European Union (Amendment) Bill

I think we all agree that there has been substantial progress from the tone of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Wirral, when he moved his amendment. We are grateful for what he did in the clustering of the amendments, because the clustering was re-formed, if I remember rightly, following the change in the list. We are also grateful for the fact that the Conservative Opposition are withdrawing amendments, or reducing their number occasionally, to try to speed up the process, which we need to do in Committee. It is necessary to register that point. The noble Lord, Lord Williamson, or another noble Lord, may have said that this was not a wrecking amendment. In a way, it is the first one of this kind. We understand the natural enthusiasm of the Conservative Benches for open competition and free markets. That is axiomatic. Indeed, an aspiration to, and affection for, that philosophy is shared in all parts of the Committee. The tone has changed and I welcome that. The previous kind of amendment was not so much in that category. As the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Wirral, quite rightly said, the Liberal Democrats proposed a particular amendment because the anxiety over President Sarkozy’s intervention was enormous at the time, and it was necessary to make sure that that was clarified. It has been partly clarified in quite a positive way, but perhaps not quite enough. We need further clarification when the noble Baroness the Lord President has time to refer to it tonight. Coming to the main point of the amendments, I do not find it easy to understand the anxieties that have been expressed by certain Members. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Wirral, in his own words, referred to Mario Monti as one of the people who was, perhaps, a bit difficult on this score, from the general British viewpoint in this area. We remember a previous, far nobler episode when, at the time the Labour Government were new, Mario Monti was the Commissioner who insisted that duty free be abolished. There was ferocious opposition from British sources, including large corporations in Kent and elsewhere, who said that 100,000 jobs would be lost in Kent if duty free was abolished. Germany supported from behind with less strength. The British led that campaign to keep duty free. A more restrictive practice I cannot think of. We proudly did that and many people supported it. The Conservative Party was enthusiastically trying to make sure that Mario Monti was defeated. With enormous courage, he stuck to his guns and insisted that duty free be abolished. We saw the benefits of that process. It did not in any way dent the ability of each member state to charge its own indirect taxes, levies and duties on alcohol and other goods. It goes to show that there is always a package of aspirations and impressions, does it not? Some countries have good examples and bad; we all have good examples and bad. The other countries quite rightly regard our failure to join the single currency as one of the greatest restrictions on a genuine single market. British Ministers in the previous Conservative Government used to say repeatedly that one could not, in essence, have a real single internal market without a single currency. That is the reality for those counties that had the courage to join the euro, which they have done with increasing success. You can tell because it is mentioned less and less in British newspapers, which is always the yardstick of success. On these Benches we recognise that, in practice, the primacy of Community competition law inevitably restricts the ability of member states to legislate for additional competition and controls. In cases where those controls may directly or indirectly affect interstate trade within the market, that is an important part of the panoply of the European Commission’s powers. I hope that the British national Parliament, in both its Houses, will make sure that it continues to support the Commission in creating that Europe-wide competition and, indeed, in ensuring that international competition spreads beyond the boundaries of the EU itself. After all, we are the major supporter of this much more active and effective competition policy under Wim Kok, and Lisbon mark 1 and mark 2, which are reinforced. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Chesterton, that the idea that the European economy is not successful is absurd. It is very successful in many ways. Unfortunately we only have 110 kilometres of high-speed track. Even Spain is now aiming for 10,000 kilometres by 2014. France already has 7,000. There are many examples either way, some initiated by the state sector. The first very successful people carrier on the Continent was the French Renault Espace, which was produced by a public sector corporation. So the idea that one has to be ideological about all these points is incorrect. However, we need a very strong internal market and we welcome the opportunity for the noble Baroness the Lord President to explain the Sarkozy syndrome to us again.