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Then there is the relationship between the high representative and QMV. I know that we have a separate batch of amendments coming up on that, which I will not talk about. Article 31 of the consolidated treaty
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Lastly, I strongly support what my noble friend Lady Park said about the external—I nearly said eternal—action service. The noble Lord, Lord Wallace, referred to the usefulness that it could have in countries where Britain was not represented, but it will not exist just in countries where Britain is not represented. As my noble friend said, in many countries there are already lavish EU embassies. That is how they are regarded; the heads of mission have diplomatic status. It is not so long ago—and I shall not embarrass him—that I was in one major Asian country where late at night the ambassador sat me down, gave me a whisky, and said, “Could you explain what on earth the EU embassy is doing here? Does it protect British citizens when arrested? Is it promoting British trade? Does it help people following some natural disaster? What is it and all its staff doing?”. There is already ridiculous duplication. There is not enough focus on the external representation that the EU already has with the many offices—even those for small business creation—all over the world in countries such as India. This is among the most lavish provisions that are wholly unnecessary.
That is not the main point that I support in the amendment. The main points are those that probe whether the treaty is as watertight as the Government maintain. That is difficult to believe when they worked so hard at the convention and late at Lisbon to take out provisions that now remain in it.
Lord Anderson of Swansea: The noble Lord’s argument had a certain contradiction. He talked about the danger of our being put in an EU straitjacket in terms of foreign policy, yet he referred to Kosovo and Iraq where there were clear differences in national perceptions. Those differences remain. Clearly the declaration to which the noble Lord referred clarifies the position, but it was put in effectively as an abundance of caution.
I gladly follow my noble friend Lord Robertson of Port Ellen. We had many happy times together during the 1990s in my noble friend Lord Healey’s team, when it was said that he was like one of those great African trees which spread its branches so wide that nothing grew under it. My noble friend Lord Robertson is perhaps the exception to that. Rather like a bad film, I have the view that this is where I came in, as there seems to be something of a whiff of the latter-day Bourbons who have learnt nothing and forgotten nothing about the European Union. The EU has indeed moved on and is a very different creature from the subject of our debates in the 1980s and 1990s.
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I also follow with a certain puzzlement what has been said by the noble Lord, Lord Howell, about the Commonwealth. It is a magnificent obsession, but my memory goes back to the 1980s when the then Conservative Government almost destroyed the Commonwealth by their policies on South Africa. Only latterly have they discovered the Commonwealth, and I refer noble Lords to the speech of Don McKinnon, the outgoing Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, who had a far more realistic vision of what the excellent Commonwealth can do. I speak as someone who chaired the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association UK branch for four years and considered myself a Commonwealth man even during the 1980s when the Conservative Government were pursuing policies that almost destroyed that same Commonwealth.
It is clear that the opposition Front Bench has a view of the European Union as minimalist, if at all, and one that is out of step with our partner countries. I can envisage very great damage to our national interests if the Conservatives were to move into government because of how we would yet again become isolated in Brussels. There would be a constant tension between the realists and the fundamentalists; those who have a fairly realistic view of where our interests as a country lie and the fundamentalist, bitter-enders. It is absolutely clear that, for a great swathe of foreign policy, our interests and those of our European partners largely converge. One thinks, for example, of the Balkans, climate change and a whole range of issues where our policies as Europeans are rather closer than those between Europeans and our great partner, the United States.
What also puzzled me about the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Howell, was that he was far more ready to accept the view of one Foreign Minister—the Finnish Foreign Minister—than the considered views of the House of Lords European Union Committee. It investigated in great depth and heard evidence from a wide range of witnesses. It is not a committee of Euro-enthusiasts or fanatics, but an all-party committee. In The Treaty of Lisbon: An Impact Assessment, it concludes at paragraph 7.16:
“These changes to the structure of the Treaties serve to consolidate, streamline and clarify the provisions on the EU’s external relations. They do not change the overall objectives of the EU’s external policies”.
At paragraph 7.36, it concludes:
“The evidence is that the Lisbon Treaty has preserved the independence of the UK’s foreign and defence policy, subject to the constraints arising when unanimous agreement does prove possible. The fundamental principles of the CFSP will not change under the new Treaties. In particular, the principle of unanimity and the search for consensus in decision-making will continue to apply to the CFSP”.
In my judgment, those clear quotations speak for themselves. Indeed, as my noble friend Lord Robertson, proposed, there is a case for far greater co-ordination of EU policies and greater working together, particularly in fields such as energy policy where we now see how we are being disadvantaged in respect of Gazprom and the Russian policies as a result of the pursuing of independent national policies by so many of our partner countries.
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Our foreign policy interests are infinitely strengthened by working together in areas such as Iran. The noble Baroness, Lady Park of Monmouth, is perhaps unaware of the degree of co-operation that currently exists at all levels between the European Union representatives and national governments on what will be called the EU External Action Service; from first secretary through to regular meetings at ambassadorial levels, where joint representations are made and our clout is far greater because we are members of the Union.
