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European Union (Amendment) Bill

No, the logic is the exact opposite. We should be realists. We should see that if we want to develop an effective energy scene for ourselves, we should do so on a global basis and look after our interests. If we talk about energy markets while others pursue completely different targets in completely different directions, we will find—as we found with the gas market—that it is impossible to be the liberal island in a larger area that is not liberal and which is governed by completely different principles. That is what I am saying. I was going on to say how much I enjoyed the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Rowlands. He and I served together and had many adventures in the international scene in the distant past. The question that he pressed was, ““What do these provisions do?””. That is a true and accurate question indeed. As my noble friend Lord Blackwell said, the treaty provisions—quite aside from whether they do anything; we are still not clear what they do—are extremely vague. As for the International Energy Agency, we signed up to it and gave certain undertakings. I suppose that we could have walked out on it at any time. I have a personal experience to share with your Lordships. In 1979 I went to Paris and chaired a meeting at which I signed up to various production, output and stock-sharing agreements with our neighbours in Europe in a spirit of solidarity. When I got back to London the then Prime Minister, my noble friend Lady Thatcher, was not at all pleased. In fact she glared at me and said, ““David, you are giving away our oil””. These are arrangements that we could have rescinded at any time, but the question in the future is whether our freedom to share our oil resources is in any way further restricted than it is already. Frankly, the IEA is not troubled at all by anything that my noble friend Lord Blackwell is saying. In fact, it provides perfectly adequately for good stock sharing. I do not understand why we need these extra provisions. The noble Lord, Lord Lea, talked about the mirage of energy policy. The real mirage is the EU energy policy because it is not there. If we believe that it is and others carry on because it is not, we will greatly damage the interests of our nation and our people very directly indeed. We want co-operation in Europe. As the noble Lord, Lord Bach, rightly said, there is plenty, but we do not need the further transfers of power set out in the treaty. We just do not need them. As for biofuels, the European energy advisory agency—a senior body and part of the Brussels Commission structure as I understand it—looked at this matter the other day, and it urged abandonment of the Commission’s biofuels targets. It said that they caused environmental damage and that they were having an effect on world food prices. That now appears to be the policy of the British Government as well.