European Union (Amendment) Bill

My Lords, that is wonderful. He wants to be able to make his own decisions. The noble Lord has not decided whether I am supporting this amendment. I want to explain what is actually happening, if I can get the noble Lord’s attention rather than his laughter—I hope laughter will follow in a moment. Within these countries changes have already taken place. On Saturday morning I will sit with Monsieur Simon and Monsieur Costra and will present the report that the noble Lord will be debating tomorrow. Yet they are interested in treaties, not in reports of your Lordships’ House. The report of your Lordships’ House that dealt with wine said that grapes should not be used to produce alcohol for cars. It was well received. Already, after President Sarkozy’s comments in London, moves are taking place to reduce the subsidy for the production of grapes that do not go into wine. As that report points out, more wine is now imported by the EU than exported. That is from far distant countries where they receive support for production and are allowed not to follow any rules. Even appellation contrôlée is changing now. Where I come from, our first wine was shipped to the United Kingdom in the second century BC. Your Lordships will know that that was a quality time. Olive trees and olive oil fetch a high premium but even within those markets changes are being made that have nothing to do with the Common Market agriculture policy. They come from a move towards quality and away from mass production. The knowledge and understanding is that other countries that may have greater rainfall and better production will produce better products. The world is not looking at what the debate is tomorrow but at what we are going to say about this treaty before us today. The agricultural costs and expenditure are among the most important of all. As your Lordships will know, in France and Italy—I can speak only for France, Italy and Spain and to a certain extent for Portugal—the rural economies are a vital part of life. Some 35 per cent of people live in rural areas there and only 8 per cent in the United Kingdom. They say to me, ““You benefited extraordinarily well out of the Common Market policy because all the money that came to you went straight on to the farmers’ bottom line as profit and all your agricultural land has soared in value: why?”” As my noble friend Lord Ferrers pointed out, farming is no longer farming. We have to look at where the production goes, to refer to my noble friend the Duke of Montrose. Where do shellfish harvested within the 12-mile limit go? They practically all leave the United Kingdom. The coquilles Saint-Jacques from the west coast of Scotland are the best in the world and command a premium price. They are biked or flown down, end up in Boulogne and overnight are transported even into the midst of Switzerland. We also have to look at fishing and at the high price of fish at the moment. The market for lobsters from Cornwall is the continent of Europe and there is now an international market in agricultural produce. We have to look at the subsidy for mass production, which I believe is going. Another very simple example is that the Spanish want to pull up their olive trees and grow more fruit trees in order to supply fruit to the United Kingdom. Vast Spanish lorries are loaded with oranges and they come here to sell us a product that we do not produce. On the other hand, the French want to buy the olive trees from Spain so that they can sell them to the rich British who buy houses in France. So a deal is being done and olive trees are moving like a commodity as gardening is becoming important. I support the amendment because it is an amendment to a treaty. I shall support the debate tomorrow. Everything that comes from your Lordships' House goes out from here and is read. Your Lordships might like to see those who have spoken today on television tomorrow night on the BBC world channel, which may repeat it three or four times and it is then syndicated. It has shattered me how interested people are, not in the other place, but in what we say here and in our reasoned arguments. My noble friend who moved the amendment has done the right thing because we should concentrate on the treaty—not on other reports. I support the amendment and I urge your Lordships to do so because it sends the right signal.