European Union Referendum Bill — House of Lords, 2015-10-28
Topic: International Affairs
Donald Anderson (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, Amendment 2, moved by my noble friend, has a certain merit: to give adequate time for the negotiations. He brings to our debate very much experience of the workings of the Brussels bureaucracy. It is clear that 2017 will be a year full of elections and pitfalls. There is the French election: I do not imagine that Mme Le Pen will win, but she could possibly do very well, which could have an effect on the French position. There is the German election—the Chancellor’s election—and at the moment, we know that, perhaps because of her position on migration, Chancellor Merkel appears to be under some real pressure for the first time. Of course, there is the EU presidency of our own country, so there is some merit in saying, "Let’s play it long" There are a lot of suggestions in our press that, thus far, negotiations have been very slow; it has been a technical matter. Perhaps it is only now clear, when the obvious point has been brought forward that the Norwegian precedent has some attractions. I am part Norwegian myself and, dare I say, my family were bitterly divided about the referendum. That precedent, as any Norwegian will tell you, and as the Prime Minister has said, means that Norway is adhering more to the rules than most actual, current members of the union, without any say at the table in framing those rules. It is said that we are making extremely slow progress; it will need a very big bang indeed for the broad lines of an outcome to be available within a reasonable period It is fair to say, as, perhaps, many noble colleagues on the other side would agree, that the Prime Minister has set out a perhaps realistic but rather minimalist agenda for what he hopes to achieve. The problem is this: the agenda of our partners in the European Union is very crowded indeed at the moment. We saw that at the last Council meeting. The focus is on migration; the effect is only to show the divisions within the European Union on this most sensitive of issues. Even if for us, our own position in regard to the Union is by far the number one issue, it might well be that for all our partners, it is not, in fact, the number one issue and they will have other issues on the agenda There will be changes, too: we should think of the different interpretations of the effect of the Polish agenda. Will it make the Poles even stronger, for example, in relation to welfare benefits for the Poles who are already in this country contributing massively to our own country? There will be other changes as a result. The real problem, however, is this: will there be adequate time, as my noble friend asked, for treaty amendment? The writings and speeches of Mr Liam Fox in the other place are honest and true; there will not be adequate time for treaty amendment in all the other countries. We have seen the precedents of this in terms of France, the Netherlands and Ireland: all of this takes time It is also very true from one’s own experience that, in these referenda, it is often not the main issue that is decided by the electorate, but rather the extraneous matters that come to the fore. There is a great problem: I think Mr Liam Fox mentioned a post-dated cheque, and my noble friend mentioned a promissory note. How much credence or weight can one put on a promissory note? The existing Governments may well say that they are happy to give us the protocols that we want, but is that bankable? Each of those countries may have elections between the time they make the promise and the time of the referendum, or afterwards—which, because of the change of Government, they will not be able to deliver.