Leaving the European Union
Lord Bilimoria Excerpts(5 years, 2 months ago)
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Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
As I have said, the alternative arrangements are not a novel concept; they are mentioned and referred to in the political declaration, and discussions have happened. Many of the existing technologies that could be used to avoid a hard border are already developed. However, many of them have not been used together, which is why further work needs to be done. We have to make sure that they are workable and, importantly, operate in the specific circumstances of Northern Ireland. It is doable and we are working together to try to achieve it.
Lord Bilimoria (CB)
The Statement says clearly:
“What kind of a message would that send to the more than 17 million people who voted to leave the EU nearly three years ago now?”
Is the Prime Minister now sending messages to heaven and to hell? This was three years ago. Sadly, more than 1 million of the 17 million people have passed away and there are 2 million youngsters who were not old enough to vote but now are—and the Prime Minister says that the very credibility of our democracy is at stake. Given that the Labour Party has finally come round to accepting that the best option is a people’s vote, and that the polls show clearly that the majority of the people of the country today—not three years ago—would prefer to remain and want a people’s vote, does the Leader of the House agree that the Government should accept the reality of today?
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
I am afraid I cannot agree with the noble Lord.
NATO Brussels Summit 2018
Lord Bilimoria Excerpts(5 years, 10 months ago)
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Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
As the noble Lord knows, NATO’s practical co-operation with Russia remains suspended but channels such as the NATO-Russia Council are an important means to keep dialogue open. He is right that we have suspended all planned high-level bilateral contacts with Russia, but we continue to engage with it multilaterally when it is in our interests to do so. It is in our mutual interests to reduce the risk of misunderstanding, miscalculation and unintended escalation. The Prime Minister has always been clear that our approach to Russia is “Engage, but beware”.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach (Con)
My Lords, the noble Lord was not in the Chamber to hear the Statement, so should really not participate.
Outcome of the European Union Referendum
Lord Bilimoria Excerpts(7 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Bilimoria (CB)
My Lords, 23 June was not independence day for Britain; it was the day the UK shot itself in its foot. Our economy has been doing so well. While European economies have been doing badly we have had cumulative growth of 62% since the single market started in 1993. We did not lose our sovereignty. We have had the best of both worlds. We have been in the EU but not in the euro. We have been in the EU but not in Schengen. We pour our beer in pints. We measure our roads in miles. Yet Vote Leave makes claims about red tape and regulations. I have seen in the 10 years that I have been in this House that the regulations that we make—the laws that we make that affect our daily lives—are made by us right here, right now in this House in this Parliament.
We take for granted 1.2 million of our citizens living in the European Union and we have 3 million European Union citizens living here. How dare people even think of sending these people back? These are people who left their families a thousand miles away, who came here not knowing the language to a strange culture and made friends, worked hard, paid taxes, put in five times more than they took out and contributed to our economy. How ungrateful can we be? We should be grateful for the efforts that they have put in. They are welcome to stay here.
We have for many years been saying: “Take control of our borders”. I believe we have lost control of our borders. I have been saying for many years: “Illegal immigration is the issue. Let’s bring back exit checks. Let’s scan every passport, EU and non-EU. Let’s make that first step, rather than making immigration the excuse that we have”.
Our universities will suffer. Already we have lost our AAA rating. Eight of our universities have already lost their credit ratings. Our universities receive £1 billion from the EU. I am president of UKCISA.
Lord Bilimoria
My Lords, I am sorry, but I do not have much time. We have 500,000 international students in this country; 170,000 of them are from the EU.
In the finance sector, big banks have already begun to make plans to move staff out. The Royal Bank of Scotland has lost value of £8 billion. That is more than we put into the EU every year and it is taxpayers’ money.
The biggest lie of them all was the £350 million that we give to the EU emblazoned on the Brexit bus with: “Let’s give that money to the NHS instead”. There was the Vote Leave advertising film showing the NHS inside the EU and the NHS outside the EU. What is going on here? It was completely misleading. These are lies. It is a net contribution of £8 billion a year, 1% of our annual government expenditure per year. That is not going to shift the needle, let alone save the NHS.
What was the Electoral Commission doing? That is what I ask the Minister. In India, which has one of the largest elections in the world, the election commissioner is the most powerful person in the country at the time. Here we have an Electoral Commission asleep on the job. Surely we need to look at the role of the Electoral Commission. Then the result would have been completely different, because I have met people who have said: “I voted to leave to save the NHS”.
