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European Council: 14 December 2007

My Lords, watching the Prime Minister, I have worked out that his favourite bedtime reading is, How to Offend Friends and Alienate People. Last weekend, he managed to annoy the Europhobes by signing the treaty and the pro-Europeans by an exercise that sent all the wrong messages and—as the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, indicated—made us look silly. Fortunately, tomorrow the Liberal Democrats will have a new leader: young, committed to Europe and well versed in European affairs. He—either of them, they both fill this—will be a 21st-century leader, whereas the Prime Minister is looking increasingly like a leftover from the Attlee Government who famously boycotted the Coal and Steel Community talks because the Durham miners would not have it. However, despite the Prime Minister’s ineptitude, we will support the Government in their desire for Parliament to endorse this treaty via the European Union (Amendment) Bill, so long as the Bill is presented in a positive and forward-looking fashion. In reply to the criticism of the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, I say that for the Conservatives to continue to call for a referendum diminishes Parliament and ignores the fact that the earlier commitment to hold a referendum on the constitution ended when the Dutch and French said no and the constitution concept was abandoned. A referendum would distract and delay, without settling anything, for we know full well that almost anything to do with Europe thereafter would again elicit a demand for a further referendum. I know that some of my colleagues would like to smoke out the Conservatives by calling for a rerun of the 1975 in-or-out referendum, but I say to the Conservatives that politicians of all political parties should stop reaching for the referendum fig leaf every time they face a difficult decision. We are a parliamentary democracy, and it is here in Parliament that such decisions should be taken. We made a promise on a previous constitution which was abandoned after the French and Dutch said no. However, are we sure that the balance is right? Is the Lord President sure that, in seeking to draw red lines, we are not excluding ourselves from European co-operation in counterterrorism, drug control, the fight against organised crime, people trafficking and immigration control, where we need to work ever closer with our European neighbours? Is she really happy that a Labour Government, with no support from their trade union colleagues, seek to deny British people rights won in Europe for workers in societies that are more socially cohesive than provided by the so-called Anglo-Saxon model, with its wide disparities of wealth? On Iran, the Balkans and Kosovo, surely the lessons all come back to the fact that Europe working together is more effective. Can the Minister think of a major issue where Britain’s voice is not made more effective by being part of Europe—be it climate change, the world trade talks, Afghanistan, Africa or the Middle East? Will the Prime Minister be taking a more positive role than hitherto in promoting greater cohesion in defence and foreign policy? Does she agree that it is time to face the more daunting agenda facing Europe? When we come to the treaty in early spring, will this House follow the other place in debating by topic, in an orderly and structural way, so that we can have a proper examination of the Bill? What the Prime Minister signed in Lisbon was the necessary amending treaty to make organisational sense of the expansion of the European Union to 27 members and beyond, and it is welcome to know that Croatia, Serbia and Turkey are now in that pipeline as well. The real hypocrisy is not among those who want to ratify the treaty, like all parliamentary treaties, by parliamentary means, but among those who argued for enlargement but now wish to deny Europe the means to make enlargement work. Perhaps I may offer one quote from the Prime Ministerial Statement, which I greatly welcomed; it is in reference to Iran but I think it has wider implications. The Prime Minister says that, "““there was agreement on a united European approach. Here again, the power we wield working with all the EU is greater than if we acted on our own””." If that is what he concluded from his little jaunt to Lisbon, the trip was well worth while.