---

European Union (Amendment) Bill

My Lords, I thank the Lord President for her patience and endurance during recent weeks in coming to this point in the handling of the Bill and in accepting the admitted novelty of my Motion. On the issue of postponement—it is postponement and not abandonment—until no earlier than 20 October, it is for the Government to decide after that date when it would be sensible to revisit and recommit. That is what the Motion says. It would be wrong for me to disguise the fact that I dislike aspects of the Bill. I have made no secret of that throughout our discussions on it and I have made no secret of my view that it is contrary to many people's assertions—what about Maastricht, what about Nice and so on?—that this is a different Bill. First, textually, it obviously is the constitution. We have had long debates on that and people in good faith just disagree. I find it difficult to understand that disagreement because the text is the same. Most people outside this House and in Europe, except one or two, believe that it is the same. Secondly, it is of constitutional significance. People may have missed that the reason our Irish friends had a referendum is not because it is in their constitution to do so, but because the High Court judges in Dublin looked at it and ruled that it was a constitution and therefore, a referendum was necessary. Thirdly, this is a Bill unlike any previous EU Bill before this House, including the European Communities Act 1972. It is more open-ended, with more facilities and provisions for self-expansion and continuation of the expansion of powers than any previous treaty. For all those reasons, I do not disguise my dislike of the Bill. It is full of things that the Government did not want and fought vigorously to reject and failed. Therefore, one has to conclude that the negotiation was not a rip-roaring success. If one reads the details of negotiation, both of the constitutional treaty and the Lisbon treaty, it is fairly clear that Ministers were less deft—or, as one cruel observer said, inexperienced—and as a result did not get the treaty they wanted. However, our job as an amending Chamber is to improve the Bill and seek to amend it, which, so far in our proceedings, we have not done. We know that we cannot change the treaty; the treaty is now in limbo as the noble Lord, Lord Neill, and others have made clear beyond all doubt. Yet it must be all the more our duty when conditions and facts have changed. A lot of the discussion has been as though we are moving smoothly through a process which we ought now to bring to a conclusion, without accepting that the context has changed radically. The Irish decision not to ratify means that this treaty is now in a very difficult state. ““Almost, not entirely, killed””, says our Foreign Minister and our Prime Minister; ““In a coma””, says somebody else; ““Asleep””, says somebody else. Certainly, the treaty is not in a state where it is ready to be brought into force. Now that other Parliaments—the Czechs in Prague—have said with authority that they will not proceed and have postponed ratification pending further constitution examinations by their justices, we cannot just say that it does not matter. I do not carry in my head, but others do, how many more countries have yet to ratify or how many will have second thoughts and have a pause. These are changed conditions. Surely we need to be flexible enough in our approach not to abandon things, not to wipe out any further legislation—that would be absurd—but to pause and reflect and take into account, particularly in the elected Chamber but also in this one, the new conditions which we now face. It has to be said, too, although I understand the worries about populism and following opinion polls, that what is being done is thoroughly unpopular. We have the guidance of the excellent poll by YouGov, which I know the noble Baroness the Lord President follows very closely, too. This tells us that, in the very latest tests, 54 per cent of those polled want the legislation dropped. They want us to halt the process and think again. Sixty-eight per cent say that the EU is out of touch with normal people. I think that is cruel, but that is what many people throughout Europe believe. That is the sort of attitude that produces the result we have seen in the Republic of Ireland. There is one more statistic that I cannot resist, and that is that 88 per cent cannot name their Members of the European Parliament. Of those attempting, the majority choice was Neil Kinnock. That is thoroughly well-deserved. He has most assiduously attended all these debates and I congratulate him. I fear that, behind all these arguments about the treaty and the worry as to whether we have got the right negotiated bargain over the constitutional treaty—or this one, nearly the same text—lies a legacy of uncertain and often mishandled foreign policy over 10 years or more. We often debated the issues in this House in a very thorough way and pointed to some of the many difficulties we are in today. We have tried, as everyone knows, to please Washington and Brussels. Frankly, we have succeeded with neither. We have greatly weakened ourselves in our position in the world as a result. Now we are told by the foreign policy experts that the way to strengthen it is to ratify this treaty, so that we allow the Prime Minister to arrive at the Council of Europe in the next few days in a strong position, enabled to repair things. I find that a very puzzling piece of Foreign Office advice. If the possibility is there to rescue the treaty, as my noble friend Lord Brittan said in a stentorian and tremendous oration—maybe it is; who is to say as there are all sorts of ingenious minds at work?—then far from the Prime Minister arriving with the whole of our legislative process tied up in a bag, finished, concreted over, and settled, he would be in a far more flexible and stronger position if he could say that our legislative process is open and that we have yet to have in the House of Commons, our elected House, the prospect of discussing a new approach and taking on board new developments. Let us at least be wise enough to delay the Bill and ensure that we and the elected Chamber can have a pause for reflection on the new situation. The Irish may say, ““Ratify it””, but they also say, ““Pause””. They give both messages very loudly indeed. As the noble Lord, Lord Owen, says, the best way to help the Irish would be to pause and reflect, as the Czechs are doing. We ignore at our peril some of the very fine voices of liberty and freedom that come from Prague. That must be the democratic route—not to abandon but to postpone— and we should take that route this evening. Therefore, I seek to test the opinion of the House on that choice. On Question, Whether the said amendment shall be agreed to? Their Lordships divided: Contents, 184; Not-Contents, 277. On Question, Bill read a third time.