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Address in Reply to Her Majesty’s Most   Gracious Speech

My Lords, if the noble Lord thinks that manifesto commitments are any precursor to what will actually happen, that reinforces my remarks. He is a lovely man. That is the world that distinguished mandarins inhabit; they read manifestos. The noble Lord, Lord Garden, on the Liberal Democrat Front Bench had obviously been reading the Labour manifesto; I have not read a Labour manifesto in 50   years, and I have not the slightest intention of doing so. They do not have any relevance whatever to practical policies, and the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, should know that. If anyone thinks, and if this Government think, that a debate on the constitution in this country will have the Conservative Party on one side and the Labour Party on the other, they are in for a very big shock. Both political parties are seriously divided on the matter, and we will see what will happen if we get a referendum on the constitution. There is one other point that I wanted to take up with the noble Lord, Lord Hannay—I am happy to give way again—with respect to the fact that there was no derogation from unanimity rules in matters of taxation. What is happening in Europe is a constant process of harmonisation of corporation tax by judicial decision, and no one is paying any attention to it. We already have a harmonised value-added tax; we already have harmonised customs duties; we are well on the way to getting harmonised corporation taxes; and the only thing that will be left to the discretion of individual Parliaments will be income tax and death duties. I predicted this—it was not difficult to predict—back when we had a referendum. It has come to pass, and it was always going to come to pass. There is something else that I want to say about Europe. I have always been a little puzzled by Henry Kissinger’s question, ““What number do I telephone when I want to find out European foreign policy?””. That struck me as the most extraordinary question. Lots of people get themselves in a lather, saying, ““We will supply Dr Kissinger with a telephone number so that he can find out what European foreign policy is””. If we substitute Asia for Europe, the question becomes ridiculous. Why should you ring a telephone number to find out Asian foreign policy? As soon as you put the question in those terms, the idiocy of the question becomes clear. I want to make it absolutely clear beyond peradventure—I am not particularly politically correct—that I am not in favour of an agreed, single, European foreign policy. That is a very bad idea—unless it is my foreign policy, and then it is a wonderful idea. If it is anybody else’s foreign policy, I do not want it, thank you very much. It is clear to me that if we had had an agreed European foreign policy we would not have gone into Iraq, which was an activity that I thoroughly supported; and we would not have liberated the Falkland Islands, which was another activity that I thoroughly supported. God knows what would have happened to Gibraltar by now. I am not in favour of a single European foreign policy; unless of course it is mine. I have only one other thing that I want to say; I apologise for detaining your Lordships. It is about UAVs and is a point for my noble friend the Defence Minister. This country has had a rather unhappy record with respect to UAVs. We have been very slow off the mark and have taken a long time to develop them. Those that we have developed have been unsatisfactory, and we could do with a lot more openness—I do not pin anything on my noble friend, of course—on these matters. I noticed from a recent edition of DefenseNews, a newspaper that I read regularly, that the United States navy recently published a wish list for unmanned underwater vehicles. Would you believe that it is 97   pages long, just on underwater unmanned vehicles? We are never told about what the British Ministry of Defence is thinking, what its aspirations are or how far it has gone. It would be very helpful if the Government could take the country into its confidence about UAVs in particular, but not only about them—about vehicles whether airborne, on land, undersea or on the surface of the sea. We would all benefit from a lot more openness, and I am glad to see my noble friend acknowledge that. Again, I wish him very well in his new responsibilities.