We rely hugely on inward investment. The referendum saw the pound plummet to levels not seen since the 1980s, when I was here as a student, when the UK was the sick man of Europe—the 1980s when this country had a glass ceiling for foreigners. Today in this country, anyone can get anywhere, regardless of race, religion and background, yet we hear of these awful hate crimes, attacks against migrants and discrimination, which I have experienced myself. Do we want to wind the clock back?
In this referendum, 72% of voters under 25 wanted to remain in the European Union but, sadly, just over one-third of them turned out to vote, whereas 83% of those over 65 turned out to vote and they overwhelmingly voted to leave. I hope that the youth of this country have learned their lesson for ever: they have to exercise their precious right to vote and come out, regardless of whether it is in or out of term time; they must come out to vote for their futures.
What is more, I forecast that if we left the EU, it would threaten the EU itself. Already, many countries in Europe are demanding a referendum, which could lead to the break-up of the EU, which could lead to the break-up of the euro, which could lead to the biggest financial crisis the globe has ever seen. Already Scotland, a region that unanimously voted to remain, is asking for another referendum. Northern Ireland, which voted to remain, talks of merging with Ireland. We are going to be a withered, shrunken England and Wales. Is it not gut-wrenching to see Nigel Farage, who was so responsible for creating the mess that we are in, resigning as leader of UKIP and this weekend wearing Union Jack shoes when he could be responsible for breaking up our union?
Look at the treacherous behaviour of the people leading the leave campaign. Boris Johnson stabs the Prime Minister in the back and leads Vote Leave. Andrea Leadsom stabs Boris. What a hypocrite she is. She said that leaving the European Union would be a disaster:
“I don’t think the UK should leave the EU. I think it would be a disaster for our economy and would lead to a decade of economic and political uncertainty”.
Wow, how prescient. Michael Gove stabs Boris Johnson in the back. These are the people who led us to leave the European Union. What were people thinking? Project Fear? Project Reality.
The referendum was advisory, and pro-remain MPs outnumber leave backers in the House of Commons, the other place, by 3:1 and in this House by far more. There is now a strong legal case, as we have heard, that Article 50 cannot be triggered until Parliament votes on it. Here is a conundrum: with the lies, the deceit, the treachery and the turmoil that has been caused, will a responsible Parliament affirm the 52:48 referendum result built on such shaky ground? With hindsight—this point has not been brought up by anybody—a decision as important as this should have had a two-thirds hurdle. Changing the fixed-term Parliament in the other place needs a two-thirds majority. To change the Indian constitution, you need a two-thirds majority. There would then have been a definitive result.
As for the Opposition, please forgive me, but Jeremy Corbyn has been absolutely useless as a leader, and his role in the referendum was pathetic. That could have changed the whole picture—and now look at the turmoil the Labour Party is in. On top of all this, we have 4 million people signing a petition asking for a second referendum. There is no legal obstacle to holding a second referendum, and a general election could even be treated as a proxy second referendum on the issue. Would the Minister agree? A MORI poll says that 48% of voters agree that there should be a general election before Britain begins formal Brexit negotiations. A BBC “Newsnight” poll says that a third of voters do not believe the UK will leave the EU, despite the referendum result.
According to Saturday’s Financial Times, the UK is now heading towards,
“lower growth, more uncertainty, a weaker currency and looser monetary policy”.
That is just what I said on 15 June, in my last speech in the debate here. Our airport expansion has already been delayed. Brexit will hugely damage our economy, our businesses, our citizens, our stability and our standing in the world. The Governor of the Bank of England is already talking of economic post-traumatic stress disorder. The Economist Intelligence Unit projects a 6% contraction in the economy by 2020.
Brexit is now the central focus of politics and government and will be for years to come. Just think of the opportunity cost of all that time, which our leaders and civil servants could be spending improving this country and the lives of our citizens. Switzerland voted two years ago by 50.3% to modify the free movement of people—two years later, it has got nowhere in its negotiations with the European Union.
I conclude by saying that this 52:48 vote to leave will not actually achieve the slogan of Vote Leave: “Take back control”. We have actually lost control and will lose more. The irony of it all is that the chief Brexiteer publication, the Sun—wot won it—published a poll just this weekend showing that 67% believed the priority of the new Prime Minister should be steadying the economy. Only 28% of them want tackling immigration to be a priority for the Prime Minister. The irony of that is unbelievable. This wretched referendum was a dreadful decision. This country had the wool pulled over its eyes and was misled by a buffoon and a court jester—the Pied Pipers of Hamelin leading our people over the white cliffs of Dover.
