European Union (Amendment) Bill

moved Amendment No. 94: 94: Clause 2, page 1, line 12, after ““excluding”” insert— ““(i) any provision that gives Her Majesty’s Government authority to agree to pay, or to pay, any financial penalty imposed as a result of a decision by Her Majesty’s Government not to opt in, or to opt out of, any provision; and (ii) ”” The noble Lord said: We move on now to deal with something that my noble friend Lord Kingsland raised briefly late on Monday in the discussion on the provisions relating to justice and home affairs co-operation. I should like to deal with the matter in more depth. Our concerns with the possibility of financial penalties being imposed on the UK are, of course, inextricably linked with our concerns over just how feasible it will be to exercise our right not to opt-in. The amendment would give us the opportunity to examine the financial penalties consequent on the UK opting in or out of any of the Lisbon treaty provisions. These concerns are entirely shared by the European Scrutiny Committee, which has of course on several occasions reported on the uncertain consequences of exercising this right, and on our ability to safeguard the interests of the UK. These financial penalties will be levied on the UK if our refusal to opt into an amended measure makes the existing measure inoperable, so the whole package has to be disregarded. The Government will no doubt respond that the provisions allow for only ““necessary and unavoidable”” financial consequences to be charged to the UK, in what I know they regard as the highly unlikely event of the provisions being implemented. But how can the Minister and her colleagues know this? There is no consensus on what future provisions for integration in this area may look like, so how can we predict whether we will wish to opt in or not? To add to this, the decisions on the inoperability of an existing measure, and on what the ““necessary and unavoidable”” financial consequences are, are both to be made by QMV—so again, we have no control over exactly what our European neighbours might choose to make us do. The chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee, Michael Connarty, was utterly clear in his opinion of these provisions when questioning the Foreign Secretary on the matter. He said, "““do not pretend that this is not a bullying tactic by whoever proposed it to pressurise the UK … These are bullying clauses and I am shocked that you try to defend them””." I await the Minister’s comments. It is unlikely that the Government will be persuaded by me when they were not necessarily persuaded by one of their own colleagues, but I would like to hear them at least attempt to explain why these provisions were allowed to remain in. I beg to move.