European Council

Lord Watson of Richmond: My Lords, a member of the general public, happening in this debate, might feel that he or she had stumbled on to an intensely private occasion. We are discussing points with which we are very familiar. Even the occasional exchanges of abuse have almost a Christmas-like feel about them. We recognise them. As we enter the festive season, it is rather like going into one of those Christmas occasions when a subject is suddenly raised and the rest of the family says, "Oh, Grandfather, you really don't want to raise that again". There is something of that feel to this debate.

However, I suspect that something else is happening in it. To use a different analogy, it is perhaps rather like the early stages of naval battle. What is actually going on this afternoon and this evening is that we are taking ranging shots. We are testing out positions; we are testing parameters of prejudice; and we are perhaps testing areas-I would not say of compromise-of common ground.

What is happening this evening is well worthwhile, despite the length of the debate. I detect that some of the ships of the line have slightly altered position. The noble Lord, Lord Howell, seems to have moved slightly. Mind you, it has been a steady progression and one has watched it in its various stages, but I seem to identify a slightly sharper and more attacking position tonight-but we shall see.

One of the strange characteristics of the premiership of Tony Blair was that, rather as this country flies the European Union flag on its embassies in different foreign countries but is reluctant so to fly it here in the United Kingdom, so the former Prime Minister tended to make his most enthusiastic European speeches in continental Europe rather than here in the United Kingdom. That was not an accident, but the result of certain timidity-I think that it is justified to use that word. He always had an eye and an ear for British public opinion, particularly as it might be expressed through the tabloid newspapers, and that produced timidity.

One of the strange aspects of the evolution of the European debate is that that timidity, over quite a long period now, has produced defeat on two fronts. It has produced defeat here in the United Kingdom, because timidity is not a characteristic with which one should confront the arguments of the Euroscepticsone is not going to win the argument by evidencing a form of timidity. However, there is another front which is very important to the status, prestige and effectiveness of the United Kingdom. It is how these arguments, or rather these demonstrations of timidity, are perceived in continental Europe and among our allies. Perhaps I may share with the House an experience that I had a couple of weeks ago. I was attending a dinner and a public speech in the American Academy in Berlin. The main speaker was the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel. The speech was focused primarily on the interesting topic of the future convergence of regulatory provisions on the two sides of the Atlantic, between the European Union and the Atlantic union, which is extremely important not only in accountancy but also in releasing a lot of the economic energy of the massive trade between the European Union and the United States. She used three times in the debate the phrase, "even in London, this argument might have resonance". The assumption behind that was that a whole raft of arguments would have acceptance in all other European capitals, but that they might achieve it even in London. I am concerned by a growing sense among our friends-and the German Chancellor is definitely a friend of the United Kingdom, as she clearly is of the United States but also among the more general public and media that Britain is already drifting into a point of disengagement. I read with no satisfaction-because it is not a fair comment, including in its criticism of the British Government-an article in Die Zeit about the change of the position of the Polish Government from one of some real antipathy to the reform treaty and other European matters to rather enthusiastic support, which is of great significance, as I am sure we all recognise. The journalist wrote:

"Above all, the British, who have always put the brakes on the integration process and weren't much more constructive than Poland during the drafting of the reform treaty, won't be able to hide behind that country anymore. If British politicians still want to block European integration, a common foreign policy or the new EU reform treaty, they will have to do it themselves".

I do not agree with that because it is unfair, but the tone of the article should be the subject of concern to us. If that feeling, not only that the British will argue and complain, but also that their instinct at a quite fundamental level is towards disengagement, gains a grip, the leverage that is available to our Government and our ability to influence the future direction of Europe will be enormously diminished.

Many references have been made today to how the public will see these matters. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, will forgive me for my earlier intervention, reminding him that when I was involved in these matters a bit, and in the first referendum, there was certainly no attempt to disguise the purpose of a European Community moving towards ever closer union. However, I was very encouraged by a speech made at the Royal Television Society a few weeks ago by the new chairman of the BBC Trust, Sir Michael Lyons, who said that the trust had been carrying out its own polling on what young people want from the BBC. Some of the things they want are what one would expect, including,

Were it not ever so? But then Sir Michael asked:

"But would you have expected that they would place very nearly the same importance on their third top priority-that the BBC should", in future months and years, "'ensure that audiences within the UK are aware of, and understand, what's going on in the world'?"

Well, that remit involves understanding what is really going on in Europe.

What is really going in Europe has nothing to do with tentacles. It has nothing to do with ensnarement, plot, or subterfuge. It is actually the fairly stumbling but nevertheless vital attempt by an enormously enlarged European Union to manage its affairs more efficiently, more effectively and, I hope, somewhat more democratically-and to keep the project going forward. Just to pause for a moment; if the process of the European Union genuinely faltered, and if we were sitting in this Chamber seeing the European Union not as it is now-without the success of enlargement or the euro-but as an organisation that was breaking up, and in which the processes and instincts for collective agreement had substantially faltered, we would be having a fearful and somewhat frightened debate. We would be facing an entirely different prospect for this country, and for all of us.

I fear I am sceptical about speeches telling me and others in one sentence, "All this is wrong; we wish to challenge it and want to stop it, but we are tremendously committed to Europe; we believe in Europe and we want everything to go forward". That position is simply not tenable. We will, of course, want to do certain things differently in this country; and so will the Germans, the French, the Poles and others, including future new states. We either learn how to do that together within an agreed framework, or we risk break-up. That is why this slightly odd, ranging debate that we are having is important. It will be followed by many more, but let us have a sense-from the moment that this real debate is engaged of what is at stake.

We are not playing with words here. We are not simply trying to score a point against the Government. We are not even trying to win points, or should not be, on who committed to what over a referendum. We are asking ourselves whether this European Union project is good for this country and can be managed well. I believe strongly that it is, and it can.