Now is the time for us as a country, in the words of the leave campaign, to take back control. We need strong leadership and we need to negotiate with the European Union before getting anywhere near Article 50. Then, whether the decision is for staying in the European Economic Area with restricted movement of people or staying in the EU with restricted movement of people, we can go to the nation through a general election, properly supervised by an effective Electoral Commission, so that people can make an informed decision about our children’s and our grandchildren’s future, with the youth turning out in full force.
Economy: High Street Trade
Lord Bilimoria Excerpts(8 years ago)
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Baroness Williams of Trafford
The noble Lord makes a good point. One of the things that councils observe is that we need more shoppers in our local high streets and not more shops, hence the expansion into some of the excellent food offers in markets now and some of the conversions from office to residential that help to revitalise the footfall in local high streets, particularly in the north of England where I am.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)
My Lords, there can be only one of us standing up at any one time. Thank you. We have not heard from the Cross Benches. After hearing from them I suggest that we go to my noble friend Lord Grade.
Lord Bilimoria
My Lords, I have been a non-executive director of Booker, the FTSE 250 company, for eight and a half years. When I started our internet sales were £50 million. Today, out of a turnover of £5 billion, they are £1 billion. Surely the answer is to help the high street to take advantage of the internet age. What are the Government doing to help retailers to take advantage of the internet, whether on payments, winning customers or dealing with their suppliers and the supply chain?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
The noble Lord is absolutely right that the digital age has in many cases been to the high street’s advantage. I have mentioned click and collect. Our local high street businesses have to compete in the digital era and we have recently announced a digital pilot programme across Gloucestershire working with partners in the private sector including Argos, IBM and Cisco. This work was developed in close collaboration with the BIS retail unit.
European Council
Lord Bilimoria Excerpts(8 years, 2 months ago)
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Baroness Stowell of Beeston
It is important not only that we make the strong case for membership of the European Union that the noble Lord has outlined, but that we stress that we are confident in making that case because of the reforms that the Prime Minister has been able to secure. We must not underestimate people’s frustration with the European Union, and we were not happy with the status quo.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
We have not heard from the Cross Benches for some time.
Lord Bilimoria
My Lords, first, perhaps I may just build on what the noble Lord, Lord Campbell, said. Should not the Prime Minister make more of the fact that it means a lot to countries dealing with the United Kingdom that we are part of the European Union? Countries such as India see the UK as a gateway to Europe and I do not think that enough is made of that. Secondly, perhaps I may build on what the noble Lord, Lord Howell, said. The Prime Minister talks about the best of both worlds. You can be a Eurosceptic, as I think I am—I hate the way that the European Parliament works and the fact that it has to go to Strasbourg every month, and I hate the gravy train, the waste of money and the fact that nobody I am aware of knows who their MEP is—and still believe that it is the lesser of two evils, rather than the best of both worlds. Does the Minister agree that it is probably better to stay in the European Union because it is the best of both worlds and the lesser of two evils?
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
Or you might say, “Better the devil you know”. Basically, I agree with the noble Lord: you do not have to be a raging Euro-enthusiast and to have been so for donkey’s years to support staying in the European Union. As I said to the noble Lord, Lord Kinnock, this is patriotic. We believe very much in the power and sovereignty of the United Kingdom, and we believe that by being in Europe we can have, as the Prime Minister described it, the best of both worlds. As to the point of the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, about making more of the way in which we are a gateway to the rest of Europe, I agree with him, and the Prime Minister is already making that case. We have four months to go and he will keep making that case. I hope that the noble Lord and others will help us in that task.
Syria: UK Military Action
Lord Bilimoria Excerpts(8 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Bilimoria (CB)
My Lords, when Parliament was recalled in August 2013, I remember speaking on whether to intervene in Syria. I made the point that in the summer of 2003 my late father, Lieutenant-General Bilimoria, on his last visit to Britain before he passed away, was asked by a senior journalist, “General, do you think we should have intervened in Iraq?”. My father replied, without any hesitation, “No, we should only have intervened with the authority of the United Nations”. Today, as the noble Lord, Lord Owen, has said, we have the authority of the United Nations to take whatever steps are necessary to get rid of the evil that is Daesh, ISIL, ISIS, Islamic State, IS or whatever name these evil monsters are given. Last year, we made the decision to intervene in Iraq but not in Syria. I remember saying categorically at the time that this did not make sense and that it was a half-cocked measure, involving a border that Daesh does not recognise. I said that I feared we would need to revisit that measure in a few months’, or even a few weeks’, time. Here we are now, a year later. Does the Minister agree that with hindsight, we should have gone into Iraq and Syria a year ago?
