EU Referendum: Assessing the Reform Process (EUC Report) — House of Lords, 2015-11-03
Topic: International Affairs
Archibald Gavin Hamilton (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, when I was a member of European Union Sub-Committee A, we produced copious reports. Most of them were pretty dull and boring as far as most people were concerned, but I must say that this report takes the biscuit—it really does. This is the most fantastically missed opportunity. I know that it is the convention of this House that I should congratulate my noble friend Lord Boswell on such a wonderful report, but I am not going to do that. I am actually going to address the report; I am not going to rerun the campaign, which is what we have been doing over the past few days in Committee on the European Union Referendum Bill. It is quite interesting that there are 19 members of the Select Committee, and only one is here tonight to debate the report—and that is the chairman of the committee, my noble friend Lord Boswell. I am not surprised that the other 18 have copped out; I would not want to put my name to this report, because it is a very dreary contribution to the debate Let us look into all this, because what is being negotiated in Europe is extremely complicated. People do not understand—or I, certainly, do not understand—what the different options are facing the Government if they want to get concessions out of Europe. There are three categories. There is the sort of stuff that can come through as a press release, which basically makes no difference to anybody and is probably stating the obvious. There are then certain measures that have to be taken which involve treaty change but, as I understand it—and I am more than happy to be put right on this, as we have great experts here this evening—if we are amending an existing treaty, and that is all that is involved, that can probably be ratified by national parliaments and does not involve a referendum. On the other hand, if what we are talking about involves a new treaty, at that stage we are in the business of ruling the thing out completely. The reason for that is, as stated by President Hollande of France, that he is not going to countenance the idea of a new treaty, because under the French constitution he has to hold a referendum and, if he holds a referendum in France on a new treaty he thinks—and he is probably right—that Le Pen would beat him. That seems to be sensible, logical politics. The Dutch would have to have a referendum, and I should think that they want one like a hole in the head, and the Danes are in the same position. The Irish would be extremely reluctant, and under their constitution they have to hold a referendum on a new treaty. So anything that is a concession given to our Prime Minister that involves a new treaty is actually not going to happen On top of that, I would have hoped that the committee would have looked around Europe and seen where we had friends and where we had enemies in terms of measures that we might put forward—what countries might support us and what countries would be against us. That would be a constructive element in this report, in response to the very vexed questions that we face. One big question, as raised by my noble friend Lord Lawson, is on the free movement of labour, which as I understand it involves a new treaty. On top of that, I do not think that a renegotiation has the support of member states of the EU. So on two questions, it is actually ruled out as something that can be negotiated, so we can forget about free movement of labour. I suspect that the Social Chapter and employment legislation would fall into the same category—that they would need a new treaty and, therefore, that is not going to happen. Also I doubt whether there is support for that within the EU We have to clarify what is going on here, what is negotiable and what is not. When the Government discovered that free movement of labour was completely unnegotiable, they started talking about depriving immigrants who come into the country from the EU of benefits. I gather that that has had a certain amount of flak from the Poles, who are not very keen on it. I am speaking off the top of my head, and I am happy to be rectified—I had rather hoped that the report might put one straight on these things—but I gather that that would involve amendment of existing treaties and therefore could be ratified by national parliaments. Then we go through all the things that have been raised by the Government, which they say they are negotiating about, such as ever-closer union. I must admit that, in my ignorance, I thought that John Major years ago negotiated that we did not have to be involved in ever-closer union, but I am told that that involves treaty change as well. Then there is the support for the single market and the financial services. It seems to me rather amazing that a number of countries in Europe have managed to exempt themselves from the single market in financial services, but that seems to be what happens. I thought the single market was designed to cover all areas of activity, but quite clearly it does not Then there is great determination that defence policy should remain the sovereign responsibility of this country. I am not sure an awful lot of negotiation needs to go on about that because that is the position as it stands now, and although there have been efforts to pool defence capabilities in Europe, I do not think they are getting very far There is lower EU spending. The noble Lord, Lord Kerr, will remember the times when we used to look at the reductions in the EU budget and compare it with the great undertakings. For some reason, whenever it had been reduced, we found it had actually gone up, and there was some very magical form of accounting which meant that lower spending meant that you spent more Reform of the common agricultural policy and structural funds are another area on which the Government are apparently looking for concessions. I remember when half our rebate was given away by Tony Blair in return for reform of the common agricultural policy. Of course, nothing has actually happened since, so I do not think we have to worry about that too much At the end of the day, we have a big problem—this has been alluded to by my noble friend Lord Lawson—that if the eurozone is going to survive, it has to have fiscal and political union. It has to come together, and inevitably we are going to be outside that, in which case we will be excluded. Decisions will be taken by the members of the eurozone who have a majority in the Council of Ministers. We have this great debate on whether we are going to be like Iceland or Norway, but at the end of the day if we stay in the EU we will be like Iceland and Norway because what will happen is the eurozone will hand down decisions that have been made by the eurozone members of the Council of Ministers and we will have to go along with them. It is extraordinary that we seem to be going on endlessly about the awful fate of being outside the EU and being like Norway and in fact we are going to be inside the EU and still have the fate of Norway A great deal has been made of the signing of trade deals. This is one of the other things the Government are very keen on getting agreement on. There are a number of trade deals. There are trade deals with the United States of America, China, India and Japan, and to date none of them has been ratified or signed. We hear constantly about how it is so much better to be a large unit representing 28 different countries to achieve trade deals, but when it comes to the main countries in the world that we want to do business with, to date we have not signed a free trade deal with any of them We are going to get concessions from Europe that we can remain a multicurrency EU. Is that not a wonderful thing? As long as you have people who are outside the eurozone, they will have their own currencies and we will inevitably be a multicurrency EU, so I do not think that is much of a concession either. It would have been nice if this report had explored these issues. We know what has been debated, but the reality is that the committee, about which I have the gravest doubts, made up its mind. It did not want to say that our Prime Minister is an emperor with no clothes, so therefore it produced this perfectly absurd report which has not addressed any of the issues that are of any interest to anybody whatever. I am very sorry that I cannot support my noble friend Lord Boswell and congratulate him on producing it.