European Union (Amendment) Bill

My Lords, I know that that causes a frisson, because the RSPB has more members than any political party. That is understandable. The European Union (Amendment) Bill covers a treaty text that quite spectacularly enhances the role of national parliaments in any wished-for scrutiny of EU legislation and policy formation. Indeed, scrutiny includes actual participation in these processes from now on. The treaty brings in improvements to the functioning of majority voting, which the Conservative Government in the mid-1980s quite rightly demanded and secured in relation to the single market, as mentioned by many speakers in the debate. Energy markets will be opened up by qualified majority voting to the benefit of consumers, and the UK share of the national votes also improves. Clause 6 of the Bill gives Parliament a major say in these processes in future. Despite the fact that the main opposition spokesman on Europe in the other place, Mr Mark Francois, sports an enticingly French surname, his sad speeches in the Commons revealed Essex man in a pathetic coalition of hatred towards Europe that is unique among all respectable parties in any of the member states. However, I note that he is at least strongly supported by the Dutch animal party, by Sinn Fein for some bizarre, difficult-to-explain reason, by many communist parties and by the French Front National. Not even the nine conservative-type parties in Italy were able to support Mr. Francois’s suggestions. On the day of the flypast to commemorate 90 years of the RAF, some among the brave pilots who survived remembered how, after the war, gradually, painfully and slowly, friendships developed with members of the Luftwaffe when conditions returned to normality. That was part of developing Europe as well. We made a note in this debate of what the noble Lord, Lord Howell, suggested. This needs closer examination and we shall see how the debates proceed at later stages. My noble friend Lord McNally made a passionate plea for us and the UK to move on. That is what we now need to do with Europe and the rest of the argument as the Bill proceeds. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Kinnock, for giving the example of what he achieved and what Europe means in a modern context—the new Europe, post-Lisbon ratification, if the treaty is ratified. A succession of speeches this evening has underscored the growing antipathy among parliamentarians of all parties to Mr William Hague’s foolish obsession in the other place with referendums—supported by Mr Murdoch’s press—as a device for maximising atavistic hatred towards all things foreign, which of course means European. That is a sad state of affairs, which must be corrected in the other place by the politicians there, as well as by people here giving them sound advice. I quote from Mr Kenneth Clarke’s speech in the debate in the other place about a referendum. Reminding us that Ted Heath and John Major, as well as Margaret Thatcher, fully overruled demands for referenda, he added: "““I am astonished to find the atmosphere so completely changed now. In fact, it worries me that members of the political ruling class of this country have now lost their self-confidence ""and their ability to rely on their legitimacy as parliamentarians to such an extent that no one among them dares defy the media, the hard-line Eurosceptics or any other people who demand a referendum””.—[Official Report, Commons, 5/3/08; col. 1820.]" I finish by paraphrasing—““because they want to overturn a natural parliamentary majority against the gutter press””. Anyway, far from this Lisbon treaty being a massive loss of national power, or a massive transfer of power, it is merely and self-evidently a sensible, totally unsinister modernisation of the functioning of the system of, now, 27 member states. These are sovereign countries, all working together with agreed integrated institutions to achieve sensible decisions on how the Union moves forward in a way that increasingly impresses the rest of the world. Witness, for example, how the Chinese fulsomely praised the creation of the euro as a unique and successful currency. I am not too keen on the red lines to which the Government refer from time to time in a slightly embarrassed way but, again, we shall see what happens in the future. They irritate our partners in the Union so much because they show that, once again, we are too often a half-hearted member state. That is not because the UK public want to be like that; I do not believe that they do. They appreciate European matters more and more, particularly the younger generation, who are natural back-packers, travel all over Europe and are getting used to being European as well as British. There is a strange, unique disease in this country whereby the opposition party becomes anti-European. Parliamentarians of both Houses and all parties must exorcise that from our political society. I noticed in the Spanish election campaign that, despite there being fierce competition between the two major parties, not a single politician from either sought to invoke Europe as a domestic political matter to embarrass the other side. I pay tribute to the Foreign Secretary and the excellent and highly competent Europe Minister, Mr Jim Murphy, for sending the Bill unamended to us for our own Second Reading. I also pay tribute to the noble Baroness the Lord President for her wise and positive words of explanation at the beginning of the debate. Let us hope that in Britain the dark days of our nauseating chauvinism are over. As I said before, the younger generation feel both British and European. They want, as do other older citizens, to enjoy their European citizenship, by travelling, studying, working and living in one of the greatest continents on the planet, where peace has taken over from war and strife. The European Union reform treaty and this Bill help us to ensure that that can happen. We Liberal Democrats believe that Europe will be of huge benefit to this country and to the world. We on these Benches are ready to take on all comers to defend Britain’s true and deep national interest, which is to be at the heart of the unique and increasingly rational and important European Union.