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Address in Reply to Her Majesty's Most Gracious Speech

My Lords, I too welcome my noble friend Lord McKenzie of Luton and wish him well in his career. I am also pleased to see the return of my noble friend Lord Sainsbury of Turville, whose impartiality has won him admiration from all parts of the House. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Selsdon, that my remarks will be confined to the more sub-lunar. I can, however, tell him that long stretches on the Benches in your Lordships' House during some of the longer debates that we have had have given me an intimate and perfect understanding of infinity. Apart from continuing to run a good economy, the Government must, during their EU presidency and in the run-up to the EU referendum, grab, tame and breathe renewed life into the EU's central project, the establishment of a single European market. All the separate tasks are intimately related. For years, the European Union has been admired for bringing peace and prosperity to war-torn Europe. More recently, its writ, markets and democracy have been carried into an enlarged European Union of 25. Now, we need the alchemy of a sound, deep and fully functioning market to give Europe's citizens the tangible benefits of jobs and prosperity. Solve the markets, and you solve the problem of Euro-scepticism. Curiously, the British "No" campaign, launched today, also vaunts the virtues of a common market. That, they say, is all that they want. But here's the rub: the golden rule of markets is that you need a market place, and you need rules and regulators to steer and guard the market. I have never understood how Euro-sceptics miss that elementary point. I add, en passant, a single currency for a single market is singularly good sense. You do not need a common currency, but it is pretty daft not to have one. When will the Euro-sceptics concede that, to trade beyond your own back yard, you need agreement with other competing players in the market place? Some sovereignty must be pooled to gain national—British—penetration into other people's markets. To fail to do that straightforward business deal is to reduce Europe to a marquetry—not a market—of member states. Where are we today and what should the British Government do to bring about a fluid and flourishing single market in Europe, its size unparalleled in the trading world? The 1992 programme has come and gone. It was a partial success. We are still hesitating over the major directives needed for that market. The latest example is the hesitation over the services directive. There is also the monitoring, implementation and enforcing of existing directives. What about the opening of the gas and electricity markets? We have done it in the UK but have failed to extend it throughout the European Union. In practice, as someone from Centrica said to me today, they can come and take our jobs, but we cannot take theirs. The Commission's single market scoreboard is illuminating reading, and I hope that your Lordships will read it. We have much to do to complete that side of the market. We need to be ruthless in revising, simplifying and updating EU legislation. Many of my remarks echo those made by the noble Lord, Lord Vallance of Tummel, but what I would say about red tape is that, too often, we fail to understand that the whole market project is the creation of one set of red tape that is clearly understood and usable by all businesses to replace the 25 sets of red tape that so bind business people at the moment. Why do we not have a crusade in favour of the development of a single set of rules and regulations that can be understood by all? We must follow through the Lisbon agenda—I know that the Prime Minister is keen to do that—especially on some of its supply-side policies and the encouragement of research and development, which is at a much lower level here than in the United States. There is also education. Thirty per cent of young people in the United States are university students, compared to 19 per cent in the European Union. We must encourage lifelong learning. In a study carried out by Sub-Committee G of your Lordships' European Union Committee, under the astute chairmanship of the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas of Walliswood, we discovered that the importance given to lifelong learning by the Barroso Cabinet may have been reduced, despite the fact that it is at the heart of economic revival. There is also the question of languages. In this country, we are so tongue-tied. It is time that this country made the business case for languages. Not only do we need languages to trade with others but we need to understand their culture, which can be discovered through their language, in order to make the right goods and make available the right services to trade with other countries, especially in the European market. We need to explain the European Union and the single European market better than we have done hitherto and explain the opportunities that arise, especially for our business people and young people. I ask my noble friend the Minister to explain the Government's regrettable decision, as I understand it, to repudiate the €800,000 made available to this country to provide 40 European information centres. Other countries are taking advantage of the opportunity to spread the news about the European Union and the opportunities for businesses and charities to gain a better understanding of the market. Why are we holding back on it? I also encourage the BBC to report the European Union more accurately. Some of your Lordships may have heard the radio programme about the forthcoming EU constitution hosted by Clive Anderson last night. It resold us the old idea about being in favour of a superstate or against it. I have heard no one in your Lordships' House saying that the European Union was appropriate for a superstate. We need to make the market not just a market for big firms but for small firms. We still lag behind the United States of America, where 20 per cent of small firms grow larger and are viable. In comparison, only 5 per cent within the European Union turn from small size to medium or large. We need to improve the entrepreneurship take-up within the European Union. Again, comparison with the United States of America proves difficult. In a 2004 survey, only 40 per cent of our citizens said that they wanted to become entrepreneurial compared with 60 per cent of Americans. There is a particular gap with our young people, especially in schools and universities, being attracted by a business career. I echo what the noble Lord, Lord Vallance, said. At a time when we speak so Euro-sceptically in this country, is it any wonder that some of our businesses, especially our small businesses, resist the idea of setting up on the Continent and taking British ideas and opportunities there? If we keep saying to them—as it were, Jimmy Young-like—"sur le Continent there be dragons with funny languages and funny money", no wonder firms will not make an attempt to go there. Euro-scepticism costs jobs. I finish with an example of an industry that is nearly always neglected by all political parties in this House, not least my own—the tourism industry. It is the biggest responsibility in DCMS, but it does not even feature in its title and, I am sorry to say, was absent from the Labour Party manifesto. If ever there were an industry—and it is an industry—that is quintessentially an industry of the single European market, it is the tourism industry. It satisfies to a lesser or greater degree the four freedoms—the free movement of people; the free movement of services; the free movement of capital; and even sometimes the free movement of goods. But we do not seem to appreciate that. We do not see where we can compete and collaborate at the same time in the European Union. Perhaps we may think about a parallel of six restaurants in one location: they are competing with each other, but they also have the magical effect of attracting customers in the first place. We should do that for Europe, not only in the tourism industry but also in many others. I close with a reminder to my colleagues on the Front Bench. One of the first Acts of an incoming Labour government in 1964 was a development of tourism Act. They took tourism seriously then. We should take it seriously now as an important industry for the whole panoply of industry and employment in this country and in the European Union.