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European Union (Amendment) Bill

My Lords, for nearly 40 years, this country of ours has been grappling with how to create wholehearted consent behind British membership of the European Union; that remains a fundamental objective of those of us who support our membership. It is a deeply unsatisfactory reality that in those 38 years there have been substantial periods of division between the parties, with considerable public dissent and often a lack of enthusiasm for the European Union. The noble Baroness the Leader of the House has a very heavy responsibility, but she started off extremely well by agreeing to start this debate and wind it up, and by trying to show that this House can substantially improve the legislation before us and—more importantly—the acceptability of the Lisbon treaty to the people of this country. I hope that she will be supported in this by the Prime Minister, who has a good record on this issue. There is no doubt that he is a strong European, and I welcome that. But he has also been ready to understand—and he is often quite unfairly criticised for this—that it was not necessary to support membership of the eurozone to be a committed European. Now we hear very few people arguing that Britain should be a member of the eurozone. That was not the situation eight years ago. It is profoundly important in facing the problems of this country to recognise that we will see a devaluation of our currency. If we were in the eurozone, that would have been impossible. I say that only because the Prime Minister will, I hope, pay attention to this debate and will recognise that the debate that took place in the House of Commons was in many respects deeply unsatisfactory. I hope that he and the noble Lord the Leader of the Liberal Democrats in this House will look with great favour at doing something to strengthen the parliamentary brake. When the noble Lord was advising Lord Callaghan—then Jim Callaghan—as Prime Minister, he and I worked very hard on the European Assembly Elections Act and introduced the brake whereby an Act of Parliament had to be passed before there could be any increases in the powers of the European Parliament. Many people, as he knows, told us that it was impossible to do that. We were able to do it and we could do it again. The Government have come some way to meet the passerelle or ratchet clause—whatever one wishes to call it—by saying that there has to be a parliamentary decision in both Houses. However, we all know—particularly people who were previously in the House of Commons—that that is not a serious brake. Why do we have full legislation and due process and take weeks and months over it? We do so because we know that it provides a real democratic safeguard. I beg the Prime Minister, in particular, to look again at this issue and to allow a full parliamentary legislative Act if we are to increase qualified majority voting in other aspects of the passerelle clause. That is of fundamental importance and it would show a measure of confidence. It would take time but it could be reciprocated as people understood that the Government were trying to carry them with them over this process. It is particularly important in relation to, say, Clause 6(3), that part of the Bill that involves qualified majority voting in foreign policy. That is by any standard a major constitutional issue. The Government say that they will not do that, but they should not ask this Parliament to give that power and not be prepared to come back with a full Act of Parliament. I hope that the Liberal Democrat party will be with us on that amendment, as it was in the House of Commons. Secondly, the interpretation of the words of the Lisbon treaty presents a serious problem. That is not just my view. The House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, which published a very good report on aspects of the Lisbon treaty, concluded that, "““it is regrettable that the Lisbon Treaty does not state explicitly that the new European Council President may not simultaneously hold any other office””." I have raised that matter repeatedly and I make no exception today. If the European Council President were to be double-hatted with the high representative or the President of the Commission, that would be a massive step. The noble Baroness, Lady Ashton, shakes her head and I hope that tonight she reaffirms the Government’s position that it will not be possible to do that. However, the Dutch Government do not hold to that agreement. They have told their Parliament that such a move is possible. The Paris correspondent of the Independent said in an article on 18 March: "““The obvious solution would be to appoint the same person as council President and EC President, with the High Representative as his or her sidekick and ‘foreign minister’. There is nothing in the EU treaties, as amended by the reform treaty, to prevent this from happening. You would then have a genuine ‘President for Europe’ with real scope and power. For this reason alone, it will not happen””." He may or may not be right but there is already a blog on this very subject. What will happen if, on a qualified majority vote, the European Council proposes that there should be such a merger? The British Government will oppose it and it will then go to the European Court of Justice. What will happen if that court says that the Dutch Government were right all along and the British Government were wrong? Tomorrow, I shall table a new clause to try to ensure that we have an appeal mechanism on the interpretation of the wording that, if necessary, goes right up to the Supreme Court. I have no reason to believe that the wording will be right but anyone—preferably the Government—can take it on because I, as a mere Cross-Bencher, cannot propose it. Such a mechanism is, after all, open to us in relation to all other legislation. If, during the passage of this legislation, we were assured that a merger of this kind could not happen but then it did happen, we could at least appeal to the Supreme Court. Politically, the Government’s position would be greatly strengthened by saying that up with this they could not put. Because of the way in which the wording of the treaty has emerged, aspects of it have great dubiety. Let us take another example. It is said that the European Court of Justice cannot be involved in matters of common foreign and security policy. However, under the Lisbon treaty, for the first time the European Council is subject to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice. In the CFSP parts of the treaty, the Council is not subject to the Court, yet we are told that in the European Council one of the roles of the new President—about which I have views but that does not matter; we have it here and now—will be ensuring the external representation of the Union on issues concerning the CFSP. Again, what happens if the European Court of Justice uses that role or that mention of the CFSP to come in on the whole role of the CFSP? People may say that that is far-fetched but we have seen it happen. The noble Lord, Lord Wedderburn, has called it a creative Court. In the past, it has made some very strange judgments—I put it no higher than that—and I think that we need the safeguard of being able to appeal to our new Supreme Court on the interpretation of the treaty’s wording. That would have great value. I want to be able to support a referendum on this treaty—I do not want to vote against it. Personally, I think that there should be a referendum, if for no other reason than that the then Prime Minister told the people of this country that there would be one. However, I am afraid that we could very well find the situation that was hinted at earlier—that is, in, say, 2010-11 there will be a rerun of the situation that we faced in 1974-75. People say that referendums have had no value but I believe that their value has been substantial. The 1975 referendum began to win back people’s confidence in our European membership. Furthermore, when the then Labour Party, regrettably, for a time committed itself to coming out of the EU without even a referendum, the fact that there had previously been a referendum was a substantial factor in getting the party to come round to being fully committed again to membership of the European Union—a fact that I greatly welcomed. Therefore, referendums have had substantial value. The former Foreign Secretary, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe, said something with which I strongly agreed. He warned about the danger of not ratifying the treaty. We may not like where we are. I do not like this treaty. There are many problems with it, although it is a great deal better than the constitutional treaty that came out of the Giscard d’Estaing convention, which was a perfect disgrace; in my view, it has been improved. Nevertheless, for us to reject it would have profound political implications in Europe. None of us should lightly cast this off. I can see a situation where a new Government, were they to be elected in 2009 or 2010, might well, if they were a Conservative Government, have to come back to the people of this county and argue for a referendum that we should stay—having made some of these changes to strengthen the case, I hope, if they had not been made by the present Government. Therefore, in the next few months we have to address the important issue of improving the treaty and making it more acceptable to the people of this country.