European Union (Amendment) Bill

I speak in favour of the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Pearson. I greatly admire his knowledge and persistence in pursuing a course in which he passionately believes. We are all familiar with the arguments for and against further integration into the European Union. As we know, more than 70 per cent of our laws come from Brussels and we scrutinise thousands of regulations from it each year. We have no power to alter any of them and no evidence has been given to this House that we have done so. If employees of Brussels speak out against the corruption that occurs, they are dismissed. You can lose your pension if you speak out against the Union. Do we want to belong to an organisation which is so unsure of its own authority? As the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, and others have said, we have a trade deficit with the EU. It needs us more than we need it. We are integrating further with an area with static, declining and ageing populations and with no adequate pension provisions. This country has a growing population, although sadly, thanks to the Government, one of the finest pension provision systems in the world has been virtually destroyed. None the less, we remain demographically much better off than our European neighbours. The constitution—sorry, treaty—is yet another direct and creeping takeover of British sovereignty. We discuss it as though it is a static document. It is, as history indicates, yet another way for the EU to take over the running of more of our lives. Even though it is not yet passed, some decisions are already being pre-empted, such as the setting up of diplomatic missions. Health and safety, which we blithely entered into, extended its tentacles into areas we had never foreseen. Indeed, some Members have already indicated that further integration is on the agenda. An example of health and safety is the draft proposal that golf courses should have toilets at regular intervals all round them. My source is a toilet manufacturer in the UK. Is that sort of interference in our daily lives really necessary? The country has failed to renegotiate any major areas of conflict—the fisheries policy for one. We are barely supported by the EU in Afghanistan. The endless bureaucracy, the levelling down and desire to lower UK standards to EU ones, and the wish to make the City less competitive are all reasons why the time has come to review our whole relationship.