European Union (Amendment) Bill

My Lords, the noble Lord has said that he is not convinced that the provisions of the treaty, in respect of foreign policy, are watertight. I suspect that whatever those provisions were, he would come to that same conclusion. He has said that there are alternative clusters or instruments of power available to us other than the European Union, and of course this is correct. But it is clear that the weight which we as a country have as a partner nation of the European Union gives us far greater clout in areas where we would be relatively weak on our own. I hope that he would follow me, for example, in respect of Iran, where a purely UK voice would be pretty ineffective and where the Commonwealth, which appears to be one of his preferred alternatives, would have no voice at all; also in the Balkans, where, apart from the faults of the 1990s, the European Union has played a particularly helpful role, in part because of the prospect of enlargement; and in a number of other areas where it is clear that the weight which we have as a member of the European Union has been one of our major instruments, our major forces for good in the world. The amendment asks for an annual report to Parliament and I would join the noble Lord in saying that it is vital, if his aim is parliamentary accountability, that we seek in all ways to further that. Nobody can doubt that the Lisbon treaty increases parliamentary accountability. I had the privilege to follow the noble Lord in chairing the Foreign Affairs Committee in the other place. Part of the duties of the person who chaired that committee was to go every six months to the country which chaired the Union at that time and to discuss with those colleagues who chaired the sister committees in the Union. What struck me very forcefully was how jealous those other countries were of the powers which our Parliament enjoyed in respect of foreign policy. I saw that over a large number of issues. Whatever may have been the formal powers, we had far greater instruments of control in our Parliament, well beyond the ingenuity of individual Members, be it the particular Select Committees, both in this House and in the other place, or the means of questioning Ministers. Therefore, I wonder whether the report which the noble Lord is suggesting will serve any useful purpose; in short, whether it is otiose, given the large number of other means of ““control”” in the parliamentary sense which we now enjoy. I am also struck by the fact that, when the common foreign and security policy was established in Maastricht, the noble Lord, who was then in Government—or certainly his party was in Government—did not take the opportunity to insert a similar clause. It is crystal clear that the powers of the Union are largely unaffected. Certainly if the noble Lord and other colleagues look through the very useful report produced by the European Union Committee of this House, they will see that the conduct and nature of foreign policy remain intergovernmental. That was the position in Maastricht and it remains the position. Given the fact that there are so many other instruments of control, my own judgment is that this amendment is unnecessary. Had it been necessary, the noble Lord and his friends would certainly have inserted a similar provision at the time when the Maastricht treaty was passing through this House and Parliament generally.