European Union (Amendment) Bill

moved Amendment No. 31A: 31A: Clause 8, page 4, line 8, leave out ““on Royal Assent”” and insert ““six months after the date of Royal Assent, provided that before that date— (a) the Government has published an explanatory leaflet on the European Union and the Lisbon treaty; (b) copies of the leaflet have been distributed to members of both Houses of Parliament, to local authorities, public libraries and such other public information bodies as the Secretary of State thinks appropriate to facilitate the widest public knowledge of the Treaty; (c) copies of the leaflet are available on line and free on request for all UK citizens, and by freephone for visually impaired people; (d) a letter from the Prime Minister is set out with every leaflet explaining— (i) why the Treaty is of benefit to the United Kingdom; (ii) which provisions of the Treaty the United Kingdom has not adopted and why; (iii) how the Treaty differs from the draft EU Constitution and why, in his judgment, a referendum on the Treaty was unnecessary; and (e) a publicly accessible website has been opened on the No. 10 Downing Street website enabling members of the public to express and to view responses to the leaflet and to the Prime Minister’s letter.”” The noble Lord said: My Lords, we now move on but, in many ways, we are continuing the debate we have just concluded. When I listened to the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Crosby, I was reminded that one of the problems over our membership of the European Union, as the noble Lord, Lord McNally, put it, is that we always seem to have been on the back foot. We have never taken head-on the concerns of the public, which have often been increased by what they may or may not read in the media. The amendment seeks to provide an opportunity for us to work out for ourselves how best we can deal with what the treaty of Lisbon really means, an issue which has been a real worry and concern for many members of the population. We got a sense of that in the previous debate. I am delighted to see the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, in his place because I was moved to think of this amendment following an exchange I had with him in a previous debate. If I recall correctly, he had described a situation in which one of the voters in France—a neighbour of his, I think—had received, during the referendum campaign, a huge document that he had put in the waste-paper basket. The noble Lord and I had a bit of an exchange because he described a lot of the voters as neo-fascist and Trotskyites. I remonstrated with him at the time that he should not describe all my very good friends in France in such terms, because there were a number who were genuinely concerned. I felt that I overreacted, however, so this gives me a chance to say how sorry I am that I then described him as a bureaucrat. I set myself a penance for that outrageous remark in that I decided, during our short break, to read the noble Lord’s brilliant editing of Sir Con O’Neill’s report on the negotiations of 1970 to 1972. I congratulate him on it. It took me back a long way into history, and it is a marvellous account. His concluding words in his editor’s foreword gave rise to this amendment, and I shall explain why. Describing the problem of Britain’s membership of the European Common Market, or however it was then described, he said that one of the problems is that there were so, "““many examples of bad luck””," coupled with ““some bad judgment””, and that this had, "““dogged the subsequent history of Britain in Europe””." There is a lot in that. We are often on the back foot, and there is a lot to be said for being much more positive about what we see as the benefits of the European Union. As my noble friend Lord Howell pointed out, we are constantly trying to improve the negotiations. We greatly regret that the Government adopted the negotiating stance that they took—but that has been dealt with in previous debates. We are looking now at how we can get across to people the benefits of European Union membership. I hope I carry the Benches on my right with me when I say it is about time that we fought back. There are so many scare stories that one reads in the press; I think the noble Lord, Lord Kerr referred to the editorial in the Times.