European Union (Amendment) Bill

My Lords, I am the last of the four who put their names to the amendment to speak, so perhaps the noble Lord will give way. I shall not be very long. The questions I want to ask are simple: was a promise made to the electorate; is the promise still applicable; and should it be honoured? Everyone is agreed that there is no doubt that all three parties made manifesto commitments, and certainly the Labour Party made a commitment to put the constitutional treaty to the electorate by way of a referendum. That takes one on to the second question: is it still applicable? The only reason I have heard for it not being applicable is that we are now looking at a different creature from that considered by the Constitution Committee. I have this to say to noble Lords: I served on that committee under the chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, when we were looking at the constitutional treaty. Today I looked back at the report published at the time, the 41st report of the committee in 2003-04, where we reported on the convention’s draft constitutional treaty on the future of Europe. In passage after passage of that report there are references to the proposals we are now considering under the current Bill and have been talking about for weeks. I put it to noble Lords that what we now have in the Lisbon treaty is a repackaging of what was in the constitutional treaty with some changes and some add-ons. To me that makes not the slightest difference if at the heart of it is the old constitutional treaty—it is all there. I do not think that Mr Blair or Mr Brown promised that there would not be a comma added, a change made, or even the 35 changes referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Blackwell. We have the essence of it here, and lawyers are perfectly capable of looking at it to see whether the essence remains. We have been doing that in tax avoidance schemes for years. I was told that if I looked at the report of the Dutch Council of State, I would be impressed by it. Indeed, my noble friend Lord Hannay is an enthusiast. With great respect to the Council of State, I have to say it deploys arguments of a character which carry absolutely no conviction with myself or, I should have thought, with many lawyers. On page 11, the report states that the Charter of Fundamental Rights is no longer within the treaty, as it was in the constitution. However, Article 6 tells us that it is to have exactly the same standing as if it were included; the point is of treaty quality. To me, it does not make a fig of difference whether it has been moved out and does not form part of a pillar. The council goes on to say that the second element to be used in assessing the proposed reform treaty is the division of competences, while the next sentence states that the division will not be substantially affected by the proposed reform treaty. It then points out that there are differences, but that the substance is not changed. When we come to the symbols, the name of the treaty establishing a constitution reflected a particular vision of European co-operation. The existing treaties were to be repealed and replaced by a treaty which is a single, binding constitutional document embracing the entire constitutional order, and was unprecedented in the Union’s political history. But what if those same provisions are just scattered like peppercorns by way of amendments over the existing treaties? It is all there, but the fact is that it is not labelled as a constitutional treaty. It goes on to point out that the state symbols have been removed: that there is nothing about an anthem and there is nothing about a flag. But the anthem still plays and the flags still fly in front of every hotel. There is an omission, it states: it is no longer said that EU law is supreme. But there is a declaration to that effect; no one doubts that that has been the case law for many years. After all that, it states that the significance of these changes should not be underestimated. I suggest that the changes are of no material importance and that what we have is the old Lisbon treaty. The two treaties are recognisably the same—they are not identical of course—and a promise has been made; that promise ought now to be fulfilled. In his maiden speech at Second Reading, which impressed me very much at the time, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chichester reminded the House of a figure known to me in my youth—not personally but I knew of his reputation—George Bell, the Bishop of Chichester. He was a figure of towering moral strength but I shall mention only one or two of his achievements. In the 1930s he rescued, or did his best to rescue, churchmen who were being tyrannised by Hitler; he moved on to help Jews to escape; he was the first churchman to go to the Isle of Man to see that remarkable array of scholars, engineers, lawyers and so on who were arrested overnight and whisked off there. His courage was such that he stood in the then House of Lords—not this building because it had been blitzed—in wartime and said that the policy of obliterating Berlin was immoral and that there was no justification for pursuing it. For me, he is a towering moral figure and I cannot help asking myself how he would regard a Government failing to carry out a manifesto pledge of this character.