A key difference between our situation now and the debates we had over the last two years is the recent publication of the 2015 SDSR. The Government have listened and they have committed to the 2% NATO spend. The SDSR of 2015 is a far cry from that of 2010. This review will strengthen our Armed Forces for situations exactly like the one we face today.
One of the primary reasons we need to intervene in Syria now is to support our allies, as we have heard, particularly after the horrific atrocities in Paris. However, as so many noble Lords have said, air attacks alone will not work. I agree with the points about the precision weapons at our disposal made by the noble Lord, Lord King, and also share the views of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, about the important role ground troops can play in the conflict. As the noble Lord, Lord Dannatt, said, we need to co-ordinate this. We must take note of what the noble Lord, Lord Hague, said in his brilliant maiden speech and accept the case for combining these strikes with Special Forces. Will the Minister confirm that? The local ground forces are not enough: they are too small and too fragmented. We need to build on what the noble Lord, Lord Owen, said. Can the Government clarify who will be leading these local ground forces and who will be co-ordinating them in a manner that renders them a viable force?
Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, one of the world’s leading chemical weapons experts, who has extensive dealings with Syria, has said that if allied forces launched a ground offensive, Daesh could be defeated in a matter of weeks. The problem, as we have seen in recent history, is that this would leave a vacuum. We must be able to use diplomatic methods to rebuild society in a proper manner and not allow the area to descend into the kind of situation we have seen with our operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. We have spent more time there than the First and Second World Wars combined—let alone the billions of pounds spent, the lives lost and the number of wounded. The noble Lord, Lord Hague, said that we must be prepared for the possibility of partitioning the region and that we must accept the enormous political and economic changes required to achieve lasting stability throughout the Middle East. Does the Minister agree that, sadly, partitioning of the area might be necessary?
Last year, we intervened late and without the required force. I said a year ago that we may be required to intervene again. That is now the case. However, we must accept the reality that these air strikes alone will not be enough. The House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee has said that they will have little more than “marginal effect” and are,
“unlikely to be effective without reliable allies on the ground … and these would not be easy to find”.
We must go ahead with these air strikes, but let us not think that this is all that is required, or we will be back here once again in a few months’ time debating the next round of measures. Now that we are intervening in Iraq and Syria, we must do this in a fully committed way, with our eyes wide open.
Iraq
Lord Bilimoria Excerpts(9 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Bilimoria (CB)
My Lords, a year ago we were recalled and virtually every one of us who spoke in the debate said that we should not intervene in Syria. Today it is exactly the opposite way around, in that just about everybody is saying that we should intervene this time, and we have had the legal justification.
The question that I ask is: why are we doing this so late? Why are we doing this half-cocked? Sixty nations are already there, including 10 Arab nations. Five Arab nations have already taken part in the air attacks, and we are late to the party. We have had one of our citizens—as have the Americans—brutally murdered by ISIL. The whole world has watched while the innocent Yazidis were terrorised and fleeing for their lives. Why have we taken so long? As we have heard time and again, why are we restricting this to Iraq? The polls from the public have overwhelmingly supported intervention in Iraq, but they also show that the public would support us if we intervened in Syria right now, as the Americans are doing. After all, ISIL has completely erased the Sykes-Picot line. Will the Minister assure us that as soon as is required—not, as one noble Lord said, in three years’ time; I fear that it will be in a few months’ time, or even a few weeks’ time—we will consider intervening in Syria? We will probably need to.
Will the Government clarify that action will involve not just six Tornados from Cyprus but also the use of drones, ship-launched attacks, submarine-launched attacks and our best-of-the-best Special Forces? On the other hand, as I said last year, we have a Government who, in the 2010 SDSR, cut our defence capabilities. We still do not have aircraft carriers. We have a British Army that will not even fill Wembley Stadium. We are relying on reserves. Here we are, as we have been so many times since 2010, once again in a situation in which we need our brilliant Armed Forces—and we have been cutting them. Will the Minister confirm that the Government will stick to their commitment of a 2% of GDP spend on defence and nothing less, because we desperately need it?
