Estates of Deceased Persons (Forfeiture Rule and Law of Succession) Bill

Lord Davies of Stamford Excerpts

Wednesday 15th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lamont of Lerwick]

My Lords, when the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, spoke in the very first debate on the first amendment in Committee—or perhaps it was on Second Reading—he said that he was like a minor character in Shakespeare referred to in Act 1, Scene 1, and never heard of again. It has, however, been to the benefit of the entire House and the Committee that instead he has been bestride the stage like a colossus. Great as my respect for the noble Lord is, I do not feel that a sunset clause on this Bill is any more appropriate than a sunset clause on a local government reorganisation, a National Health Service reorganisation, or anything else.

However, there has always been an argument for attaching a sunset clause or a sunset condition to some EU legislation with great advantage, because so much EU legislation is irreversible. That is a point that I have made before, but I repeat it simply because I think that that is the problem of connection between the public, Parliament and the EU, and one of the reasons why there is scepticism and mistrust about the European Union.

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

Is the great distinction about referenda which the noble Lord is making—he has made it twice this afternoon—whether a decision once taken becomes irreversible, and that in that category there should be a referendum; and that in other categories there should not? If so, why will there not be a referendum on reform of the House of Lords? Surely that will in practice be an irreversible decision. Once you have a democratically elected legislative Chamber, you can hardly go back on that.

[Lord Lamont of Lerwick]

I have not heard that there is not going to be a referendum on legislation for the House of Lords; I have heard many people speculating that amendments may be moved. We shall see, and I shall see how I vote on the interesting suggestion made by the noble Lord.

It has been said that this debate has at times been something of a Second Reading debate on many of the amendments. That is because the Bill has been misrepresented in several of the debates in an exaggerated way. The noble Lord, Lord Howell, has made it clear again and again that we are not going to get a plethora of referendums, for several reasons. First, changes in competences and powers tend to come in packages, in treaties. Secondly, we have been assured many times that we will not have more great treaties. The fact that certain vetoes and certain competences remain after we have had Lisbon, Nice and Maastricht shows that there are very good reasons why national Governments wish to retain them. No Government are going to invest a huge amount of political capital in pursuing some relatively minor matter. That is not how these things operate; they tend to come in packages.

People talk about these issues being trivial. We are talking about competences and powers. We are talking about vetoes, for example. The noble Lord, Lord Kerr, referred to the amendment very well proposed last week by the noble Lord, Lord Davies—I think it was Amendment 22A—about exempting defence procurement from the requirements of the internal market. He said that that is something that could advantage the country, and surely we ought to have the flexibility to move to QMV. Actually, I think it is important to be able to buy certain types of defence equipment and certain weapons, or produce them where you want to, and not have them subject to the full rigour of the market. In the previous Government, Des Browne himself—now the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Ladyton—said that he regarded that as a vital power to be retained by the British Government. Judging by the previous Government and what the former Secretary of State said, that is an extremely important power for this country to retain.

The noble Lord said the Bill was otiose because the Government were not intending to hold referenda in this Parliament. As the noble Lord, Lord Howell, said, the Bill will apply in this Parliament. It is not otiose any more than the Act giving effect to the Maastricht treaty. It had an opt-in for Britain to opt into the euro, but it was made very clear that we were not going to opt into the euro in the next Parliament. That did not make it otiose.

Then we have heard the argument that we are legislating for future Parliaments, but of course it is perfectly open to any future Government to repeal the Bill. With great respect to my noble friend Lord Jopling, we would be getting the worst of all worlds if we enacted the Bill but then said that the whole floodgates could be opened again without any specific intention at the beginning of each Parliament. I can think of nothing that would inflame public opinion more and get the tabloid press—about which we have heard a lot in this debate—going again than if, without any specific intention, a Government decided at the beginning of each Parliament to open the floodgates to the reversal of this legislation. We are told that it will lead to inflexibility in negotiations. However, other countries have procedures that take a long time and they have certain provisions on which they have to hold referenda. We have seen how it takes time for some of these treaties to be legislated for in other countries. Therefore, I do not think that the position of Britain’s negotiators would be any different from that of other countries.

What has been confusing in these debates is that this legislation is about competence and powers, whereas people try to make it about issues and policies. Nice, Lisbon and Maastricht have all given a tremendous amount of power and transferred sovereignty to the European Union. What in terms of power and competence do the Opposition and those opposed to the Bill think the European Union needs? What is the issue? What is the European Union not able to deal with at the moment? We have had many changes in recent years. The United States constitution has had only 27 amendments since coming into existence but we produce endless changes. The European Charter of Fundamental Rights was written in very dense language and was much longer than the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or the charter of the United Nations.

The noble Lords, Lord Kerr and Lord Hannay, have certainly enlightened our debates with their enormous expertise and very abstruse knowledge of difficult and complex issues. However, when I listened to them I was reminded of what Winston Churchill said when he became Chancellor of the Exchequer. He came out of the Treasury and said, “These chaps speak Persian. I prefer generals and admirals”. Of course, the contributions of the noble Lords, Lord Hannay and Lord Kerr, have been extremely important and enlightening in these debates, but I think that with some of these abstruse issues—the language used and so on—there is a real problem of connection between ordinary people and the European Union.

What has not been recognised enough by opponents of the Bill is the tremendous crisis that is taking place in Europe over the European Union. We have seen dramatic changes in public opinion on European integration in countries such as Finland. However, I would particularly single out what has happened in Holland. Throughout my life, Holland has been the most pro EU-integrationist country in Europe; now, it is the most obstructionist. It is strongly opposed to the bailouts of Greece, Ireland and Portugal and it wants to dismantle the Schengen provisions as well. The Bill draws a red line to say that in this Parliament, and beyond if this Government are re-elected, there will not be a transfer of powers. It seems to me to be sensible legislation and we should be determined to carry it forward. I think that the red lines we are drawing will go some way to restore some trust in the European Union.