My Lords, I hope your Lordships will not consider me ungracious if I point out that of the 19 previous speakers, at least 13, and perhaps more, were strong and vociferous supporters of this country joining the euro. We can all now see that it has been the disaster that some of us forecast it would be, yet we have heard not a word of apology or repentance from any of them. I hope that we will do so from the seven noble and europhile Lords who are yet to speak. In the mean time, I will just ask why we should pay heed to their wisdom about the EU’s future when they got its past so wrong.
I think we can take it that there will soon be a referendum in this country to decide whether we wish to stay in or get out of the EU. The Prime Minister apparently wants the choice to be between leaving and staying in a reformed EU, with powers being returned to Westminster from Brussels. But I trust that Monsieur Hollande, the French President, put him right on the possibility of reform last week. As I have said to your Lordships many times over recent years, to change a comma in the treaties of Rome, let alone to retrieve a power, would require unanimity among all its member states—28 of them now—and a new treaty to be ratified in all of them. I fear that that is not going to happen for any worthwhile powers.
I suggest that the referendum, when we come to it, will turn on one word: jobs. I suppose we can assume that the other great fallacy of the EU project—that it has brought peace to Europe and is essential to maintain peace in future—will not feature much. The historian Antony Beevor puts this rather well in an article entitled “Europe’s Long Shadow” in this month’s edition of Prospect, which I recommend to all noble and still europhile Lords. I quote:
“The argument that it was European unification which prevented another war on the continent was always a completely false one … Democracies do not fight each other. The key question is therefore the inverse: will a dramatic increase in the democratic
deficit lead to unrest and even conflict as Europe ‘tears itself apart,’ in the controversial phrase of the governor of the Bank of England?”.
I would just repeat that the employment, misery, and civil unrest already sweeping Europe are entirely caused by the project of European integration and its euro. What is the eurocrats’, and our political leaders’, reaction to this obvious fact? Why, more Europe of course. I quote from Mr Beevor again: the eurodreamers,
“should perhaps remember that both in war and in peace, reinforcing failure through obstinacy has always tended to turn a crisis into a catastrophe”.
Have the Government given any thought to the contention that the disasters caused by the euro, with worse to come, can be solved only by getting rid of it? Could not all 17 finance ministers meet and declare the obvious—that the euro has failed—and go back to their national currencies at initial exchange and interest rates, to be agreed in one weekend? Of course it would be messy, but I understand that much of the work has already been done. Changing a currency costs only about 4% of GDP, which may turn out to be a small price to pay against what has already been wasted in keeping the euro going and what may lie in store. I fear that it will not happen, of course, but I thought that I would just ask, if only for the pleasure of saying “I told you so” when the tumbrils come to collect us. I look forward to the Government’s reply.
I go back to trade and jobs, on which the forthcoming referendum will turn. The Government and other europhiles will, no doubt, still intone the falsity that we must stay imprisoned in the EU because 40% of our trade and 3 million jobs depend on or are linked to the single market. I hardly dare repeat it again, but there are 4.5 million jobs in the EU that depend on their trade with us; we are their largest client, so we will be in the driving seat when we have voted to leave. The EU has, or is concluding, free trade agreements with 30 other countries, according to a government Answer to me on 19 November. It is inconceivable that we could not have trading and other arrangements at least as good as those enjoyed by Switzerland.
We have never said that we want to be in the European Economic Area like Norway, a fax democracy obeying the EU rules without taking part in their making. A number of noble Lords have made that point today, but we have never said so. I hope that we do not have to hear the Norwegian comparison again. We could have our own arrangements, and it would not matter that we no longer wasted so much time in Brussels, agreeing all the regulations that are steadily sinking the single market in the great ocean of the new markets of the future.
The US and China, and all the other countries that export to clients in the EU, do not do so either. We do not make the rules for exporting to the United States of America, but it helps to put the steering wheel on the left if you want to sell a car there. So of course we would obey the rules if exporting to the EU, as does everyone else. However, none of our exports to the EU, nor the jobs that deliver them, would be lost if we left the political construct of the treaties of Rome. The truth of this is underlined in Hansard for 14 December, at column 263, in a Written Answer to the noble Lord,
Lord Stoddart, from the noble Lord, Lord Green of Hurstpierpoint. This confirms that there really is no difference between a free trade agreement and membership of a single market. I trust that my noble friend will quote the Answer in full when he comes to speak later.
As I have often said before, only 9%, and falling, of our GDP goes in trade with the EU anyway; 11%, and rising, goes to the rest of the world; while 80% stays right here in our domestic economy—yet Brussels diktats smother 100% of our economy. It is madness, really, when you look at it like that.
I hope that the Government are slowly beginning to understand some of these points. The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, the Leader of the House, told me on 21 November that,
“the noble Lord may wish to take heart that, despite tough conditions, British exports of goods have increased in the past two years to China by 72%, to India by 94% and to Russia by 109%”.—[Offical Report, 21/11/12; col. 46.]
If that is so, could we not make the conditions less tough by negotiating our own free trade arrangements with those countries? There is also the rest of the Commonwealth, and the whole world outside the sclerotic EU.
So, millions of new jobs indeed depend on the EU—they depend on our leaving it. Anyone who doubts this should read the briefing notes on the globalbritain.org website, where it is all set out in succinct form. I ask again whether anyone in the Foreign Office or the Treasury has actually read that store of unanswerable wisdom. What do they think of it, if they have? I look forward to the meeting offered by the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, in Questions on 26 November, when she offered to give me,
“a briefing on the economic importance of our continued membership of the EU”.—[Official Report, 26/11/12; col. 10.]
I have written to her saying, “Yes please”, and I await the date with fervent anticipation.
When we have voted to leave the EU, by what method will we do so? Will we simply repeal the 1972 Act, which we were always promised, at the time of Maastricht and before, was the way of leaving the EU and retrieving our sovereignty, if that was what we wanted to do? Does that promise still stand or will the Government feel constrained to follow Article 50 of the Lisbon treaty, which sets out an expensive process that can last two years, with Brussels in control of the terms of our departure? I trust that it is still the former: we repeal the 1972 Act and then all its subsequent amendments—the Single European Act, Maastricht, Amsterdam, Nice and Lisbon—fall with it, including Article 50 of the latter. I look forward to the Government’s answer to that one.
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