European Union (Amendment) Bill

My Lords, I have only one comment to make on the speech made by the noble Lord, Lord Lawson of Blaby. Unlike him, I believe that this treaty gives a huge opportunity to this United Kingdom, to this House and to all of us in Parliament to show a new kind of democratic accountability, which the treaty of Lisbon makes possible. I shall say more on that later. I believe that this complicated Bill has buried within it extraordinary capacities for giving powers to national Parliaments, which, if used intelligently and thoughtfully, can substantially enhance the influence of this country and this Parliament. In that context, it is perhaps interesting that the excellent study of the impact of the treaty on this country, and more widely on our policies, put forward by the committee chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, shows yet again how indispensable specifically the House of Lords is to the process of scrutiny and accountability of European legislation. I should like to put on record, as many others have done, the immense gratitude all of us feel towards the excellence of that report and the way in which it may have perhaps ironically given probably yet more responsibility and even a greater obligation to the European Scrutiny Committee to show how national Parliaments and countries can once again acquire accountability for what goes on in the European Union. I am endlessly rather surprised at how as a country we fail so often to give due credit to the European Union for the astonishing things it has achieved. I will not say much more about the referendum issue, although I believe—and this may confirm what the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, said—that the decision to hold a referendum was inappropriate and that it happened because the former Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, decided for electoral reasons to call for a referendum and the other parties felt, wisely or unwisely, obliged to follow that commitment. I recognise that the commitment was embarrassing and I do not believe that it was in the interests of this country or in a good relationship with the rest of the European Union. I have referred to my belief that we are incapable of seeing the sheer scale of the achievement of the European Union. The noble Lord, Lord Kinnock, referred to this and I intend to do so as well. Let me make just one comparison. For the past five years we in this country and our allies, the United States, have been waging a hugely expensive war in Iraq. One of its purposes was to bring Iraq to the rule of law and to democracy by overthrowing a dictatorship. During the same period and over the 10 years before it, the European Union has, with no loss of life or use of violence, brought about an extension of the concept of democracy and the rule of law from the 194 million people who were party to the original Treaty of Europe to the 429 million people who now ascribe to the values of the European Union—for the rule of law and for democracy. It is a staggering achievement by any possible criteria and it is one that this country has been very reluctant to recognise. We have seen dictatorships like those of Spain and Portugal, and communist-controlled countries like those of eastern and central Europe, all become part of a European Union which is committed to the Copenhagen principles of democracy, the rule of law and human rights. I repeat that that is an astonishing achievement and one that, if we were less blinded by our extraordinarily prejudiced press—the noble Baroness, Lady Quin, rightly referred to this—we would be much more aware of than we seem to be. I turn to what I believe is the great potential of this treaty. We now have much clearer statements of competence, of concurrent competence and of specifically national responsibilities than in any earlier statement about the European Union. That was made very clear in a report to this House from the committee of the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell. We have the capacity, along with one-third of other national parliaments, to resist European legislative proposals and return them for reconsideration. For the first time we have the right for a country to secede legally from the European Union. Incidentally, an ““in-and-out”” referendum means that there would have to be a referendum to get out. I do not think that my party would necessarily oppose such an idea. We have the important concept of fundamental human rights and those rights being able to be discussed. Among other things, they include a citizens’ initiative which can make a popular position made known and have to be considered by the institutions of the European Union. There are two other extremely significant changes, as those noble Lords who have followed closely the evolution of the scrutiny of European legislation will know. The first, also mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Kinnock, is the decision to make open for the first time the discussions in the European Council that have a legislative nature. Let me be clear on what that means: Ministers of European Governments, including our own, will no longer be able to hide behind secrecy and to conceal their responsibility for what they have agreed. All those who follow what is done in the European Union have been very conscious of how even our own Ministers, among others, when deciding on something that might be necessary but unpopular, will pretend that it is a decision of the European Union against the interests of their own country when they themselves subscribe to it. The second important change is that the publication of European decisions and proposals for legislation and directives will no longer be made by way of Governments, but direct to parliaments, and that will include a decision that at least eight weeks’ notice must be given to enable the national parliament to consider the directives and decisions before they are finally passed into law. This key change will enable national parliaments to have a degree of control over their Ministers attending the council of a level that they have not had up to now and which has been assiduously avoided in many cases. A great deal now depends upon our own Parliament—and not least upon this House—vigorously supporting and encouraging the parliaments of other European countries to follow the examples of scrutiny, monitoring and careful attention given by this House. By strongly developing the powers of COSAC, the committee of the scrutiny committees of all members of the European Union, and bringing them together, national parliaments can have a degree of influence over the Union that they have not begun to imagine they might have. Therefore, an awful lot depends on how we handle this over the next few months. I have two final thoughts. First, when I was the director for eight years of a body called Project Liberty, which came into existence at Harvard University in 1991 after the fall of the Berlin Wall, we worked consistently with the leaders of the central and eastern European countries, in that process of dialogue known as the community method, to discuss all aspects of making Governments responsible to the people and not to the party, and to carry out the concepts of the Copenhagen criteria in great detail. The transformed countries of central and eastern Europe are now stable democracies precisely because, wishing to join the European Union, they engaged in such a dialogue and changed their whole natures and the way in which they understood power and the responsibility that power has for the people of a country. Finally, when I was a member of the board of Britain in Europe, which throughout the period of Mr Blair’s governance tried to mount a campaign to inform and educate the people of Britain in what had happened within the European Union, on every occasion when such a campaign was proposed, arguments were advanced to show that it was impossible to carry out—even arguments that involved the then Prime Minister, who was in his own eyes a pro-European. Consequently, never in Britain has there been an objective attempt to explain the European Union to our people, who have been subjected to the most astonishing propaganda, not least from major influence and interests in the printed press. We all know about this and it is time it was challenged. I strongly support the Bill and the treaty, but what needs to go along with it is not a sigh of relief because it has been passed but an absolute commitment by, and obligation on, all of us to begin to put the truth about Europe among our people. Adlai Stevenson, the presidential candidate, once said that a lie runs around the world while the truth is pulling on its boots. I strongly recommend to those who favour the treaty that it is high time we began to pull on our boots and ensure that the truth begins to prevail.