Finally, the Opposition show a certain lack of confidence overall in ourselves as British people in the European Union and in the leading role which we have already played. They continue to view the European Union almost as if it is a hostile country which we are afraid to get close to. It is indeed in our interests to play a far more positive role within the European Union. I hope that every Member of the Committee looks carefully at the considered conclusions which the House of Lords European Union Committee drew, having carefully examined all the evidence before us.
Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon: I am happy to follow the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, because I agree with many of his sentiments and those expressed earlier by the noble Lord, Lord Robertson. Above all, I agree with his puzzlement about the arguments put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford. I cannot work out whether I was more depressed or frightened by hearing the arguments put forward by those on the anti-European side opposed to closer European integration on foreign affairs and defence. I think I was more frightened overall because the arguments bear no relation to the changing world in which we are living or, above all, to the new threats that the nations of the European continent and the European Union are now facing. My puzzlement and bewilderment is about the strange positions taken by old friends. I have always had a very high regard for the voice of the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford, on matters related to foreign affairs. I have always respected him, so it comes as something of shock to hear him mouthing the same arguments—indeed, sometimes even the same words—as Mr William Cash down the corridor in the other place.
However, I agree with him about one thing. At the end of his speech he said—I think I quote him precisely—that we need,
That is where I find his arguments so extraordinarily deficient because the arguments that I hear advanced come out of a vacuum and are completely unrelated to the reality of the new threats that we now face. They bear the same sense of importance as Nero would have recognised regarding his fiddle case as the flames leapt higher outside or the same sense and understanding of the strategic threat that we face as informed those who designed the defences of Singapore and put the guns resolutely facing out to sea while the enemy came from behind. I wonder whether people have been to Washington recently. Do you often hear the word “NATO” there? Do you often hear the word “Europe” there? No, you do not. Washington’s obsession these
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Europe will occupy a much less important position in the pantheon of American interests in the future than it does today. I suspect that the new American Administration, whichever side they come from, will re-establish positions with Europe and improve relations. I welcome that. But the reality is that the United States is looking elsewhere in the world and the European Union and the Atlantic relationship, which will always be there, will be far less important than they were. Let us take a look at one fact. How many US soldiers are there today on the mainland of the European Union? How many US tanks are there? There are almost none. There are 30,000 US servicemen in the European Union today, but almost all of them are manning the airbases that America finds it convenient to use to prosecute its war in Iraq and Afghanistan. I do not complain about that; it is a fact of life; but the reality is that the American security guarantee under which we have sheltered for so long and under which many European Union nations have abandoned the need for a strong defence, which I greatly regret, is not going to be there in the future in the way that it was in the past. If we in the European Union do not understand that the consequence of that is that we should deepen the integration of our foreign policy and defence institutions rather than weaken them, we are fools. We do not understand that realignment.
I am a passionate European—noble Lords will hardly be surprised by that—but I am also a passionate Atlanticist. I do not see a contradiction between the two. One of the ways we will refurbish and renew the Atlantic relationship is to strengthen the integration of the European Union, not diminish it, to make ourselves more effective, not less effective. We are not dealing with just a retrenching United States; everybody knows that we are also dealing with a more assertive Russia under a muscular new president who has found new leverage in the form of energy. If there is a clear example of how we fail if we deal with Russia on an issue as a fractured series of nations, each negotiating a bilateral treaty, it is energy because our failure to speak with a single voice has given Putin more leverage than he would otherwise have and diminished our bargaining power. We are not without bargaining power in the energy debate. Russia needs our markets and our investment quite as much as we need its oil. There are only two existing pipelines—a third is being built to China—and both of them come to Europe. However, the fact that we completely fail to speak with a single voice has increased enormously both the political leverage of Putin on this issue and the pain that we suffer in consequence.
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As America is retrenching to our west and Russia is more assertive to our east, the right reaction from Europe is not to weaken the institutions of our foreign policy and defence but to strengthen that integration.
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Put your hand over the side of the little boat in which we sail, feel the way the tide is moving, feel how strong the economic tide is now moving from the nations gathered around the Atlantic shore board to those of the Pacific rim. It is not impossible that we will wake up within the next 15 years and discover that we are not among the world’s first economies any longer, but among its second-tier ones. Imagine what that will mean for the governance of our countries. In the face of that, do we seriously believe that we want to consign ourselves to the role of little corks bobbing along in the wake of somebody else’s ocean liner rather than integrating Europe to give us all a stronger voice, integrating and pooling our sovereignty on some of these key issues on which the decent lives of our citizens depend? If we do not understand that the right response to those circumstances is not to weaken the integration of our foreign policy, security and defence, then we are fools.
We are looking at a whole new different shape to world affairs. We are looking not at a world dominated by a single super power—a mono-polar world—but at a multi polar world. It will no longer be good enough to shelter behind the apron strings of our neighbouring superpower and say that that is a foreign policy.
The great British Foreign Minister, George Canning, used to talk about the European areopagus in the middle of the 19th century, the concert of powers in Europe—the five sides of powers in Europe. He said that Britain should always seek to counterbalance any coalition of others in order to preserve the equilibrium of the concert of Europe. In so doing, the peace of Europe was kept for 50 years and Britain was kept out of continental armed entanglements for more than a 100 years. That is much more like the world that we are going to look at and that we are going to be in. If we do not understand that, in these circumstances, Europe will have to be much more independent and more subtle to be able to play its role among this multi sided, multi polar structure of world affairs and therefore that we should not weaken the institutions of our defence and foreign affairs, then, we are fools.
