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Lords debate on the EU Constitution – Lord Howell
winds up for the Opposition. Compares two speed Europe to inner slow core and
outer ‘peripherique’ or fast track. The so-called peripheral countries will be
the fast movers, he explains.
Lord Howell of Guildford: My Lords, it has been an excellent debate, with good
Scots and Welsh participation, which always provides spice and vigour in our
discussions in this kingdom. It is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord
Maclennan of Rogart, with his characteristically thoughtful words. I do not
agree with the noble Lord, but he gives great thought to such things. It was
nice to hear a speech from the Liberal Democrat Benches. It is surprising that
we heard only one, given that the Liberal Democrats usually get so excited and
worked up about such matters, but there it is. There was one very good speech,
which we have just heard.
Above all, everyone has strongly expressed their thanks to my noble friend Lord
Forsyth of Drumlean for such a timely debate. I qualify that only by saying
frankly that I am staggered and astonished that it had to be a Back-Bencher who
provided the time for issues of such enormous importance, two days before the
Government tackle the decisive issues and, possibly—maybe not—solidify matters
in concrete. It is deplorable that we did not have a full government-allocated
day—I am not talking about the Queen's Speech debate—to examine the matters,
before they begin to be signed and sealed by governments and Ministers. However,
that is the way it is, so we must be thankful that my noble friend stepped into
the breach.
Over the discussion hangs the constantly repeated government mantra that the
treaty involves no fundamental change in the relationship between the European
Union and the member states. That was said twice in the White Paper, and it has
been said again and again by Ministers. The reason why our debate has been so
good is that it has made me wonder whether we have reached the point at which
the Government must face a few realities.
One of those realities is that the rock on which they have rested their case has
begun to crumble and has turned out to be not rock but some kind of substance
like polyfilla. The Government cannot go on ignoring the enormous volume of
highly informed criticism, questioning the view that the treaty does not amount
to much and that we can safely leave it to the parliamentary process to do a
little tidying up.
The remarkable Gisela Stuart has been the patron saint of this and many other
debates. Practically every speaker has quoted her, and rightly so, because she
adds her reflections to a long list of enormously independent legal authority.
Having been right at the
10 Dec 2003 : Column 815
heart of the matter, she rightly says that the constitution reflects the needs
of 50 years ago—a backward looking constitution—that it is riddled with
imperfections, put together by a self-selected group of the European elite, the
Praesidium, and that it raises the most important political issue facing Europe
today. She adds for good measure that it is not about democracy and
accountability, alas, but all about political deepening of the Union. She
questions whether there is any evidence that the people of Europe want that at
the moment.
In the face of that kind of comment, I do not see that the Government can just
go on calmly holding to their current position. I do not see how they can
dismiss the very learned report from the committee chaired by the noble Lord,
Lord Norton of Louth, which my noble friend Lord Lang mentioned—a document that
raised 15 points of a principle nature regarding the constitution of this
country. In the face of that, how can it be said that the constitution is not a
vast matter that does not change very much or make very much difference?
In the debate we had a week ago I said that the comments about tidying-up were
being greeted with ridicule. The noble Baroness, Lady Symons, asked whether I
was also ridiculing the noble Lords, Lord Hannay and Lord Grenfell, whom she
called in aid in support of her general case. I would not dare for a moment
extend anything but admiration—it would be impertinent not to do so—in the
direction of the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, who is one of the most excellent
independent adornments of this House. However, in the debate a week ago the
noble Lord had a dig at me, which was quite unfair. He said that my views tended
towards the negative and exclusive about everything to do with the European
Union. That is quite untrue. I have always put forward a vision of a more
flexible, subtly articulated European Union network—a truly up-to-date version.
I have backed it up, as have my honourable friends in another place, with
detailed proposals about going forward to a genuine, not a forced, kind of unity
and with the proposition that, on the odd occasions, a single voice is more
powerful than the individual voices of the separate European countries, so long
as it is the right voice and does not just turn out to be a Franco-German
dominance ignoring the views of other countries.
