European Union (Amendment) Bill

I shall try to follow the noble Baroness’s example in being reasonably brief, and I promise that I shall be chagrin-free as well. I become quite exhilarated by hearing the clash of fine minds in this Chamber, struggling with completely different interpretations of the truth and either not agreeing or simply passing each other by like ships in the night. The noble Lord, Lord Tomlinson, whose robust interventions I always enjoy, said that I was embarrassed by the evidence. But we are not flying in the face of that at all, because authority after authority—the Dutch state council excepted—has said the obvious; that is, that the treaty is a replica. I am a little embarrassed at hearing the contortions of people whom I greatly admire and even befriend in trying to tell us that black is white. Contrary to some people’s impressions, I can read, and I have read this treaty and the previous treaty; I even had a dip into the Dutch state council’s efforts. I have read a lot of other things as well—there are so many piles of documents that one would need a wheelbarrow to bring them into this Chamber. They all state that the sentences are the same. It is very difficult to be told by people whom one respects that they are different. We think that they are the same; we think that there was a promise; we think, as my noble friend Lord Waddington robustly said, that it is the role of your Lordships’ House to respect the manifestos of parties and see that they are not departed from, or try to do so in accordance with the Salisbury convention. I am not sure that the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, was implying it, but we do not think that it is the treaty to end all treaties—on the contrary. Although the Prime Minister seemed to imply that it might be and that there would be no other institutional reform, it is perfectly obvious that there will be more institutional reform if the Bill and the treaty go through following all the passerelle provisions which we have debated and will do so again. Beyond that, there will also be other treaties. People are already talking about others to take Europe forward, backwards, sideways or whichever way one views it. Let us leave aside the earthquake effects—I admit that it is a decade or so away—of Turkey joining the European Union and succeeding Germany as its most populous country. Huge changes are ahead, and huge opportunities will arise for wise people with a clear vision of the kind of regional Union that Europe should be, of its wider role and of what part we should play in it to make an effective contribution. The noble Lord, Lord Roberts of Llandudno, was absolutely right. I can stand here only as an ersatz Welshman. Someone once told me with glorious exaggeration that I was descended from the kings of Wales, but I cannot speak a word of the Welsh language. I felt very small in being put in my place by the noble Lord, Lord Roberts of Llandudno, for getting a word wrong. I assure him that we will get that word right on Report and all further stages. Overall, the difficulty for some of us, and the hardest thing to accept, is that we know that the treaty is a trick. We know that because so many of the European leaders—I am not going to quote them—have said it is a trick. The proof-of-the-pudding argument which the noble Baroness put forward just does not work. The reason other countries are not having referenda is precisely as the leaders of Europe have explained, because they have succeeded in making the treaty unintelligible and wrapping it up differently. Therefore, ““This time it’ll be all right. We’ll get by without a referendum””. That is exactly what they have all said. It not the proof of the pudding, it is an explanation as to why all of these countries are not seeking referenda. They are able to wrap it up in various ways so that it is not intelligible and does not look like the previous treaty. It has been asked how much one should use referenda to consult people in the modern times. They are tricky instruments. They should be used with the greatest care. But I think that there is a sort of failure to understand in some people’s minds, and in the minds of those who appear to be patronising about the ““complexity”” of the issue and the difficulties of consulting people today, that we are living in the internet age. We have had an information technology revolution. It is possible to mobilise 1 million signatures in an afternoon through an internet flash constituency or some other device. We are living in an interactive age where, night after night, the television tells you that you can speak back to what is coming out of the television set. This just is not the age when one could say in court, ““My Lords, in the hills of Connemara they think of nothing else””, and get a good laugh. You cannot do that any more, because in the hills of Connemara now they are probably fully wired up with mobile telephones and interactive technology and they are all on the world websites discussing these issues in great detail, not only in Ireland but in England and across the whole of Europe and other continents as well.