European Union (Amendment) Bill

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Tomlinson, as I agree very much with everything that he said. But the two speeches that I particularly wish to refer to in passing before getting on to my own are those by the noble Lord, Lord Jay, and the noble Baroness, Lady Williams. The point they made about the European Union being the most effective vehicle for the spread of democracy and human rights in today’s world is of absolutely critical importance. That is a great achievement and shows the up-to-date relevance of the European Union to world affairs. I am proud of the contribution that Britain has made to the expansion of the EU and to the spread of human rights and democracy to many countries which have never enjoyed them as well as to some which had them once and then lost them. This achievement is widely recognised in the United States, not least by those to whom my party feels particularly close. The point that I want to make is that I firmly believe that this treaty is very much in the interests of the United Kingdom. It furthers British interests, and it will make the European Union work better; which in itself is a British interest. I deeply regret that in saying that I find myself at odds with so many in my party; indeed, I find myself at odds with the party line. That is not a thing that I like to do. Sadly, I believe that the Conservative Party’s present position on the treaty is not only contrary to the national interest but to its own interest. I will revert to that point in a few moments. However, I do not want that position to be misconstrued as support for the way in which the Government have handled this matter. If I may say so, I thought that the speech by the noble Baroness the Lord President was an exemplary defence of the treaty. I very much wish that the way in which she put it had been put earlier by other Ministers. The Government’s position was exemplified by the Prime Minister’s deplorable behaviour in Lisbon. Instead of promoting the treaty, the Government have basically apologised for it and, instead of drawing attention to the virtues of the treaty, they have presented it as a threat, saying that they have saved Britain from various threats worse than death by the red lines and all the rest of it. It is no wonder that there is so much suspicion of it, and no one has done more to fan that suspicion than this Government. I find myself supporting them on the treaty on this occasion because I believe that the treaty is in Britain’s best interests, but I feel unhappy to be at odds with my party and even more unhappy to find myself in the same Lobby as some members of the Government, though not the noble Baroness the Lord President. The treaty is in our interests. It introduces a whole raft of innovations that we have promoted for many years. The noble Lords, Lord Hannay and Lord Kerr, enumerated a number of them. In the interests of brevity, I will almost just tick them off. There is the replacement of the rotating six-monthly presidency, which is an improvement and is something that Britain has always wanted. The merger of the high representative with the external affairs commissioner, with the holder of that post chairing the foreign affairs council, will also improve the workings of the European Union, and it is something for which we have campaigned for a long time. There is also the smaller Commission, the capping of the numbers in the European Parliament, the Council meeting in public when it is legislating, the reinforcement of the big countries’ position in qualified majority voting and the increase in the voting weight of the United Kingdom. Britain has campaigned for all those things and, although some have poured scorn on the treaty because they do not like to see virtue in a treaty that they are so much against, the innovation in relation to national parliaments is an important step in the right direction, and I hope that it may be carried further in the future. I could go on. The Conservative Party could be the biggest beneficiary of all this because, on present trends, it looks very much as if a new Conservative Government will enter office at just about the time that the new system incorporated in the treaty will come into play. It looks as if, at the moment when a Conservative Government take office, the European Union will be better placed to deal with substantive issues than it has been for a very long time. The institutional debates about treaties of one sort of another, which have been so arid and divisive, will be behind us. I agree with my noble friend Lord Howell that there will be a good deal of jockeying for position between the new president of the European Council, the high representative and the president of the Commission. I also agree with the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, and my noble friend Lord Brittan that the most likely outcome of that is that power will move rather towards the intergovernmental aspects of the European Union and rather away from the institutional aspects. I think that they are right, but we will have to see. So there will be a great opportunity to drive forward progress on the big substantive issues on which many Conservative spokesmen have often said that the European Union ought to concentrate, rather than on the institutional debates. These issues have been enumerated by a number of noble Lords but are worth a word of repetition. There is climate change, which the noble Lord, Lord Jay, mentioned, and that links to environmental policy. There is the whole question of Russia that my noble friend Lord Brittan mentioned, and that, too, is linked to energy, which is linked to climate change and the environment. There is the question of immigration; there are the issues facing world financial markets, including how best to adapt to the phenomenon of sovereign wealth funds; there is the alleviation of world poverty. There is the tackling of threats to peace in neighbouring areas, notably the Balkans. There is, perhaps, also the issue of playing a more constructive and substantial role in the whole question of Israel and Palestine. I could go on, but all those issues have an important place in the British agenda and on which Britain is more likely to be able to influence the outcome to the better by co-operating with its European allies in a framework that enables decisions to be taken more easily than was the case in the past. Thanks to this treaty, the British Government who will come into office in 2009 or 2010 will have an unprecedented opportunity to pursue the national interest through the European Union and enable the EU to pursue its aims more effectively. I very much hope that, when that happens, it will be an incoming Conservative Government who will be able to take advantage of all this and that they will avoid the terrible errors of Mr Wilson’s Government. Noble Lords in this House will remember how the first two years of the Wilson Administration were wasted in the barren and empty exercise of renegotiation and the referendum, which put British policy in Europe and British foreign policy in general into baulk, and used up goodwill that could have been used to much greater effect during the subsequent difficulties on the European budget. It would be a terrible and most awful waste if the opportunities presented by this treaty were not taken full advantage of by the British Government of whatever party. Above all, I hope that it will be a Conservative Government.