When the noble Lord, Lord Radice, asks what is the vision, I say that we have
put forward a very strong vision. We see now the opportunity to build that
vision and to keep Europe on the mainstream towards unity and away from this
diversion that is threatened by a flawed and ill-formed constitution. The noble
Lord, Lord Grenfell, is an old friend, literally, of one of my oldest friends in
this House. I certainly do not presume in any way to ridicule the enormously
thorough work of the committee chaired by the noble Lord. However, the fact
remains that the report contains a key sentence which is wrong. The key sentence
that we have all mentioned is that the balance of power will shift from the
Commission to the member states. I note that my noble friend Lord Lamont tried
vainly to remove that sentence from the report. When I first read the
10 Dec 2003 : Column 816
sentence, a phrase from Disraeli came to mind. Like a fly trapped in amber, I
wondered how the devil the sentence had got there. I studied the report closely
to try to understand the sentence.
The noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, explained with his usual good humour, clarity and
independence what the sentence meant. It meant that in some respects power would
be shifted from the Commission to the Council of Ministers, and that as the
Council of Ministers is made up of member states, that meant that the relevant
power would be shifted to the member states. I understand that, but it is not
quite the same thing, frankly. The Council of Ministers cannot just be described
in terms of shifting power to the member states because what is decided in the
Council of Ministers is modified by qualified majority voting and many other
things. However, I see now what the noble Lord was getting at. The trouble is
that the sentence in his hands is understandable, but if it falls into less
scrupulous hands, it gets distorted—and that is what has happened. The phrase
has been waved around by the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary, the noble
Baroness and many other Ministers as some kind of bogus evidence that we are all
worrying about nothing and that the movement of power is not affected.
It is a pity that that is the case. It is even more of a pity because, when one
reads the rest of the committee's report, one discovers that it is full of
excellent details which do not support that conclusion at all; in fact, they go
quite the other way. I made a list of them. Paragraph 67 states:
"There is, however, no evidence that any competence has been or will be returned
to Member States".
That is quite right. In paragraph 73 the committee,
"would welcome further explanation of where the boundaries of shared competences
will be set".
That is quite right as no one knows, so I do not know how one can reach
conclusions regarding powers. In paragraph 83 the committee wanted to be
satisfied that new provisions,
"are not so open-ended that they could lead to a considerable expansion of
European Union activity".
You bet! Paragraph 263 states that intergovernmental elements on justice and
home affairs will be "reduced to a minimum", and that qualified majority voting
marks,
"a significant departure from the current arrangements".
The same paragraph refers to,
"a significant increase in the powers of the European Parliament".
On the rights of initiative, it points out that the powers of member states have
been further limited, and that the jurisdiction of the ECJ has been
significantly extended. The report goes on and on. It reminds us—perhaps it
should remind the Government also as they do not seem to have read those parts
of the report—that the measure permits the extension of EU competence in
criminal law and proposes very significant changes to the Union's security
policy. The report states at paragraph 332 that national Parliaments will lose
competence over a whole range of areas. How that matches with the conclusion
that
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the Government draw from the report, that somehow it validates their case that
nothing much has happened, stretches credulity well beyond breaking point.
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Lord Grenfell: My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord for giving way.
However, does he accept that I stand by everything that he has read out? He
quoted from the committee's report. I do not dispute those quotations. However,
the noble Lord puts the weights on to one side of the balance. If he also quoted
those parts of the draft treaty where there is a very definite shift towards the
member states in terms of greater authority being given to national parliaments
and the Council—I dispute what the noble Lord said about the Council—he would
see that we were not wrong in saying that the shift is towards the member
states.
Lord Howell of Guildford: My Lords, we may have to differ on that. The noble
Lord always has been passionate about balance. The report is balanced but when
you take the sentence that I mentioned out of context—as the Government have had
no scruples in doing—the balance is destroyed. That is what happens if one does
not keep these sentences carefully locked up and one allows them to run around
without a lead.
The debate moved on to the central question of the significance of the shift of
power the other way—to the European institutions. That is a key matter in terms
of the Government's argument. My noble friend Lord Waddington made an
unanswerable case that although Community law always had superior authority from
1972 onwards, it is now embodied in a constitutional document which is not just
another treaty. It is a legal writ, a legal form. What is written down in it
carries powers and will be judged in the courts. I say to the noble Lord, Lord
Maclennan, that many of these points were in the Maastricht Treaty and other
treaties, but never before have they been enshrined and embedded in a higher
law—in a constitution. That is why the case is unanswerable for having a
referendum; it is not just a parliamentary matter. That is why we want a
referendum. On that there was a deathly silence from the Liberal Democrats.
