Loans to Ireland Bill

My Lords, I start by confirming the clear illegality of bailing out the eurozone, which includes these loans to Ireland. I do so by quoting the French Finance Minister, Christine Lagarde, from two days ago. She said: "““We violated all the rules because we wanted to close ranks and really rescue the euro zone. The Treaty of Lisbon was very straight-forward. No bailout””." She went on to add that the Greek and Irish rescues, as well as the creation of the bailout funds, are, "““major transgressions of the treaty””." Perhaps I may ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they agree with her. The fact that what it is doing is illegal has never stopped or troubled the EU juggernaut. I have previously regaled your Lordships with its illegal use of Article 308 of the treaty of Nice. Students of the history of the eventual collapse of the European Union may care to look up a summary of that abuse in our debates on the Lisbon treaty at col. 1073 on 18 June 2008. More recently, we have the EU’s legislation on hedge funds—the alternative investment fund managers directive—which is designed to do much damage to the City of London and hence our tax base. That directive depends for its legal base on Article 53.1 of Lisbon, which is about the mutual recognition of diplomas. Can you believe it? There is no point in appealing to the Luxembourg Court about any of this because it is not a court of law at all. It is merely the engine of the treaties, as it has often proved in the past. Even so, history suggests that trouble lies ahead when a regime is free to break its own laws with impunity; when it is supported by a puppet court and Parliament; and when its people are powerless to remove it. I have a couple of questions that were not answered by the Government yesterday in our debate on last week’s European Council. The first came somewhat surprisingly and most welcomely from the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, on the opposition Front Bench. He reminded the Prime Minister of his promise that, if he got any chance of reopening the Lisbon treaty and having a referendum on it, he would take it. The Prime Minister also promised that we would take the first opportunity to repatriate powers to this country, especially social and labour policy, but he has broken that promise, too. Will the noble Lord explain that behaviour today? The second unanswered question yesterday came from me. It was on whether the Government have made any estimation of the cost for Ireland and in due course, no doubt, for Portugal, Greece, Spain, Italy and Belgium to return to their national currencies. What would the cost be? The Government tried to say that this would not be a decision that would affect the United Kingdom, so they refused to answer the question, as they have done in their response to a Written Question. But of course such a decision would affect us, because Ireland and the other countries could devalue their currencies and fix their own interest rates and then have a sporting chance of trading their way out of their present impossible situation. That would mean that we would no longer have to go on pouring billions down the hopeless euro drain, so we are interested in at least knowing the cost involved. Perhaps we could even help them with it. That might be a tremendous bargain, especially as the Government made it clear yesterday and again today that they do not at all rule out sending even more colossal sums to the other countries that I have mentioned. Therefore, I look forward to hearing the answer today. The Government keep making great play of our trade with the eurozone and with Ireland in particular. It is to safeguard this trade, they say, that we have to borrow such huge sums, which we probably will not get back, when we are cutting our own services at home in an attempt to reduce our deficit and debt. The Minister said in his opening remarks that 5 per cent of our total exports go to Ireland, but do the Government realise that only about 1 per cent of our GDP—of our total economy—goes in trade with Ireland? That is because only 9 per cent of our GDP goes in trade, in deficit, with the EU overall, of which Ireland accounts for about 10 per cent, so that makes 10 per cent of 9 per cent, or 1 per cent to be generous. Then 11 per cent of our GDP goes to the rest of the world, in surplus, and 80 per cent stays right here in the domestic economy. Yet the wonderful deal that we have done as a member of the EU means that Brussels diktats apply to and strangle the whole 100 per cent of our economy. Would the Government care to justify this position? Why is it worth borrowing so much money to safeguard only 1 per cent of our GDP, which would not be lost if we did not? Are we really saying that we would lose all that trade if we did not do this? It is not realistic. The Government and the Martians in Brussels talk much about growth, how they are stimulating growth and how their bailouts and loans will help it along. Every now and again, I read the Government’s Written Statements about the meetings of the so-called Competition Council in Brussels and I must say that they make me weep. I have yet to detect any bureaucrat or council member contributing to those meetings who has the slightest experience of international competition in the real world. That is no doubt why they and their colleagues in the vast bureaucracy of Brussels have lumbered us with perhaps the most overregulated and least competitive regime in the world. Indeed, even their own Competition Commissioner, Mr Gunter Verheugen, said a couple of years ago that EU overregulation was costing all EU economies some 6 per cent of GDP, or over £60 billion per annum in our case. Just to be jolly, the demographic trend is moving against the continent of Europe as well, so I do not see much hope for growth. I fear that we are on the ““Titanic””. It is not just wild-eyed Eurosceptics like me who are saying that the euro cannot survive and that the sooner it goes, the better. Just yesterday, the head of the world’s largest bond fund called on Greece, Ireland and Portugal to leave the euro and restructure their debts, unless the eurozone is to submit to complete fiscal union, which seems unlikely. He went on to say that EU leaders were too quick to congratulate themselves on saving the euro last week, with a permanent bailout fund from 2013, which in his view comes far too late. But the EU strategy of forcing heavily indebted countries to undergo draconian fiscal austerity without offsetting stimulus is unworkable. The austerity policies are stifling the growth that is needed to stabilise debt levels. He is not alone in that. The chief European economist at RBS says that last week’s Europe summit failed to grasp the nettle: "““None of the policy responses put in place in Europe since the start of the crisis provides a credible backstop to prevent further contagion””." Those policy responses include our loans to Ireland. We should not be making them. It is not just the euro that was designed for disaster; so was the whole project of European integration, for which the euro was supposed to be the cement to hold it together. The idea behind the great project was honourable enough, but it has turned out to be misguided. That idea was that the nation states had been responsible for the bloodshed of two world wars and the long history of carnage in Europe. Those nation states therefore had to be emasculated and diluted into a new form of supranational government, run by bureaucrats. That is the big idea. That is why the Commission still has the monopoly of proposing and enforcing EU laws, which I remind noble Lords are made in secret. It is why there is a sham Parliament and a sham court, with all of their denizens interested only in the gravy train which rolls on without the consent of the people. If there is one small candle of light in all this gloom, I hope that it is that more of the people of Europe will come to see that the whole EU project is also misguided. Those who are suffering from the euro are already getting very angry. The riots and strikes in Greece, Portugal, Ireland and Spain are entirely caused by the project of European integration and its misguided currency and, alas, there is more to come. In conclusion, I invite your Lordships to stand back for just a moment and consider a Europe without the European Union, without Brussels and Strasbourg, without the Luxembourg Court of so-called Justice. Consider a Europe of 27 national democracies trading freely among themselves and with the other 190 or so countries of the world, none of which has been foolish to join anything like the EU or the euro. What benefit does the EU bring that we could not have through genuine democracy, free trade and friendly collaboration? None, I submit. I hope that none of your Lordships will suggest peace, which was secured by NATO, and for which the EU gets no credit at all. So the EU emperor has no clothes and the quicker the people of Europe realise it, the better for all of us. If the collapse of the euro helps them to do so, that may yet prove to be a blessing in disguise. In the mean time, we should not be helping to prop it up.