The noble Lord, Lord Dannatt, and others spoke of the necessity to win this battle on the ground. Is it not sad that at the Battle of Mosul in June an Iraqi army of 20,000 was forced to flee by an ISIL force of 3,000? It was left to the Kurdish Peshmerga to hold the line. But we were there for so many years, supposedly training the Iraqi army. What went wrong? Did we not train it properly? My father was in the Indian army. I remember that when he was serving, the Indian army had a training team in Iraq for years, headed by a lieutenant-general. If we want to train, let us put our might behind training the Iraqis and the Peshmerga as well.
We need to invest in that capability because the ideology is dangerous. As the most reverend Primate said, it is deep. As His Holiness Pope Francis has said, we might be in the midst of a World War III. This is not going to go away. This is very serious. If we are going to do this, we need to be with our allies. We need to be completely effective; we need to push forward, because we cannot rely on the UN. Once again, the UN has shown itself to be completely ineffective. Will the Government use this as another reason for a desperately needed reform of the UN?
In conclusion, we may have been late to the party but after today we will be at the table and we must go out there with full force, with a mission and a very clear strategy to liberate the ISIL-controlled areas of Iraq and Syria from the evil of ISIL. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, that ISIL is not Islamic; it is not a state. It is a group of medieval, barbaric monsters.
Nelson Mandela
Lord Bilimoria Excerpts(10 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Bilimoria (CB)
My Lords, I returned today from India, having attended the UK-India Round Table. We started our meeting on 6 December with two minutes’ silence for Nelson Mandela. In fact, India has declared state mourning for five days. We could not even consume alcohol at the meeting.
I was born and brought up in India and married my South African wife a year after Mandela was freed in 1990. When I first visited the Free State she came from, my family there told me, “If you had come just a few months earlier, no Indian was allowed to spend the night in the Free State”. An Indian whose car broke down on the way from Johannesburg to Durban would report to the police and invariably would have to spend the night in jail. Things have changed, thanks to Nelson Mandela and President F W de Klerk.
One individual who has not been mentioned in these amazing tributes is Archbishop Desmond Tutu. He is the one who has spoken about the word “ubuntu”, which anyone who has been to South Africa knows about. The person who personified ubuntu was Nelson Mandela himself. As he said, ubuntu is about not enriching oneself but putting back into the community with human kindness. We can see that in his lack of bitterness, his ability to forgive and that saying of his:
“No one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin, his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite”.
What about Mahatma Gandhi? Nelson Mandela was a huge admirer of Gandhi. In fact, he said:
“India is Gandhi’s country of birth; South Africa his country of adoption. He was both an Indian and a South African citizen”.
He also said:
“Both Gandhi and I suffered colonial oppression, and both of us mobilized our respective peoples against governments that violated our freedoms”.
Is it not amazing that these two men had difficulties with our two great Prime Ministers—Mahatma Gandhi with Winston Churchill and Nelson Mandela with Lady Thatcher?
The noble Lord, Lord St John, mentioned the great rugby victory. In prison on Robben Island, Mandela would often quote the poem “Invictus” by William Ernest Henley, and its last lines:
“I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul”.
Mahatma Gandhi’s most famous saying applies better to no one else—ever, ever—than Nelson Mandela. I will paraphrase it: “Your beliefs become your thoughts. Your thoughts become your words. Your words become your actions. Your actions become your habits. Your habits form your character and your character determines your destiny”. Mandela has been an inspiration not just to his country, the world or this generation but for ever more.
House of Lords: Working Practices
Lord Bilimoria Excerpts(11 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Bilimoria
My Lords, since I joined your Lordships’ House more than six years ago, we have debated House of Lords reform inside-out and upside-down. As we have heard throughout this debate, the latest attempt by the coalition to go for drastic reform has thankfully resulted in major reform being shelved for the moment, particularly in terms of an elected House. It has been kicked into the long grass, but my worry is that at the next election we will see the major parties, once again, in a frankly populist way, putting an elected House of Lords in their manifestos. Perhaps the Leader of the House can answer that.
