European Union: Recent Developments

Debate between Lord Lea of Crondall and Lord Stoddart of Swindon

Monday 17th December 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lea of Crondall]

Am I going to get extra time for this?

[Lord Stoddart of Swindon]

I merely wish to correct the noble Lord. He pointed to me when he referred to UKIP. I am not a member of UKIP; I am Independent Labour.

[Lord Lea of Crondall]

I do not know what the disagreement is between UKIP and the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart. Perhaps it is simply that the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, having been a member of the Labour Party, has misgivings about joining people of that ilk. However, I am talking about policy, and perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, could answer separately. I forgive him if he thinks—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Stoddart of Swindon]

The noble Lord shakes his head, but the former President of France specifically said that he would like to see north African countries in the European Union. France, therefore, would like these countries to join the European Union.

If you have all these countries in the Union, what does it mean? If you take Turkey and Ukraine together, by the time they come in, that is about 140 million extra people. By the time we have finished with all of them there will be 700 million people. If experience is anything to go by, the larger the EU becomes, the more centralised and authoritarian it becomes. For those reasons, I am opposed to any further expansion.

Every entrant into the EU reduces the existing countries’ influence, including of course our own. We must also remember that the rules of the European Union mean that sometime or other after these countries join the European Union they have the right of entry into this country to work and settle. So there are difficult problems about building ever more countries into the European Union. I used to talk about a country called Europe. Now we seem to be talking about an empire called Europe. In the end, it will not do Europe any good.

The second point is about the Commission membership. I can hardly oppose what is proposed. When we were debating the Lisbon treaty, some of us, including the noble Lords, Lord Pearson and Lord Willoughby de Broke, said that it was right that every country should have its own Commissioner. But we were told that as Europe got larger, they could not have each have a Commissioner because it would be too difficult to run the whole thing with so many Commissioners. I can hardly be against that. I welcome the fact that the Irish are to have their own Commissioner and other countries as well.

Then we come to developments in the EU, which is the third part of this debate. Of course, there have been so many developments in the European Union since we last had a debate that it is difficult to sort them out. I have done my best. I start with the eurozone. It is still in acute financial trouble, as we have already heard. There are problems in most of the countries of the eurozone. We have heard that unemployment in Spain and Greece is more than 25%. There has been rioting in the streets. Teargas has been hurled at demonstrators and some of them have been injured by police violence. There is hatred among some of the countries, particularly between Greece and Germany. That is not supposed to happen in the European Union. We are all supposed to be jolly friends together. But what has happened in the eurozone is pushing the European Union apart. According to Eurostat on 3 December, 24.5% of EU citizens are at risk of poverty or social exclusion and that figure is increasing. What do those people who are in favour of expanding this organisation and keeping it going make of that?

When we went into the Common Market, we were promised that this was a great leap forward and that this was the organisation to be in. Britain would thrive and prosper inside it and so would every other country. Instead of that, the reverse is happening. Those of those who warned against ditching the pound and not adopting the euro were insulted by those, like Mr Blair, who led the campaign to ditch the pound. Mr Blair now thinks that people like myself are a virus because we happen to take a different point of view from him about the future of this country. He is the man who said before the 1997 election that he was a British patriot and then went on to sign the Lisbon treaty, got rid of many of our freedoms, and sacrificed part of our rebate. I had to say that because I resent having been insulted in that way by that particular person.

Then we have Frau Merkel telling us that outside Europe Union the United Kingdom will be alone. How insensitive can you get? I am of an age when I can remember being alone in 1940 and Frau Merkel seems to have forgotten about that. She also seems to have forgotten that there is a Commonwealth and Britain is part of that Commonwealth and one of its leaders. She was backed in all of that by Herr Schäuble, the German finance minister, who also believes that Britain could not exist outside the European Union.

Nearer to home, our own Prime Minister says he wishes to remain in the EU and once again he cites Norway to make his point. The United Kingdom has a population of 62 million. Norway has a population of 5 million. There is no comparison at all. Let us have a look at Norway. I mentioned some of Norway’s benefits in a previous debate. Let us look at Norway in other ways. It has the second highest GDP per capita in the world—in the world, not in the EU. It is the second wealthiest country in the world in monetary value and has the largest capital reserve per capita in the world.

[Lord Lea of Crondall]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, for giving way as I gave way a couple of times to him. Is he not aware, as it has been pointed out to him on more than one occasion, that oil and gas represent 22% of Norwegian GDP and 67% of Norwegian exports and that is the heart of the reason why Norway is so successful. Does he not accept that?

