacking in drama and hyperbole, which no doubt explains why in contrast to other reports on the same subject it has received so little attention in the media. That is in itself a sad commentary on the nature and style of the European debate in this country as mirrored in our press. Surely the most important thing we have to debate today is whether the changes made in the Lisbon treaty are in the overall interest of this country and of the European Union, on whose efficiency and effectiveness we depend to such an extent in the interdependent, globalised, international community of today. It is really rather hard to gainsay the fact that, in almost every policy field, we are more likely to achieve our national objectives by acting in concert with our European partners than by acting alone and without them. Can we achieve our objectives on climate change acting alone, or on obtaining freer trade and investment, or on stabilising the Balkans, or on ensuring our competitiveness through a deeper and more complete single market, or on defining policies towards Russia and in the Middle East? I could go on, but that would be extremely tedious. The simple point is that, if we can best achieve our objectives in all these fields and more by acting through the European Union, we need a European Union capable of acting decisively and flexibly, not continually reduced to the speed of the slowest ship in the convoy. That is the heart of the case for institutional change, and for accepting moves to the use of qualified majority voting in fields where vital national interests are not at stake. On balance, this country has already gained substantially from the use of qualified majority voting. Now, under the Lisbon treaty, our weight in establishing these majorities is to be increased. If there is any question of using the passerelle clause in the treaty to move further down the road towards qualified majority voting, this Parliament will have the final say on whether it should happen. Probably the most far-reaching changes in the Lisbon treaty are those which involve the restructuring of the handling of the European Union’s external policies. It is not before time. The Union has been seriously underperforming in its external policy formulation and execution for many years. This is only partly due to divergences between member states, although they have on occasion, as over Iraq, been deep and serious. It has been due also to the dysfunctional nature of the institutional machinery, divided between the Commission, with many of the financial resources and controlling many of the instruments of economic policy, and the Council, with a final say on policy. And then there has been the pantomime horse of the rotating presidency, due to come to us now only once in every 14 or more years. The new structures, with the high representative bringing together all the threads of policy and chairing the Foreign Affairs Council, should be capable of achieving much greater coherence and effectiveness. Important decisions remain to be taken on the relationship between the president of the European Council, the president of the Commission and the high representative, and on the implementation of the treaty provisions establishing the external action service. But the potential is there for a common foreign and security policy capable of furthering and defending our collective interests better than has ever been the case in the past. Nothing has been more revealing of the basic attitudes of the opponents of this treaty than the way in which they have consistently denigrated the new provisions dealing with subsidiarity and the role of national Parliaments in ensuring that the European Union legislates only where matters cannot better be handled at member state, regional or local level. The creation of new powers in the EU legislative process for national Parliaments is surely something that we should welcome with open arms, not damn with faint praise. It will certainly be a challenge to make those new provisions work effectively, and I hope that, in due course, the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, will give the House the thoughts of his committee on how this process should best be managed. Meanwhile, this marks an important innovation in the European Union’s institutional machinery. There has been much sound and fury in the other place and in the press over whether this treaty needs to be approved in this country by a referendum. I have no doubt that we shall hear plenty about that, too; indeed; we have already begun to do so. We shall be asked to consider amendments on that issue which I hope we will reject. It is worth remarking that only one member state will hold a referendum on this treaty—Ireland—and that only because its supreme court ruled a considerable time ago that the Irish constitution required any European treaty changes at all to be so submitted. That is to say that the Irish requirement for a referendum is nothing to do with the content of the treaty or with its similarity or lack of it to the constitutional treaty. I have always taken the view from the 1970s onward that the practice of representative parliamentary democracy in this country over many centuries argued strongly against the use of referendums in the context of approving European treaties. I criticised the decision in 2004 to hold a referendum on the constitutional treaty; I spoke in this House immediately after it was announced. I was confirmed in my negative views about referendums in this context not so much by the outcome of the Dutch and French referendums as by the campaigns in those countries, which had little to do with the details of the treaty under consideration and much more to do with the attitude of the electorate to the president and Government of the day. If referendums on European treaties cannot be concentrated on the treaties in question, and I can see no way of ensuring that they are, what on earth is the basis for arguing that they represent a higher form of democratic legitimacy than approval by Parliament? I am sure that we will hear it said that the opposition to a referendum is purely opportunistic, based on the fear of a negative outcome, but can the proponents of a referendum seriously ask us to believe that their motivation is not opportunistic? The weeks ahead will provide ample opportunity for the House to consider every aspect and detail of the Lisbon treaty, and that is as it should be. It would be nice to think that this will clear the air and pave the way for us to concentrate with greater unity on other aspects of European policy, from climate change to policy towards Russia, from budgetary and agricultural reform to the Union’s further enlargement, including the accession of Turkey. There are few greater ironies than the fact that while most continental Europeans believe that this treaty was tailor-made for the UK—President Sarkozy’s eloquence reflected that when he spoke the other day—its opponents here regard it as a federalist straitjacket. Well, they cannot both be right. I have no doubt where the balance of the argument lies, and that is why I wholeheartedly support the ratification of this treaty.