EU Referendum and EU Reform (EUC Report) — House of Lords, 2016-06-15
Topic: International Affairs
Timothy Boswell (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, the House will be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, for his generous response to our three committee reports collectively, and for the tone in which he explained the Government’s position. I was rather moved by his final remarks, although that will not shake our formal position of independence on this issue As the noble Lord said, this has been a very remarkable, extended and unusually balanced debate. The epithets I will attach to it are "rich" and "reflective", because it has gone through a very wide area. As I indicated at the beginning, I have welcomed the contribution on science, which has added to the debate. We have ranged widely and properly through subjects such as, from the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, the position of the poorest countries of this world in relation to this, which we so often forget, and, from the noble Lord, Lord Low, disabled people. This matter touches us all Inevitably, I will concentrate more on the political, diplomatic and legal matters. There will not be time to comment on everyone’s contribution. If I may single out without invidiousness the noble Lord, Lord Howell, who often takes the House to another stage of perception towards the future, he chided us a little bit—and rightly so—for perhaps not giving a full flavour of that vision, although we said that the Government needed to do that. We certainly do have a contribution to make in this House and through our committees in taking the argument further, whether we stay in or move out. One of our sub-committees has very recently reported on digital platforms—one of the subjects that the noble Lord specifically mentioned. As it happens, its last report was on the control of pilotless drones, so we are keeping up with this. In fact, we took some of that sub-committee’s observations to an international meeting only this week, where we shared them with colleagues. So we will not mess about with that; we will do our wider duties as well as the more particularly political ones I will turn to two areas that I think have not had quite enough attention in this debate but which reflect, in a sense, the remit of our committee. Of course, we report to this House, but one area which is certainly not our direct responsibility but which we should bear in mind—some noble Lords referred to it—is the question of our colleagues, the other 27 members of the European Union. Occasionally, some of the public comment here suggests that we operate on our own without reference to them, but I will pick up, on this occasion entirely with approval, the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, who said that we are not their enemies. Of course we are not their enemies. Indeed, we do not want to make them our enemies; we want to have a good relationship If I may refer again to the international conference I have just attended on behalf of the House with the noble Baronesses, Lady Falkner and Lady Armstrong, who both contributed so thoughtfully to this debate, we had all the other 27 member states represented, in one form or another. Though they did not make large, pro-forma pronouncements, the number of them who came up to us in the margins and said, "What is going on? We are concerned about this. We are concerned for ourselves as well as for you", was quite remarkable The second constituency I am conscious of—and while I do not expect people to read every word of our report I hope that some of the messages will distil—is the wider constituency of the electorate who have to make this decision next week. We have a lot of people who yearn for clarity, objectivity and a degree of sensible, sober presentation, and, as a number of noble Lords have said, they do not feel that they have entirely had it yet. I would like, in concluding this debate, to draw out two areas The first is the complexity side of all this, perhaps best expressed in our short report on withdrawal. In looking at that, I would say to people who have not read it, "Just read the appended Article 50". If that is too long—and the number is just a coincidence—just read Sir David Edward’s evidence at paragraphs 49 and 50, the latter of which has been referred to by a number of noble Lords, including the Minister. This is a very complicated process. It involves us all. We do not always remember that it involves us all. I have declared, although I did not mention it this afternoon, that I am in receipt of payments under the common agricultural policy. In that case, there does not appear to be a conflict, because in fact the leave campaign has undertaken to restore those payments. I will leave that one for contemplation Let me be a little more down to earth. I do not often bring out a visual aid, but here is a European health insurance card. I recently renewed this. It was done with huge efficiency online and came back virtually by return from the Department of Health. It tells me that I am covered until 18 April 2021. Well, I do not know whether I am or not. I do not know whether I would be told if I was not, or whether the UK Government would pay for me to be even if it were not part of a European scheme. I just mention that because it is a small, hands-on example of the complexity of this I can understand, in a sense, that that is adding to people’s difficulty in making their decision. We have had some indications of passion and vision from a number of noble Lords, including the Minister. There comes a time when you move from the tabloid headline or the saloon-bar comment, or the fact that you wrote to TripAdvisor after you had had a bad night. That is one area of how we live our lives and we do it perhaps too often, but you then move to the other decision, where you think, you reflect, you count twice and then you decide at the ballot box. That is the moment when it really matters. It is not the duty of this House to tell people how to do it, but it is our duty to tell them that we will help them to think seriously about it. It is a serious decision that we want them to take and we will then respect it. I beg to move.