European Union (Amendment) Bill

My Lords, I knew that this would be a superb debate and it has been. I feel privileged and humble to have had the opportunity to take part in it. I shall try to be brief in summing up some of the contributions. There obviously is not time to comment on every wonderful speech. I hope that this does not embarrass the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, but I should like to put her speech at the centre of my considerations. She it was who put, as clearly, simply and eloquently as one could, the case against which our amendment is aimed. She it was who put the question: is this different? The noble Baroness, Lady Symons, asserted with vigour that it was different and that the constitutional concept had been abandoned. That is what we have to assess. I believe that not to be so. It is view against view and I will try to support the case the other way. The secondary role was played in our debate by the good Dutch lawyers who are much quoted, although I think that my noble friend Lord Neill of Bladen demolished their credibility to a considerable extent. Indeed, when you read on page 13 of their report, as I am sure all of your Lordships have, that they assert that the Lisbon treaty does not codify the supremacy of the European Court of Justice or the EU law, one realises that it must a be rather questionable document, because it does. In the treaty provisions precisely, the supremacy of EU law is codified and made absolutely clear. It has been confirmed in all our debates in Committee by the very learned and wise lawyers, judges and others in this House whose opinions are immensely valuable. They have all confirmed that the ECJ is the supreme court, that its rulings cannot be challenged—there is no appeal against them anyway—and that it is supreme in all areas which fall under the ECJ. This treaty brings a whole new group of areas under the ECJ. The rulings of the ECJ are supreme and override our national view. I say that merely to emphasis the point that those who question the constitutional importance of the treaty, or who say it is merely tidying up, not very much or no big deal, really cannot have grasped what is stated in the treaty. In the decision to collapse the Third Pillar and bring the vital issues of justice, home affairs and many others into the purview and coverage of the European Court of Justice, it is constitutional. Even the Dutch lawyers admit that. Therefore the proposition that somehow the constitutional concept has been abandoned withers and collapses. Does it have the same effects? My noble friend Lord Blackwell put this devastating question: if all the measures that were in the constitutional treaty are there, who is to explain that it does not have the same effects this time, just because it is written in a slightly different form? Of course the same measures will have the same effects and provide the same basis for the same rulings by the European Court of Justice, as would have been the case under the constitutional treaty. Finally, is the text the same? Here again we seem to have a difference, like ships passing in the night. I have before me the text of the two treaties and I find again and again, page after page, paragraph after paragraph, word after word that it is identical. It is the same text. As the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, rightly and eloquently said, it is in a different wrapping, but it is the same text. If that is not taken as fact from this Dispatch Box then let us turn to the great Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the sponsoring department, which in 2004 put out a guide to the European Union to explain the constitutional treaty. The other day it put out a guide to the Lisbon treaty with a foreword by the Prime Minister, Mr Brown. I have to tell your Lordships that out of 15 pages of explanation, 12 are identical. It is the same advice for treaties that are said to be different, and I am afraid that that stretches credulity to breaking point. Your Lordships may wish to vote on other considerations but I ask that they do not do so on that. Perhaps I may say a word on the issue that came to the fore in many excellent speeches—the question of whether we like referenda. I do not like them very much. In principle, I think that we should handle them cautiously; in practice, they occur again and again. There have been many under this Government and all parties have promised them in their manifestos for various things, including my own party in 1997 regarding the euro. The truth will have to be faced by some of my noble friends who have used phrases such as ““time and time again””, ““in the past”” and so forth. The world has moved towards the referendum mode for very obvious reasons. Quite aside from the fact that referenda have been promised, we now live in a world where 2 billion people are on the internet and the world wide web, and two-thirds of households in this nation are online and interactive. People are empowered, they have views and they wish to put those views forward. This is not the world of five or 10 years ago; it is the world of the information age, which totally transforms the way in which opinion is formed and the way in which democracies will work. I am very sorry for those who say that they do not like referenda but there will be a lot more of them. They will come again and again. There will of course be resistance to them and there will be many cases where it is felt that a more refined judgment filtered through Parliament is much better, and that view is probably right. However, there will be more and more of what the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, calls ““exceptional cases””. I believe that we have one before us now. Parliamentary democracy in this very difficult age—it is getting more difficult—will flourish only if Parliament acts with consistency and integrity and sticks to its promises, but it will not flourish if it disregards promises or if parliamentary control is bypassed.