---

European Union (Amendment) Bill

My Lords, I do not know what I have done to deserve being singled out by the noble Lord, Lord McNally, who, in his opening remarks, accused me of shooting a fox. The noble Lord, Lord Sewel, has said that I am a taxidermist or a bird-stuffer. Of the two I would probably choose to be a bird-stuffer. I do not know; I will ask the noble Lord, Lord McNally, about that. During Madame Sarkozy’s successful visit a couple of weeks ago, her husband was interviewed on the ““Today”” programme about the implications of the reform treaty for Britain. He said: "““No one is asking Britain to change its real identity. Keep your language, your culture, your interests””." That is very big of him, is it not? He conspicuously did not say, ““Keep your parliamentary democracy and powers””. Of course he did not say that, because he knew that it would not be true. It simply cannot happen. In the very next breath in that interview, he said: "““Thanks to the … treaty we are going to have a common immigration policy … the very first thing I am going to do””—" presumably he is talking about the French presidency of the EU— "““is tackle the European migration pact””." There we go. We can keep our language and customs, yes, but we cannot keep our parliamentary democracy. That will be elsewhere. I am sorry to say that the powers of Parliament have been substantially surrendered to Brussels. I remind your Lordships of one or two of those areas. Immigration, as has been mentioned this afternoon, is already largely an EU competence. None of the 27 members states have powers to control immigration. Indeed—referring to the ““crooks and nannies”” of the noble Lord, Lord Harrison—we have no power to deport any crooks from the 27 members states. Witness the sad inability to return the murderer of Philip Lawrence to Italy where he was born. We are unable to do that because of EU law to which we have signed up. Crooks and nannies, nooks and crannies; we cannot do anything about it. Our trade policy is decided in Brussels, negotiated on our behalf by the European Commissioner for Trade, currently none other than our very own Peter Mandelson. We have lost control of our fishing industry. That has been wrecked by the common fisheries policy, which is repeatedly condemned by the Select Committees of this House. I served on Sub-Committee D at one stage, and eventually got tired of standing up and saying how awful the common fisheries policy was. Actually, nothing has changed; the noble Lord, Lord Sewel, was honest enough to admit that. Equally, agriculture and environmental policy is still dictated by Brussels. We have just heard that nothing has changed, or is it likely to change. There is a pious hope that things may change, but it remains just a hope. I ask the noble Lord, Lord Sewel, whether it would not be better if we repatriated agricultural policy and decided for ourselves what it would be, rather than let it be done in the dark, misty corridors of the Brussels comitology. We have managed to lock ourselves into the absurd EU biofuels policy, notably the renewable fuels transport obligation. I saw that that was criticised as ““insane”” by none other than Defra’s chief scientific adviser, Professor Bob Watson, last week. Even the Commission is starting to think that, but we cannot do anything about it because we must rely on the Commission to change it: we have already signed up to it. We have no say whatever in that field. Perhaps that is no more insane than our aspiration to meet the EU-imposed renewable energy obligations which the Government’s own advisers have already said are almost entirely unattainable. We just will not get there: 20 per cent of our energy from renewables by 2020 is not going to happen. However, we cannot decide that for ourselves. This Parliament—our House and the other place—has no say whatever in our own achievements or what we want to attain in renewables and biofuels. We cannot touch it. It is not there. So Parliament seems to have already contracted out much of its power to the Brussels bureaucracy and the Lisbon treaty just moves a little bit—a great deal—more away from Parliament to Brussels. For years we have heard the soothing mood music from the Europhiles: ““Don’t be alarmed, there is nothing much happening. There has been no loss of sovereignty. The treaty simply aims to make the European Union more efficient. There will be no significant transfer of powers””. That is what we have been told for years. Who here remembers that the noble Lord, Lord Hurd, called the Maastricht treaty the high water mark of European integration? I wonder whether he still believes that and could say it now with a straight face. I do not think he could. In today’s Times we have more cooing from the Europhile doves. The noble Lord, Lord Brittan, has written an article headed, "““How piquant if unelected Lords impose a referendum””." He repeats the soft soap stuff; the