European Union (Amendment) Bill

I would like to add my support to the amendments in the name of my noble friend Lord Howell and to explain the thinking behind Amendments Nos. 111 and 113, which are in my name. As we have heard, these amendments drive to the heart of the contradiction between, on the one hand, saying that we want to be part of an increasingly common European policy and, on the other, declaring that we have retained UK independence. It is not a question, as some have said, of whether we want to co-operate with other countries, for of course we want to do that. It is a question of whether we want to be bound into the particular form of treaty clauses and restrictions introduced by the treaty of Lisbon. The noble Lord, Lord Owen, set out a powerful analysis of how the world is changing. I, for one, would disagree with little of what he said about the sound of the drum telling us that the world has changed, but I completely disagree with the conclusion he draws there. In my view, that changing world makes it ever more important that we retain the flexibility to respond to countries around the world and to form alliances with them—not to be bound into an outdated, centralist and inward-looking club designed for the world of the past century. That is why we have different views on how we should respond, not on the underlying issues with which we are trying to deal. The core question here is the extent to which we can retain our independence. The noble Lord, Lord Anderson, quoted the House of Lords report effectively saying that the UK had retained its independence except in those areas where the EU had formed a common position. In the tortuous language of a consensus report, that is effectively what that sentence said; of course, if it is turned around the other way—in a more common-sense way—it actually says that the UK is constrained in its foreign policy, except in those areas where no common policy has been agreed by the European Union. The question then becomes: how much of our policy will be in the areas of common agreement, where we are constrained and no longer have the ability to pursue an independent policy?