Lord Maclennan of Rogart: My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lord for
giving way so that I can inject another moment of Liberal Democrat intervention.
I shall do so briefly, because he is near the end of his speech. The reality is
that nothing in the document suggests that it is in any way different in kind
from the previous constitutional treaties of Maastricht, Amsterdam, Nice and so
forth. Nothing declares that the document is superior in a different way from
earlier treaties that have been the foundation of the rule book for the European
Union.
Lord Howell of Guildford: My Lords, as the late Ernest Bevin was fond of saying,
"I've heard different". In our view, the document is constitutional. It
enshrines such matters; they become justiciable in
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the European Court of Justice, which becomes a higher court. I must move on,
because the debate has been very full.
The defence issues, which were not looked at very deeply in the European Union
Committee's report, were raised by the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont. They have been
raised by the neutrals in recent days, who have reminded us that they are not
prepared to go along with mutual defence pacts or clauses that automatically and
inevitably incorporate them in defence of the Union not by willing decision—many
neutral-country soldiers are involved in present operations—but by law. The
committee expressed the hope that no operational EU command structure would
emerge, and urged that it should not be encouraged in paragraph 284, which
quotes a witness as saying that,
"none of these structures pretends to provide an operational EU military command
structure either at the strategic or the tactical levels. There are no standing
EU headquarters . . . Any such EU operational command structure would duplicate
existing NATO and national assets".
I am terribly sorry, but what the committee says should not happen has happened.
We now have an operational command structure proposed that is to be reinforced
in the treaty, greatly to the dismay of the Americans, who are deeply worried at
structured co-operation, and, again, to the dismay of the small countries.
I was glad that my noble friend Lord Hurd, in a very distinguished speech, spoke
about the smaller countries. That is an enormously important issue. I favour
another vision, that of a more equal Europe, yet it seems to be a vision fading
in the welter of arguments about the weighting of votes, a Commission that
excludes the smaller countries, a president who may perpetuate differences if he
is the wrong president at the wrong time, a stability pact that apparently
applies to only the small fry and not the big boys, being told to shut up over
Iraq, and a general sense of domination by the bigger powers in a Union that is
supposed to be one of equal countries. The UK should be far more vigorous in
championing the smaller nations, as my noble friend Lady Park of Monmouth
rightly suggested.
I shall mention the issue that apparently worries the Prime Minister now;
namely, that if he sticks to the red lines on tax, defence, foreign affairs and
energy—let us hear a little more about that this evening—he will somehow get out
of line with the French and the Germans, and that a two-speed Europe will
develop. That appears to be his worry according to this morning's newspapers. It
is not my worry. If there are to be two speeds, the fast lane will run round the
edge of the European Union. It will be Poland, Estonia, Scandinavia, the United
Kingdom, Portugal and Italy. That will be the peripherique on which wise
statesmen and policy makers will keep their national vehicles. It is the slow
centre that will move forward, as it is perfectly entitled to do, in a more
ponderous way.
We should bend our efforts to support and bring out that newer Europe and reject
the antique and backward-looking constitution project, which is bad
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for us and bad for Europe. According to the Foreign Secretary, it is now anyway
not apparently necessary. Going back to Gisela Stuart for a moment, I should say
that she tells us that when she puts "Giscard" into her laptop computer, it
insists on printing out "discard". There may be a lesson for us all in that.
In that marvellous speech at the beginning, my noble friend Lord Forsyth rather
brutally compared Ministers to Humpty Dumpty and the unhappy events that he
encountered. I read this morning that, given good counselling, proper medical
technology and sensible treatment, it would have been possible to save Humpty
Dumpty and put him together again. That is indeed the treatment that we now
offer. Rejection of our offer will be greatly regretted. It will leave not just
Ministers, but higher and more valuable issues such as European unity itself in
pieces on the ground, instead of being put together again.
7.6 p.m.
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