European Union Membership (Economic Implications) Bill [HL]

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Friday 25th November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords, having listened to every word of the debate, I would just like to refer your Lordships’ House to one point. I want to remind noble Lords of a very remarkable man, a friend of mine who was a distinguished Member of your Lordships’ House until a couple of years ago—the late Lord Dahrendorf. It seemed to me that Lord Dahrendorf had it right. He was a visionary, a man who distributed literature against Hitler on the streets of Berlin, and who served Germany in Parliament and represented Germany in the Commission in Brussels. He then came here and, having taken British nationality—although he was still given the German Order of Merit—he served our country with vision and distinction. He warned this House and Europe in general of the folly of entering too prematurely into a single currency. He thought the whole idea was questionable because without political union, of which he was not in favour, you could not have a proper working single currency.

I do not go with the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, in wanting to pull out of Europe, but the lesson of today’s debate is that we have to rethink our place within it. Those who are still peddling the single currency as a panacea have to realise that it has achieved far less than they thought it would. It has achieved about as much as Lord Dahrendorf thought it would when he warned that that way could lie disaster.