European Union (Amendment) Bill

My Lords, I apologise for making my maiden speech when so many noble Lords wish to speak and thereby taking up their time, but it has the advantage that I have to be concise. Convention also requires me to be non-controversial. Well, I shall endeavour to obey that, although, as President Sarkozy said so clearly last week, this is a sensitive matter. They were very delicate words. Personal conviction apart, I have two particular interests in wanting to speak today. Symbolically, the more important is the fact that this year will see the 50th anniversary of the death of one of the greatest Europeans of the last century, who also happened to be my predecessor: George Bell, Bishop of Chichester from 1929 to 1958. This may not be the last time that I mention his name in your Lordships’ House. It has been said that, apart from William Temple, George Bell was the only English churchman of the 20th century of whom everyone had heard. His interests and sympathies were manifold, but it is his specific concern for Europe that I mention today. Bell was a strong supporter of the confessing church, which stood against Hitler in the 1930s. He took a particular interest in the plight of refugees who fled from Nazi tyranny only to find themselves interned indiscriminately as aliens when they came to this country. His friendship with Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the martyr, was legendary. His welcoming spirit is perhaps best exemplified by his patronage of the artist Hans Feibusch, whose work is an important testimony to the moral dimension of aesthetics. More politically, Bell understood that the concept of the just war applies both to the cause of war, which is why he supported the war against Nazi tyranny, and to the prosecution of war, which is why he spoke in your Lordships’ House against the destruction bombing of Dresden. A notable historian has written that the moral ideas espoused by Bell, "““held the foreground in the early phase of the post-war European movement before it was hijacked by economists””." If that is controversial, please blame Professor Davies, not me. I shall share with your Lordships the reaction of some of my European friends and colleagues, particularly in Germany and Scandinavia, to the news of my appointment as Bishop of Chichester. They greeted it with the words, ““Ah, the see of Bell: that is an inheritance””. Yes, it is an inheritance, right at the heart of which is a moral vision of the European project, and it is good to see that highlighted in Article 2 of the amended treaty on the European Union. My second interest is that for most of the 1990s I was the Bishop of Gibraltar in Europe, the Church of England diocese covering the whole of mainland Europe, while the Continent was digesting the immediate implications of the collapse of Soviet power. ““Europe”” from the perspective of the Church of England means all continental Europe together with Morocco, Turkey and the whole of the Asian part of the former Soviet Union. What I found especially fascinating in those years was to oversee the emergence of what had begun as embassy chaplaincies into authentic local churches; to accompany those local communities, particularly in eastern Europe, as they began to reclaim property stolen or appropriated in earlier revolutions; and then to share with local churches and other communities of faith what it means to be both European and a believer and to be both European and a citizen or subject of a particular nation. It is in that context that I support the Lisbon treaty. Like Pope Benedict and, I suspect, like George Bell, I am sorry that the framers of modern European legislation are so reticent about acknowledging the Christian foundations of European identity, the Christian roots of the Enlightenment and convictions about human rights and, indeed, the Christian motivation of the founders of the current European project. But be all this as it may, this is a venture which deserves our encouragement. As President Sarkozy identified so precisely last week, for too long we have devoted our energies to divisive institutional debates rather than to what unites us. The Lisbon treaty may be imperfect but it may, he suggested, draw a line under the confrontations of the past and invite us to engage in concrete projects. Although I would love an opportunity to debate robustly with him some of what he went on to identify as those projects, and particularly some that he did not mention, I have no doubt that he is correct in saying that Europe needs the United Kingdom to be thoroughly inside rather than outside those discussions, and that we have a far greater chance to make a powerful and value-laden influence if we are there than if we are or are perceived to be semi-detached critics. I think this treaty is an improvement on the existing arrangements and am glad to support this Bill.