My Lords, this is not the first occasion when I have had the pleasure of following the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, in a European debate. As he rightly anticipated, I did not agree with him this time any more than I have done on previous occasions, though he said his piece with his usual charm.
It has been a stimulating and worthwhile debate, but it is essential that we have another debate when the Prime Minister has made his long-awaited speech. Can I urge the Government that when that happens we have the whole day for the debate, and that the Government do not reduce the time by introducing
Statements or debates on matters that, however fascinating they may be to some people, do not have quite the same potential historical significance as this one.
I may be a bit old-fashioned but I still have the idea that a debate should try to make progress, so I want to take advantage of being put rather low in the batting order this afternoon, not to make a prepared speech but to comment on some of the remarks that have already been made, particularly those that appear to be most memorable.
I am delighted to see the noble Lord, Lord Taverne, come in at this very moment, because the first speech that I want to refer to is his. He made a masterly analysis of the justice and home affairs issue. He demonstrated clearly and conclusively that there are no pragmatics about the Government’s attitude to this; the national interest is completely irrelevant. The Government are simply playing politics with the national interest. A bone—a very important bone, sadly—is being thrown to the Eurosceptics for purely party political reasons. This is a disgraceful state of affairs.
I also to pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Monks, who made an excellent speech about the Social Chapter, based on a unique degree of experience in these matters. I would like to add something about that issue. I am not known to be timid about attacking the modern Tory party or for being particularly indulgent to it. However, I wonder whether even the modern Tory party would seriously go about repealing the limited government measures that have gone through under the Social Chapter, to which my noble friend referred: the parental leave directive, part-time or agency workers’ directive and the four weeks’ paid leave directive. The one thing that Mr Cameron cares about is votes, and I do not think that he would get any if he legislated along those lines. No doubt the Institute of Directors, some right-wing think tanks and a lot of Eurosceptics would be delirious with pleasure; but I do not think that that would help him at the next election. So I anticipate that the Tory party is much more likely to say, “We want to pull out of the Social Chapter for ideological reasons, but we won’t actually repeal the measures that have gone through”.
If you think about it, though, that is the worst of all possible worlds. If we are going to have these measures—which are costly, of course, but essential in a humane society, to which we all want to be committed, and which are supported by all reasonable employers—it must be in our interests to ensure that they are part of the Social Chapter, and that there is no one else within the single market who can conduct their business without these kind of costs. Otherwise we would be damaging our own competitiveness within the single market, which would be a self-destructive thing to do. The Government pretend to care about the national interest, but an important aspect of the issue has not been taken into account at all.
Now I turn to the Government and to the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi. In a most excellent speech, my noble friend, Lord Liddle, quoted the Prime Minister as saying that, for him, Europe and referenda went together. I cannot think of another sentence that a Prime Minister could have pronounced which more obviously, immediately and dramatically would create
uncertainty about our position and future in the European Union. Yet we had the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi—and, before her earlier today, the noble Lord the Leader of the House—saying, “Oh no, there’s no uncertainty at all; the Government are quite committed to our membership of the European Union and we haven’t created any uncertainty”. That is really quite a fatuous remark. The Government have gratuitously created a lot of uncertainty; as the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, said, a large number of people in this country believe that we are set on a course that will lead us to leaving the European Union in the next Parliament. Not only a lot of people in this country believe that and work on that basis, but a lot of our partners, sadly, believe that and will be working on that basis, which will mean a reduction in our bargaining power with them on many issues. Worst of all, many investors believe that, are working on that basis and therefore will not invest in this country. Whether they are British-domiciled or foreign-domiciled, they will invest somewhere else in the single market if they want their operation to be certain to continue to be in the single market and in a country that has a full weight in the decision-making process of that market so it can protect their interest.
I turn to the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch. I do not want him to think that this is a personal attack. In fact, I have a high personal regard for him; I admire his courage and persistence in continuing to voice views that I think are completely misconceived but he does so very lucidly. Since he has set out so lucidly today what is the standard narrative of Eurosceptics, both in UKIP and the Tory party, I hope that he will not mind if I make him the object of my final remarks.
The problem that all Eurosceptics, whether UKIP or Tory, have in this country is that you just cannot make a credible economic case for leaving the European Union. There is no way that anyone can argue—I have not seen anyone even pretend to do so—that the mere fact of leaving the European Union will add one job to our national economy or one basis point to our GDP. Of course it will not; the argument is entirely the other way. The argument is about how many jobs it will destroy and how many basis points, or, indeed, percentage points of GDP, it will remove and over how long. That is how the argument is conducted—on whether it is hundreds of thousands of jobs we will lose, or millions. Generally, people recognise that if we were left with no access to the single market altogether, it would be more in the millions than in the hundreds of thousands.
Faced with that fact, what do you do if you are a Eurosceptic? I am afraid that you go in for some pretty evasive and disingenuous arguments, which we hear the whole time, and I am sorry to have to say to the noble Lord that we heard them from him this evening. We hear people say in the same speech, “We can negotiate continuing access to the single market”, and, almost in the same breath or sentence, that what is all wrong with this thing is the regulatory burden that we face, which is why we must leave the European Union. Yet if you continue to have access to the single market you continue to have the same regulatory framework, to which you are committed. That is the case with Switzerland and Norway, and it would be the case
under all circumstances if we negotiated continuing access to the single market.
The difference, and it is a very important one, is that you are no longer part of the decision-making structure. You have no influence on the evolution of that regulatory regime, on the new regulations or on changes to them. You have no opportunity to propose a reduction of regulations, if you think that is the right thing to do. You are out of the dialogue—