EU Referendum: Assessing the Reform Process (EUC Report) — House of Lords, 2015-11-03
Topic: Mixed Topics
Timothy Boswell (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, veterans of debates on the European Union and reports of the Select Committee and its sub-committees will be familiar with the fact that we are often obliged to do this at a late hour. That is partly a function of being able to get the reports debated in a timely manner. If we are honest, there are occasions when the subject matter is somewhat staid and the comments are occasionally even a touch self-congratulatory. I think we have been spared that tonight. The convention is to say that we have had a very good debate, but actually, amazingly enough, we have; it has been very lively, and one could almost call it enjoyable. I would take some encouragement from that, in that there may be something going on in the air, because there appears to be a renewed interest, sensitivity and liveliness about the debate, which is probably to the good for the future It is late and I do not intend to speak at length, but, first, I should say that the Minister is very good—sometimes better than some of the professional politicians, if I may put it that way—at playing a straight bat against both fast bowling and some deadly spin. He has done that in a way that the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, forecast, almost quintessentially. In a sense, I admire that technique. Amazingly enough, we manage to distil words of wisdom even as we go along, albeit that it is a slow process. I reflect on my own experience as a Minister, when the dilemma was not what you knew—that was quite easy—but what you knew but could not remember whether you were allowed to say, which was more difficult. However, the debate will continue, as it will with other noble Lords I do not want to go through in seriatim, but there have been some important calls for better vision and fascinating suggestions about better communication with this committee and the role of this committee in communicating at large. If I can do so without invidiousness, I shall single out three contributions to comment on. The first is that of the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, who remains my good friend. He is very right, occasionally, to shake us up. He did not like the report, and I am sorry about that. I suppose my excuse is a sort of Billy Bunter excuse for eating the cake: it was quite a small one. The reason the report was quite a small one was, as we say in our final paragraph, that we are beginning the process of shedding light on the process. There is more work to be done Many of his adversions related to the treaties and how they would interact, what would happen to them and whether it would be necessary to change them. Frankly, we need to remind the House that the Government, not the EU Select Committee, have called, in their terms, for a new settlement with the European Union, which they are negotiating and on which it is our duty to comment. We are not, as it were, functioning as the Government. We are not striking out too far. However, I take the point, and I think in our forthcoming report on visions we will want to give a bit more meat to this process. As we learn more of the Government’s intentions from the letter to President Tusk and otherwise, we will take that forward The second contribution was made by the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, who talked about a possible scenario on exit. I know that the Government are very reluctant to talk about this. I would like to report to the House and to the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, that it may not be as simple as that. If one thinks that there may or may not be treaty change engaged in remaining, it is almost certain, on the intelligence and advice I have received, that there would be treaty change on leaving. It would require three treaty changes under Article 50: a treaty of withdrawal negotiating our exit; an amending treaty for the remaining 27 member states who would have to take us out of the equations of the Lisbon treaty; and, one assumes, a future treaty of association between the United Kingdom and European Union. That is a triple bill which might entail all these potentials for referenda and other debates to go on. However, I leave that I shall close on two aspects of the comments of the noble Viscount, Lord Brookeborough. I acknowledge that he was not the only speaker, although I think he is the resident most directly affected, who talked about the sensibility of the devolved Administrations. He singled out the problems in the island of Ireland. I think I am right in saying that near Clones one of the major roads crosses the border four times in five miles, which is an example of the kind of issue that can arise—and that is before you look at some of the constitutional implications of the Anglo-Irish agreement and so forth. We are sensitive to that and we will continue that work with our colleagues in the devolved Administrations Even more, he made an impassioned point which reflects the view of us all that there should be as much plain speaking and common sense about this discussion as there can be. I understand that the words "derogation", "protocol" and so forth trip off our tongues easily because we are used to them, but they not the kind of thing that will engage the electorate. We have a primary duty to report to this House, and we have an important secondary duty to contribute to the national debate which will now start to get under way and to do it in a fair and objective way. In doing that, we will need to focus very carefully on what the Government are doing. We will then report as we can and as material becomes clearer to us. We have made a start. We intend to carry on. I am very grateful for the support of noble Lords in this debate tonight.