European Union Referendum (Date of Referendum etc.) Regulations 2016 — House of Lords, 2016-03-02
Topic: International Affairs
Jeremy Ashdown (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord. I so much agreed with what the noble Lord, Lord Howell, had to say about Europe at last changing and feeling the impetus of the external events that cause it to reform. This is such a bad time, especially when we have friends, particularly Germany, who can help us reform and change Europe in the direction that he talked about and that I would strongly support I do not think my memory is playing me false when I recall hearing Mr Michael Gove in the context of the Scottish referendum saying to the people of Scotland, "We accept, of course, that you are a nation. We accept, of course, that you have sovereignty, but we believe that your sovereignty is best exercised when pooled with that of the United Kingdom in Scotland’s interest". There you have it. That is the argument. Quite so. It strikes me as odd that having articulated that and having realised that fact he then makes the conclusion that what is good for Scotland is not good for the United Kingdom within the European Union The case for getting out seems to me to rest on a strangely old-fashioned, almost Victorian, view of sovereignty—the days of Bagehot and Dicey, when all power rested in the nation state. It is no longer true. I suspect that there is now more power resting on the global stage today that affects the lives of ordinary citizens than is vested in the institutions of nation states like ourselves. The question is: how do you deal with that? There was a day when you could divide policies between domestic and foreign. You can no longer do that. There is no domestic issue that does not have a foreign quotient with it: not jobs; not the environment; not terrorism, which is international; not crime, which is international; not the creation of systems of security, when we pooled our sovereignty. We pooled our sovereignty right from the days of NATO; that is what NATO was about. There is no sovereignty a state has that is more important than the sovereignty to defend itself, yet we found it entirely in the national interest to pool that sovereignty with others to give us better protection for ourselves. That is the reality today The question is: how do you deal with those global forces? Are they better dealt with alone, singularly, acting unilaterally, or in concert with your friends with whom you share so many interests? Manifestly, it is the latter. There are those who argue, "Of course, we could set up these trade deals with other people". It would take a long time, by the way; it has taken Canada 10 years and it has not got there yet. It will take us a long time to set up a trade deal with, say, China. But how does that help us tackle crime on our streets when that is a European problem best tackled through the European arrest warrant on a European basis? How will it help us to create the clean environment that we want for the people of this country, when pollution is no respecter of borders? It is the deals we reach with our European partners that deliver what we want for our citizens I am a passionate European—not just because I believe in Europe; I find something attractive to this idea that it has put an end to war of 1,000 years, with the slaughter of countless millions of our young, by bringing ourselves together. I am also a passionate European because I remember in Bosnia, when I was trying to build peace after war, that it was the institutions of the European Union that gave me more assistance in creating those institutions of the state—a legal institution, a customs institution, and intelligence services. The European Union is a massive soft power that, acting together, helps to build peace after conflict. There is no better However, I am a much more passionate European for one other singular reason: there is nothing I want to see delivered for the people of Britain that cannot better be delivered by acting in partnership with our European Union partners than by acting alone. Nothing. We can tackle crime better through the European arrest warrant. We can create the environmental cleanliness we need because we can do that on a European basis. We can create better security. Yes, we can tackle refugees better, too. People look at this and say, "It’s the refugee issue that’s now persuading us not to vote for Europe". This is madness: this is not a new problem; this is an old problem that goes back for 1,000 years or more—the vast passage of peoples—and is much better dealt with on a European, regional basis than on a singular one If you think this is a new problem, let me tell you it is not. It will not stop at this either, because this will be one of the great strategic issues of our time—mass movements of people stimulated by war, pestilence, and plague, but above all by global warming. It is only if we work together that we can deal with that. The Prime Minister is right: if we were to withdraw from this process, the probability is that Sangatte would turn up at Dover. I recognise that the European Union is not dealing with the refugee issue very well, although it is somewhat hypocritical of us to criticise having taken not a single one of those miserable, desperate people tramping across the muddy roads of the Balkans to get to us. We have helped, by providing a home and assistance, not one of them. For us to do nothing to solve this problem and then carp and criticise Europe for not dealing with a million people in very short order is hypocrisy. They will get there over time. It will not be easy. It will not be elegant. But they will. This will be a major strategic issue for us in future, and it will be working regionally, together, that will assist us to solve that. I know that. I went not long ago to Kuala Lumpur to talk to the ASEAN nations which are already coming together to sort out the problems of massive movements of people out of the flooding Ganges delta Here is the thing I do not understand—I genuinely do not. Do we not understand how much the terms of trade of our existence have altered these past 10, 15 or 20 years? We no longer have a United States looking east across the Atlantic; it is looking far more west across the Pacific now. We no longer have the United States to act as our defender of last resort—our friend in all circumstances. It has its interests in the world and they do not necessarily coincide with ours. Meanwhile, on our eastern borders, we have a Russian President aggressively trying to destabilise and divide Europe. We can be sure that Vladimir Putin would be voting for us to leave as that is what he wants to see happen. He wants to divide Europe; that has been Russian policy for ages, and essentially we would be assisting him in doing so. To our south-east, the Arab world is in flames and, to our south, the Maghreb is in turbulence, reaching right down into Africa. All around us, new economic powers are growing up, individually more powerful than any of the European nations individually And should we believe that this is the time for us to abandon our solidarity with our European neighbours in such a turbulent and dangerous world, and the time for us to adopt the illusory sovereignty of a cork bobbing around behind other people’s ocean liners? That is the way to serve the worst interests of this country. By so doing, we would diminish our influence, we would diminish our protection and we would diminish our capacity for success.