---

Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill

I too have signed this amendment, so shall speak to it. I remind the Committee of the 1972 Act and the debates which we had in Parliament at that time. As I was a Member of the House of Commons and took part in those debates, I have a memory of what was said about the impact that the 1972 Act would have on British life. We were assured when we were giving away the right to make our own rules that we had the veto. There was the ““empty chair”” situation, whereby nothing really mattered because if things affected us adversely, we could veto them. But times have changed. Gradually, over a period of time, ratchet by ratchet, treaty by treaty, the veto has been virtually taken away. Now, it almost no longer exists and everything is done by qualified majority. When regulations and directives are made, the United Kingdom has an influence on those decisions of only about 8.5 per cent. One could say that 55 per cent or 60 per cent, or whatever, of our laws are not being made here in Westminster, but that they are being made in Brussels by 24 countries, including ourselves, on the basis of qualified majority voting, and that decisions that are inimical to our own interests may very well be made. The amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, attempts to deal with this and I hope that it would deal with the matter if it were accepted. It makes the assertion that British sovereignty remains completely intact, given that all appearances suggest that it does not. In Committee on 3 July the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, stated: "““We want open markets—that is what the single European market is about””.—[Official Report, 3/7/06; col. 44.]" But, of course, we are not simply talking about the single European market; and, in any event, only10 per cent of our GDP is involved in such trade, which is a point that the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, would have made had he not had to visit his physician today. However, the regulations that come from Brussels affect the whole of British industry, not just the 10 per cent of it that is involved with the European Community. Regulations are being placed on areas of our industrial and, indeed, our national and political life, that are completely unnecessary for operations in this country and are sometimes not necessary in respect of the European Union, either. In addition, because we are part of the EC and the European single market, we are not allowed to decide what our trading policy should be. The results of that have been seen just recently, when the European Union placed tariffs on shoes coming from China and Vietnam. Perhaps people think that that does not matter, but it does. It will certainly matter to people with children, because we now find that the imposition of those tariffs will put 15 per cent on the cost of British shoes—so we have lost control of our trading arrangements. The other point I wish to make is that we are not really in a European Union market that believes in free trade, which, I thought that Her Majesty's Government, the Opposition and everyone else believed in. In fact, the single market is a closed market and access to it is only by agreement and is not open in the true sense of the word. So, again I say that the amendment is important. Once a regulation has been made, as noble Lords will know, it is incumbent on this country to put it into operation, whether it is gold-plated or not. Once a regulation is made by the Council of Ministers and once qualified majority voting is applied, it is incumbent on this country to put it into operation and there is nothing we can do to alter it. What are the consequences of that? I have been questioning the Government about a recent consequence which arises from the hazardous waste directive. The directive affects the use of lead and some other metals in electrical and electronic goods, and it will affect industries in this country to a large degree. It will put up their costs and, indeed, will put some companies out of business. I have tabled Questions to the Government about this, to which the Answer has been, ““Well, we can't do anything about it, and it's in the best interests of the single market that we can't.”” So, once a regulation is made, it does not matter how much it costs industry in this country, it has to be imposed and there is nothing that our Government can do about it. The cost of the directive throughout Europe will be about £44 billion, yet it is imposed on individual countries and there is nothing that they can do to protect their industries from possible bankruptcy. One could give all sorts of examples of the way in which the regulation operates in the European Union. At Question Time today, the Lord Chancellor accused me of being anti-European. That simply is not true. I am not anti-European: I am simply anti-European Union and anti the impositions that it makes on our sovereignty and on our industry and national life. It affects not only our trade but virtually everything, and we are not the only ones involved. The other day, the Bavarian environment Minister, Werner Schnappauf, talking about European over-regulation, said that in the 1990s the German regions had to comply with 90 regulations a year but that now the figure is closer to 500 a year. If that is happening in Germany, it must also be happening in this country. Thus, there has been a five-and-a-half-fold increase in the number of regulations since the 1990s, and that is an enormous burden on our industry and on the country generally. I have spoken for long enough—I am sure that some people think that I have spoken for too long—but I feel very strongly about the way that we are governed by regulations from the EU, which, in the context of the United Kingdom, have no real relevance. I believe that, by agreeing to the amendment, something could be done to mitigate the baleful effects which I fear come from our membership of the European Union and the way that it is operated.