European Union (Amendment) Bill

My Lords, it is a great privilege for me to follow the maiden speech of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chichester. I see from his record that he was a teacher and then a young priest in a demanding area of south London, but almost the crowning glory is that he was the Bishop of Gibraltar in Europe, which meant that he had the care of the flock on the Rock as well as of a much wider part of the Continent. Clearly, from his appearance as well as his speech he falls into the happy category of a muscular priest. I am sure that we will benefit from his wisdom and expertise for a very long time. In truth, the Bill before the House relates to a reform treaty, no more and no less. That treaty is less radical and less centralising in terms of powers than the Maastricht treaty of 1992 or, indeed, the Single European Act enacted by the Conservative Government in 1986, and it makes more provision for democratic accountability, transparency and pragmatic European co-operation than any previous European Union treaty. I therefore implacably reject the false claims made in this House and elsewhere that the treaty is constitutional, that it will weaken democracy and that it will transfer more powers to the European Union. The truth is that the treaty is most certainly not constitutional. I have always argued that that term should never have been used because neither it nor its predecessor, the constitutional treaty, can or will change the way this or any other member state is governed. But that term has in any case rightly been abandoned. Even more importantly, the proposal that all previous treaties should be replaced with a gargantuan Giscardian blockbuster has conclusively and comprehensively been withdrawn by the unanimous decision of the Governments of 27 member states. In the reform treaty there is therefore no Foreign Minister, no official flag and no European Union anthem. However, in this treaty there are opt-outs and special provisions for the United Kingdom on the Charter of Fundamental Rights so that no law will be accepted unless it is consistent with UK law, and there are particular safeguards on common foreign and security policy—which in any case is specified as a common policy in which each initiative and action has to be agreed, and not a single policy which has mandatory status. We are indebted to the European Union Committee of this House under the able chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, for the lucid and convincing analysis and conclusions which it offers on these issues and, indeed, much else. What, then, of the claim that would transform all of us into opponents of the treaty if it were true—the claim that it will weaken democracy? Frankly, it is the opposite of the truth. First, all European Union legislative proposals will now, because of the treaty, have to be examined first by national parliaments as well as approved by European member states’ Governments and by the directly elected European Parliament. Secondly, when the Commission compiles legislation—incidentally, but vitally, more than 90 per cent of the time at the explicit request of member states—those proposals can be sent back to the Commission if a third of the national parliaments decide that the issue in question is for national, not European Union, legislation. Thirdly, and significantly, for the first time legislative proceedings in the Council will be held in public. As for the allegation that the treaty will mean the transfer of more powers to the European Union, the truth is that the reform treaty does not create a single new competence for the European Union. Instead, it defines the established competences of the EU with greater clarity, specifies that powers can be returned to member states and adds the substantial new democratic checks and balances that I have listed. As always, it is elected Governments—not the Commission, not the European Parliament, not the European Court of Justice—which will decide how much and what sovereignty is shared and what is not shared, and this treaty does not alter that 50 year-old reality at all. When confronted with these truths, opponents of the treaty shift to other spurious slogans. We hear that the European Court of Justice is political and will overrule British law. It is not and it will not. The court adjudicates only on law made by the Council, it does not make law, and this treaty does not change that at all. We hear that the new Council voting system reduces UK power in European law-making. But the new voting system, operational from 2014, is population-related and the UK’s share of the vote in the Council of Ministers therefore increases by 45 per cent from 8.4 per cent to 12.2 per cent, while the UK’s share of the majority needed to block legislation increases from 32 per cent to 35 per cent. Then there are the other specious scaremongering allegations, the chief among which is the claim that qualified majority voting has been extended to 60 new areas and that the UK loses veto on all those issues. The truth is that there are 49, not 60, new articles where QMV will apply. Thirteen of those relate to the eurozone or to other areas which do not currently apply to the UK because of opt-outs; six articles relate to enhanced citizens’ rights to petition; nine articles relate to the composition of the Committee of the Regions and civil service committee structures. Nine relate to reformulated legal bases where powers already exist, for example, in relation to culture. Two articles relate only to state aid provision in post-reunification East Germany. The remaining 10 relate to energy liberalisation, which the United Kingdom already has, but has a vested interest in ensuring better application right across the European Union; better protection of intellectual property rights, which the UK, like every other member state, patently needs; and provision of emergency humanitarian aid in times of disaster and crisis, which the UK supports more than most countries in the world or in Europe. In short, the new areas for qualified majority voting are a mixture of the patently beneficial, the innocuously procedural and the non-applicable. They certainly are not the democracy-destroying virus that the Europhobes claim. The House will now consider this Bill. Throughout the proceedings, there will be repeated rebuttal of the phobic falsehoods and consistent evidence that the new treaty is functionally necessary as a means of improving the conduct of business in the enlarged Union while strengthening democratic scrutiny and accountability. We heard earlier from the noble Lord, Lord Howell, that Jean Monnet would be horrified by certain aspects of what is going on. Without the benefit of acquaintance with Monsieur Monnet, I know that if he now were to contemplate not a Union of six but of 27, which was expected to base itself and its operation on rules enacted to affect six member states or at best 15 member states, truly the word ““horrified”” could deservedly be used. I cannot avoid expressing the hope that in the wake of parliamentary deliberations on the Bill our country, including its mainstream political parties and its press, will conclude that after 35 years of membership we are in the Union to stay, that there is weakness not strength in semi-detachment, and that alarmist polemics about a European superstate have and will continue to have no substance in fact. In place of those disabling distractions, I want the United Kingdom to further insist on the active implementation of the Lisbon agenda for employment and competitiveness. I want the United Kingdom to unrelentingly pursue budgetary reform that moves resources much more substantially from the common agricultural policy to research, innovation and infrastructure. I want the United Kingdom more vigorously to promote European Union action to combat the common menaces of poverty, disease, climate change and crime, which are all areas in which at best there are only partial single-nation answers. The need for all that action certainly exists. The potential for doing it is real, and the will to act must now be much stronger.