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European Union (Amendment) Bill

My Lords, the challenge is to follow that. I heard the noble Lord, Lord Owen, describe a part of Britain’s constitutional history, on which I remember being closely associated with him. I remember standing shoulder to shoulder with him on most of the issues that were discussed at the beginning of this country’s membership of the European Union in the 1970s, but I part company with him today on its precise relevance to the issue before us. The question of whether Britain should join the European Community, as it then was, was of immense importance. Even if one took the view, as I did, that in a parliamentary representative democracy referenda are not ideal because they tend to lead, despite the disavowal of the noble Lord, to a plebiscitary notion of how we should govern ourselves, it was arguable then that this was an issue that should be decided by the public. By any objective test, the Lisbon treaty is a very different matter for this country. Having served, along with the noble Lords, Lord Tomlinson and Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, on the convention that drafted the constitutional treaty, I am bound to say that in my judgment, even if the constitutional treaty had been adopted, it is arguable whether it would have been sensible to have a referendum. I know the political arguments—I heard them in my own party—as to why we should have one. Once again, it was arguable that this treaty, drafted and signed by 27 members, which purported to establish a framework that would in some sense be final and a framework for further jurisdiction by the European Court of Justice, was of such emblematic importance that it was necessary or appropriate to have a referendum. In the case of the treaty of Lisbon, which is just one of a series of amending treaties, I cannot understand why the Conservative Party in opposition finds it necessary to argue that it should be treated any differently from those that it was responsible for negotiating in connection with the Single European Act.