There is a great poem, “A Shropshire Lad”, that is said to have echoed in Churchill’s mind in the 1930s, written by AE Housman at the end of the long hot summer of stability of the 19th century. One stanza talks about the changes coming—listen because we live on the cusp of just such a change. The lines run:
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You do not have to listen very hard to hear the distant drummer and the sounds of feet marching. We are living in an extremely turbulent world, one in which we will be facing possibly mass movements and migrations in the face of, for instance, global warming and starvation; a world in which conflict will, I fear, be more, and not less, common and in which the threats to our civilisation, future and security, will be deeper and stronger than any we have experienced since the end of the Cold War and maybe even more so than that. If we do not understand that in the face of such threats, the right response for Europe is to deepen the integration of our foreign and defence institutions, then, we are fools. The problem with the Lisbon treaty is not that it is too strong but that, in this matter, it is too weak.
Lord Tebbit: It is always a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown, not least because it means that it is over. It was extremely kind of him to explain who Canning was. I am most grateful to him, in this place, for explaining such things in his speech. I hope it is a speech that he will make to our friends in Scotland at some stage, because it might almost be adapted to a defence of the union as well. I offer that to him. It is obviously a good speech and he should not just waste it on us again.
I also like to agree across the Floor of the House whenever I can. In particular, I agreed with the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, when he said that the EU of today is nothing like the Europe of the 1980s and 1990s. I will say that and why my view of it has changed since then and why, although I supported the Single European Act, I opposed the Maastricht treaty.
It was the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, who said today that we need more Europe, not less. Would he ever say that we have had enough Europe—that we do not need any more of it? That was the conclusion that I reached some years ago. I hope that he will follow me before too long.
My remarks appertain principally to Amendment No. 113, which the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, saw as something quite extraordinary. Well, it is, in a way, extraordinary that it should be thought necessary to emphasise in this House that no Parliament should have the power to bind its successors. I thought that was something about which we all agreed, but not anymore it seems. Amendment No. 113 would reassert that but the treaty, as it is written today, does not.
After all, our positions change from time to time. The European Union might take a position on foreign policy and subsequently wish to change it. Why not? Circumstances change. A British Government elected by the people of this country might come to a conclusion on foreign policy which falls into line with the conclusions of the European Union. However, what if, at a subsequent general election, that foreign policy issue is a matter of
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My noble friend Lady Park raised the issue of the Falklands. I remember very well indeed being at the Council of Ministers in Brussels in the week following the Argentine invasion of the Falklands. You had to shop around pretty hard to find any of my colleagues who supported what we were doing. The general view was, “I suppose if you want to make this big gesture of sending the fleet, well, all right, but of course you won’t do anything about it. It would be madness. It would be contrary to the interests of the world, particularly of Europe, to pick a quarrel with the Argentinians”. There was one exception among my colleagues, one Minister who understood what we were doing: the French Minister. France unilaterally assisted us a great deal in the advice and information that it gave us about the Argentines’ Exocet missile capacity, but so far as the rest were concerned, forget it. They were more interested in their trade with Argentina than our interest in upholding the right of freedom of the Falkland Islanders.
Lord Tugendhat: I, too, was in Brussels at that time and have recollections of the Council. I am sure my noble friend will agree that whatever private doubts some Ministers expressed about the wisdom of some aspects of British policy, the European Union—or the European Community, as it was then known—very quickly imposed sanctions against Argentina and very quickly maintained a united front at the Security Council of the United Nations. It came as a great shock to the Argentinians to find that whereas there was no common front in Latin America, even countries in Europe which they had supposed would be sympathetic to them stood by Britain in trade and in the United Nations. I recognise that the Irish and the Italians deviated somewhat further down the road—many people of Italian origin live in Argentina—but at the moment that it mattered, our European partners rallied around us with sanctions and in the United Nations.
Lord Tebbit: I put it another way. They followed once we had acted. There would have been little chance of their doing so if we had been dependent on them to act or to allow us to act if they had the ability to prohibit us from acting. That was what I experienced on the ground. Again, it emphasises the fact that we must have the right to unilateral action at any moment, even in defiance of what our European colleagues want us to do.
The noble Lord, Lord Robertson, also spoke of the time when his party was unilateralist. That emphasises the fact that all our parties change their views at times, and that it is important that we ensure that we do not produce a mechanism by which our parties can be, if not forbidden from changing their views, then prevented from implementing their change of view. That is the important thing about Amendment No. 113.
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Lord Robertson of Port Ellen: I wonder whether the noble Lord remembers a debate that he and I had on Sky television at the time of the Maastricht ratification procedure. He made the statement, which made the front page of the Observer the following Sunday, that if Maastricht was carried through, the British Chancellor of the Exchequer would have no more powers than the treasurer of a rate-capped local authority. That was 16 years ago. Does he still hold with that proposition?
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