However, that is a red herring because the most important part of this debate is to ask: what do we do and how? What is our role? As the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, said, this is the time; this is the opportunity—and congratulations to her on becoming a grandmother. I have always seen our role first and foremost as a sort of guardian of the nation. Ironically, this unelected House is a cornerstone of democracy in our country, with the amazing depth and breadth of experience and expertise that we have. In those terms, we sit head and shoulders above any other upper House in the world, but do we use this experience and expertise enough?
We have an unwritten constitution that has evolved, that is delicate, and we have the best of the best people in this House, not in a prescriptive way—no one has told us, “You have to have so many scientists, engineers, lawyers and former Cabinet Ministers”. It has evolved; it has happened. In this House we have the best of the best in every field. No party list system would ever deliver that.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Filkin, for initiating this debate. The noble Lord said that this House is too big. Perhaps we need to reduce our numbers but we have to take into account that to keep this depth and breadth of experience and expertise, and to get the attendance levels that we now have, we need quite high numbers. Unlike in the other place, we are not full-time employees. We do not get a salary. We do not get a pension. We are expected to hold outside appointments and jobs. I still run an international business. Those of us who have retired bring their experience here. Nobody has brought this point up today, but in terms of bang for buck, this House is phenomenal value for money—very different from the other place.
How do we make more of this expertise? I do not think that we make enough of it. In the House of Commons, there are departmental committees in every field, which have the power to scrutinise Secretaries of State, whereas in your Lordships’ House we have far fewer committees and they do not have nearly the same remit or powers as in the other place. We need to redress the balance of power between the two Houses. This is the time to do that. The committees in the House of Commons have these powers but they do not have the experience that we have. Just imagine some of our Members sitting on those committees and how much value they would add.
I did a comparison with other Parliaments. In the UK we have 43 Commons committees and only 16 Lords committees and seven Joint Committees. In the USA there are 21 House committees, 22 Senate committees and six joint committees. In Canada there are 24 House committees, 18 Senate committees and two joint committees. We are missing an opportunity here, and even if we do not go that far, maybe we should consider that Members of the House of Lords could sit on existing committees and add their expertise to make those committees that much more effective.
We have had a great debate. The essence of this debate is not just evolutionary reform, as the right reverend Prelate suggested. We need that, but we also need to take this opportunity, as the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, said, to make Parliament much more effective on the whole.
EU Council
Lord Bilimoria Excerpts(12 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, it is always nice to welcome a question from my noble friend on this matter. On this occasion, we chose to reserve our position on the treaty, at least in part, because we recognise that there are problems within the eurozone that need to be tackled. We believe that we are using that reservation to watch the operation of the treaty closely and, if necessary, we will be able to take action if our national interests are threatened. However, the principle that EU institutions can be used only when there is permission from all 27 member states has been safeguarded. Of course, we have a number of legal concerns on the use of the institutions but we do not want to hold up the eurozone doing what is necessary to solve the crisis, as long as it does not damage our national interests.
Lord Bilimoria
My Lords, first, in the Statement there is the intention finally to close these free trade agreements with countries such as India. The UK India Business Council, of which I am president, has been asking for this EU-India treaty for years now. Do the Government honestly think that, with the present crisis, it is realistic to be able to conclude such treaties at this time? Secondly, the Government keep talking about wanting fiscal discipline to sort out the eurozone crisis. Can the Government get real? In the growth and stability pact there was no discipline; even Germany did not fulfil the requirements to join the euro when it did so. When are the Government ever going to be able to impose fiscal discipline when there is no sovereign union throughout the united states of Europe? There will never be a united states of Europe. Do the Government think that the Greek crisis will just go away? If Greece defaults, will there be contagion throughout Europe? Are we prepared for that contagion?
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, the noble Lord asks me a load of questions at the end of his intervention which are not my or the Government’s responsibility. They are very difficult questions to answer. We all have to hope that the steps that the eurozone countries are taking are the right ones to prevent the contagion of which he speaks. We hope that they have done that. People like me, who rather oppose a single currency, have pointed out these problems for many years. It is hard to see how a currency union can work without greater political and fiscal union. It may well be that the countries of the eurozone are heading in that direction.
On the noble Lord's first question about international treaties between the EU and other countries, including India, it is, at least in part, because of the state that we find ourselves in and the lack of moving forward on the Doha trade round that I feel confident that the statement made yesterday in Brussels is heading in the right direction. There is a lot of political force behind it and I am sure that the whole House will welcome this strong declaration of coming forward with a long-term treaty between the EU and India.