European Union (Amendment) Bill

My Lords, I followed as far as I could the logic of the speech of the noble Lord in moving the amendment. I will have no difficulty in recommending that we on the Liberal Democrat Benches oppose the amendment. The noble Lord quoted the Times on the paucity of EU strategic thinking. I must say that, from what we heard in the introductory speech, the paucity of Conservative strategic thinking is also rather mind-boggling. Not even Senator McCain, in his proposals for an alliance of democracies, suggested China as a more appropriate partner for Britain and the United States than France and Germany. However, if I understood the noble Lord, Lord Howell, that is exactly what he was proposing. The notion of the Commonwealth as a stronger institution for British foreign policy than the European Union requires, again, a good deal of careful examination. The noble Lord said that EU foreign policy has not always been successful. Actually, British foreign policy has not always been successful. American foreign policy under President Bush has not always been entirely successful. By what criterion are we judging success? I say to our Conservative colleagues that one must be careful about one’s position on the European Union and foreign policy. I was interested to see William Hague’s letter yesterday to the leader of my party suggesting that we have some confusion, but the Conservatives are doing their best to straddle their dog-whistle movements towards the Europhobes and those within the Conservative Party who want to make the best of British membership of the European Union. The noble Lord said in his opening statement that he is not entirely convinced of the need for a common energy policy. The Daily Mail this morning tells us that high gas prices in Britain are entirely the fault of the French and the Germans and nothing to do with anything else. I trust that the noble Lord, Lord Howell, does not entirely agree that the problems of British gas prices are the fault of wicked French and German energy companies. There may be a case for closer European energy co-operation. I recall William Hague saying that we needed a stronger European position in our relations with Russia. That seems to be a good case for closer European co-operation in foreign policy. The noble Lord also said: "““we do not welcome the intrusion of majority voting … into various aspects … of our foreign policy””." In the 27-member EU—and, for that matter, the 26-member NATO—one occasionally stubs one’s toes, in terms of effective action, against one difficult member; Greece and Macedonia currently, and Cyprus is holding up the whole question of closer co-operation between the European Union and NATO. The European Union External Action Service has also been mentioned; we talked about it in Committee. Some of us pointed out that Britain currently has no resident representation in 50 member states of the United Nations and that there is a great deal to be said for shared representation in those 50 states. We must be careful in listening to what William Hague is saying about Conservative policy. This is the man who said, on the Nice treaty, that we had 10 days to save the pound and that British democracy was under threat. I have received several letters in the past few days that said that the Lisbon treaty threatens the future of British democracy; indeed, that it would be the death of British democracy. I cite some of these letters—they must have come from some Europhobic newsletter, they are so similar—which say that it would be comparable to the Nazi takeover of Germany in 1933. I say to our Conservative friends that we must have a constructive debate about British foreign policy. We on these Benches are entirely clear—