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European Union (Amendment) Bill

I shall not get involved in the substance of the amendment and shall not support it. I will keep my head down to allow the flak to fly from the hardline withdrawalists sitting behind me against the entrenched position of the Brussels apologists who seem to agree that everything that comes from there is perfect. It seems to have escaped the notice of some Members of the Committee that although many amendments on these issues may have been tabled in the other place they were not debated. Very few amendments were debated, and that is precisely the complaint of the newspapers and the public and, indeed, of Members of all parties, including the Government party. These matters were not debated. We were urged by the Prime Minister to look at them line by line. It is particularly sad on an issue such as this, which does not seem to have a direct connection with the proposals in the Lisbon treaty, although it has a direct connection with the evolution of the European Union. There is a lot of new thinking. Commissioner Hübner has said that there is a need to adjust this policy—she means the EU regional policy and the cohesion fund policy—to the entirely new conditions of global trading. Energy issues, energy security, climate change issues, the internal market, the demographic challenge and entirely new approaches to overseas development are now bearing in on the policies of the past, and I am sad to hear them being dogmatically defended—along with a lot of nonsense of the kind we have just heard from the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, about our position, which was quite misleading and incorrect—and to hear that kind of debate going on in your Lordships’ House. We ought to be able to get hold of the new issues and realise that we need to have new thinking about them instead of doggedly defending the past. That is a great pity and very much to be regretted. The other thing that shocked me a bit in the final 20 minutes of the debate was the attitudes of the noble Lord, Lord Lea, whose views I normally admire, and the noble Lord, Lord Tomlinson, whose views I enjoy but do not necessarily agree with, about the procedure. They seemed to be saying that they wanted to close the debate down. They know perfectly well that if we are going to look line by line at the treaty, we have to table amendments. I said at the beginning that we know that we cannot change the treaty; it is given to us and there is nothing we can do about it except that in due course there will be other treaties and these matters will be reopened because they will not be settled by this. There will be more vigorous debates and more successful negotiating under a Conservative Government in the future than there has been under this rather deplorable and now dying Labour Government. That will happen. That is certainly so. However, the idea that we should therefore not debate these matters at all when they have not been debated in the Commons is quite shocking, and I am sorry to hear those two, usually excellent, Lords suggesting such a proposition.