[Lord Stoddart of Swindon]

I understand all that. When I was a member of the Energy Select Committee in the House of Commons, we recommended that the then Government should do exactly the same as Norway. It is a pity they did not, because we would be very much better off now. That is the answer to the noble Lord. I understand all of these things. I have been around a long time.

The fact of the matter is that the Prime Minister says that Norway trades with the single market but has no say in the making of the rules and regulations.

European Union Bill

Debate between Lord Lea of Crondall and Lord Stoddart of Swindon

Wednesday 13th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lea of Crondall]

The noble Lord spent many years in the House of Commons. Is it not the position that the Labour Party was looking at the Bill, as amended by the House of Lords, and that it was not incumbent on the Labour Party to do anything along the lines he suggests?

[Lord Stoddart of Swindon]

It was not incumbent on the Labour Party to do so, but it had the opportunity to do so and did not. If it believed, as the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, said when he moved his amendment, that this should be its policy, why did Members not do it when they had the opportunity in the House of Commons? That is the question that has to be answered. I assure the noble Lord that I know the procedures in the House of Commons. I was a Whip in the House of Commons and I have sat on a number of committees dealing with amendments that have come from the House of Lords. The House of Commons was perfectly entitled to move an amendment but it did not do so.

[Lord Lea of Crondall]

My Lords—

[Lord Lea of Crondall]

I am going to put the matter right for the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart. It was a Bill that had been amended in this House, which is what the House of Commons was considering.

[Lord Stoddart of Swindon]

The House of Commons is entitled to amend amendments that we have made in this House, but did not do so. The Labour Party did not do so because it did not want people outside to get the impression that it was against consulting them about losing further powers to the European Union. That is the real reason behind it.

I know that the House wants to get on, but I just want to say that the noble Lord, Lord Davies, referred to Greece. Of course, it is very clever to do that because we know the appalling state that the eurozone is in at present. He made the reasonable point that if it were a unitary state the Commission would have examined the accounts of the Greek Government. It had the opportunity to do so before Greece was admitted to the eurozone, but it did not do it because it was a politically driven decision. It wanted as many countries in the eurozone as possible, whether they were broke or, like Germany, prosperous. We should be very careful when using the present crisis to undermine the Bill. I would like it to go further but it is the best we are going to have, and I hope that the House will not insist on the amendments on this occasion.

European Union Bill

Debate between Lord Lea of Crondall and Lord Stoddart of Swindon

Tuesday 17th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stoddart of Swindon]

I understand exactly what the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, is saying and I can understand the reasons why she is saying it. However, the reason we have this Bill is because of the betrayal—if I might use that strong word—of promises which have been made and not kept.

I refer first to the promises that were made by the Government and, indeed, by the Opposition about having a referendum on the constitution, later to be known as the Lisbon treaty. There is very little difference. Even Giscard d’Estaing says that there is very little difference. However, I do not want to get into that argument. I want to try to explain why I believe we have reached this point where such detail has been put into a Bill. It is because people join political parties and have an influence on them. So many times promises have been made, such as on the five red lines that were all crossed, and not kept. Increasingly, people in this country have lost trust in the Government’s promises that we are not, ratchet by ratchet, going into a federal European state.

[Lord Lea of Crondall]

Is the noble Lord not giving the game away that this is an exercise in trying to destroy the Lisbon treaty by the back door when in fact the country has signed the treaty? He thinks that this is an opportunity to take, bit by bit. He wants a referendum on everything they have tried to do under Lisbon and it can be blocked because we do not want to have a referendum or because it can be defeated in a referendum. Is that the point he is now making?

[Lord Stoddart of Swindon]

The noble Lord has misunderstood what I am trying to say. The Lisbon treaty is in operation, and I am not suggesting that that can be reversed. I am trying to explain why this Bill has come about. It is because people have lost trust in the leadership. I think the reason why it is so detailed is probably because this coalition Government—it is not a Tory Government, but a coalition Government—have been trying to set out their red lines that can be crossed only if the people of this country agree to it. I hope people will reflect on that and realise that, out there, ordinary people are very unhappy about the way the European Union is proceeding. I think they have already said, “So far and no further”. This Bill is complicated because the red lines that have previously been put forward have not been kept to, and perhaps this Government are trying to put them into an order where they cannot lightly be set aside.