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EU Constitutional Treaty

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Blackwell, for giving us the opportunity for this debate. I follow on from where the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, began. If the noble Lord, Lord Blackwell, was here to bury the convention rather than to praise it, he only half-succeeded. He certainly did not praise it but he failed dismally as an undertaker. The convention process itself, in which I together with the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, had the privilege of representing your Lordships’ House, was a broadly good process that produced a broadly good result. It was a result that the vast majority of national parliamentarians in the convention were able to sign. Of course, I can make criticisms of it. Some criticisms have already been made today. The title and the outcome of the convention were absurd. The length of the document was equally absurd, as was the incorporation of the European Charter of Fundamental Rights. But the result on the parts that really mattered, which was quite significant, was agreed by all heads of government and has already been ratified by the majority of Parliaments. The draft treaty is no longer on the table, but many of the important parts are issues that, if they are not addressed in the context of the outcome of the convention, will have to be addressed individually. The noble Lord, Lord Hannay, has given an exhaustive list of those issues. I do not think that anyone can pretend that the Nice treaty is adequate for now. It is certainly not adequate for the enlargement being negotiated with Bulgaria and Romania, which the overwhelming majority of Members of your Lordships’ House have already welcomed. If the enlargement process goes beyond that, the deficiencies of the Nice treaty will become ever more evident. Other issues can and need to be dealt with if we are to persuade citizens to support some of the changes, including, for example, the legislative role of the council and greater transparency. I want to concentrate on my concern about how we organise a framework for discussion: we had a very clear one arising from the Laeken declaration. It is no surprise to my noble friend Lord Grenfell, because I have told him very clearly, that I had some scepticism about the process that the European Parliament was behind promoting. The process was to be a one-off forum in Brussels for national parliamentarians and the European Parliament to have a discussion to see where we all stand. On reading the outcome, the intention at the conference was that the next one could be hosted by the Finnish Parliament, although the European Parliament would, as this time, provide all the facilities. So the ““one-off”” of everyone getting together has already begun a life of its own. The next one is planned. The European Parliament, as it controls the purse strings, will control the agenda and the dialogue, which leaves me with some doubts. As I look at the outcome of the forum, parts of it were good. The contribution made by President Barroso was extremely good. He took up one of the themes that came out of the convention in relation to subsidiary—the ““yellow card””. He said that of course it was not quite the yellow card and that,"““Clearly, the early warning system proposed needs to have the force of a Treaty to come into being””." But, as my noble friend Lord Anderson observed, his proposals were essentially for engaging national Parliaments in an early warning system, which is exactly the outcome that the convention had sought. So, positive things have emerged. However, other things in that forum lead me to have serious doubts. Just as we can welcome what Barroso said, I also notice that the Austrian Green MEP, Mr Johannes Voggenhuber, suggested that in this process national governments would undermine the powers of the European Parliament. He said that there was strong criticism of the role to be played by national Parliaments because they would wind up playing a stronger role in the EU legislative process. Voggenhuber’s criticisms do not surprise me because I heard them all the way through the convention. But what I would point out is that he was one of the prime movers behind the European forum that took place in Brussels, so we have to be careful of some of the people we are having a dialogue with because they have a distinct agenda which is not necessarily one that we share. I want to mention particularly that in the Brussels forum, extensive discussions were held on the system of future financing. While those discussions are important, during the convention I spent quite a lot of time and a not insubstantial amount of effort in the specialist working group on future financing defending the rights of national parliaments. One of the fundamental rights of national parliaments is to approve own resources decisions. I spent an equal amount of time and energy defending the rights of governments to require unanimity in financial and budgetary questions, and therefore I am a little hesitant when I see our rights potentially being put up as future hostages with discussions about new systems of own resources, direct taxes on energy and other forms of direct taxation. No one can agree them in that forum, but on an agenda they do become issues that appear to have common purpose. If there is to be a continuation of this sort of dialogue, we have to be much more insistent on knowing exactly what our national parliament line is before we appear to be complicit in a discussion which later on we may find we want totally to oppose because it is contrary to our interests both nationally and as a national parliament. I wanted to take this opportunity to express some scepticism about the process. I do not mind discussion, but we have to consider very carefully the agenda and what our role is within that agenda before we appear to have been swept along with someone else’s agenda, which we later regret.