canard that the, "““purpose of the treaty is to make the EU function more efficiently””." We have heard that a lot this afternoon. The fact is that without this treaty the EU is already producing a mass of legislation. Thousands of regulations and directives are produced every year that this House and the other place simply cannot touch. We have to rubber stamp. We cannot alter a single comma of it. We all know that, do we not? Yes, we do. Thousands of directives and regulations go through without being scrutinised. Well, we can scrutinise and debate, but we cannot change them, even if we disagree with them. Nothing can be changed. In his article, the noble Lord, Lord Brittan, goes on: "““In the sensitive areas such as taxation and social security Britain will retain its veto””." In fact, tax is not mentioned in the treaty, so there is no point throwing that up in the air and then shooting it down. It is not even mentioned. As for social security, the treaty is quite clear in, I think, Article 150 or 160. It states that: "““The union may take initiatives to ensure coordination of Member States’ social polices””," so social policy is not safe either. The noble Lord, Lord Brittan, goes on to pray in aid the protocol preventing the European Charter of Fundamental Rights being justiciable in the UK. My noble friend Lord Howell dealt with that in his opening remarks. He is quite right that it will not be up to this House or the other place to decide. Our Parliament cannot do that. It is going to be up to the European Court of Justice to decide exactly where, when and how the European Charter of Fundamental Rights is to be justiciable. The noble Lord, Lord Tomlinson, quoted Profession Damian Chalmers. I will quote him again in the context of the European Charter of Fundamental Rights. "““The protocol does not say the Court cannot apply the Charter to the UK: it just says it cannot extend it … People who think we have some sort of opt-out are going to be in for a surprise in that regard””." That is what will happen. It will be extended. That is what he says. The opt-out is simply not secure. Let us not dream about that. The noble Lord, Lord Brittan, then tells us that new powers are granted to national parliaments. I like the word ““granted””. Just who is granting powers to national parliaments? I thought national parliaments were sovereign. Who is granting us powers from the EU or EU treaties? It is completely absurd. Under the treaty, national parliaments will be significantly weakened, not strengthened. Half the national parliaments must object to a proposal even to begin the process of turning back or refusing a Commission directive or proposal. That is assuming that half the national parliaments—14—will be given the time by their Governments in the eight-week window which is allowed to scrutinise draft legislation. Then they can return their objections to the Commission which—surprise, surprise—can overrule them. That does not give national Parliaments any further powers; it reduces them considerably. I do not get any confidence or comfort from getting our voting weight up in the Council of Ministers. After all, under the treaty it becomes an EU institution in its own right, so going up from 8 per cent to 12 per cent is neither here nor there. In my view, the Council of Ministers is part of the problem, not part of the solution. Then the noble Lord, Lord Brittan, in his article, moves on to the question of referendums. He is opposed to them, "““as they are incompatible with representative parliamentary government, the true hallmark of the British constitutional system””." That sounds wonderfully statesman-like and unarguable as a principle, but it falls because, as my noble friend Lord Leach said so cogently in his speech, the British people have not been asked and they have therefore never given their consent for their representative parliamentary government, as the noble Lord, Lord Brittan, has it, to hand over permanently to an unelected bureaucracy in Brussels powers that were only lent to them temporarily for the term of a five-year Parliament. However, that is what has been happening over the years; over the treaties, Parliament has been giving away powers that were not its to give away. That is why people are so furious, so disillusioned with the whole EU process. Finally, the noble Lord, Lord Brittan, tells us that, "““it would be piquant … for an unelected House to seek to impose a referendum, the ultimate manifestation of populist democracy, where the elected House has declined to do so””." I am not quite sure about what the difference between populist democracy and democracy is. It is probably that populist democracy is when you lose the argument and democracy is when you win it. My view is that it would be piquant, to put it very mildly, for the British people to be denied a referendum when they have been explicitly promised one by all three main political parties.