Lord Owen: My Lords, I rise to support a referendum and to concentrate some of my remarks on those made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe, and in particular his assertion that a referendum is an alien concept. I am afraid that history is important to this issue. In March 1972, the other place was faced with an amendment for a referendum before we could accede to the treaty to join the European...
Lord Owen: My Lords—
Lord Owen: My Lords, I support both amendments but I hope that the Official Opposition will not push their Amendment No. 28 to the vote but will support a vote on the extremely interesting and important amendment tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Neill of Bladen and Lord Waddington. I notice that the former Attorney-General is in his place. I had not before read the very interesting speech that he made on...
Lord Owen: I—
Lord Owen: No suggestion? The noble Baroness's former Prime Minister was committed to a referendum and he told his colleagues that, if they gave way on certain matters and changed the constitutional treaty, he would commit to there being no referendum on the Lisbon treaty. We know that. That is the negotiation that took place in the middle of the night. Of course, he had to come back and win that, and...
Lord Owen: The noble Lord praises endlessly the Select Committee approach and the committee procedures, and he may well be justified in that, but in this case the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs of the House of Commons has made a specific recommendation that there should be full legislative procedure.
Lord Owen: Does the noble Lord agree that exactly that situation confronted the former Prime Minister Tony Blair when he was negotiating this Lisbon treaty? He had a commitment to a referendum on the previous constitution and he could not know what would happen on this particular thing. He was committed by a decision in the general election to have that. That did not stop him making a deal which...
Lord Owen: It is not for me to go into too much detail on what is or is not reform in the other place. I am very conscious of the fact that, as you get older, you always think everything that happened in your time was much better than it is at present. In my family when my children were younger and I started reminiscing about how much better things used to be, they would quote from the Monty Python...
Lord Owen: I am afraid the noble Baroness did not quite hear what I was saying. I said that in the middle of the night the Prime Minister may succumb in the European Council to a decision for a unanimous vote. The legislation that is passed will be subject to a vote in both Houses of Parliament, but once that decision is taken by the Prime Minister—and it is usually in the small hours of the morning—
Lord Owen: I am afraid the noble Baroness shows how little time she has spent in the small hours negotiating in the European Union. The European Union makes decisions by unanimity in the European Council in many diverse ways, quite often not actually in the Chamber. It is usually a case of three or four people who are having difficulty with a particular issue being called into the president's room where...
Lord Owen: My Lords, this is an extremely important amendment. I refer particularly to Amendment No. 136A, which I imagine is the amendment on which we may or may not vote. I cannot imagine a more important amendment among those on which we will vote. This will last for at least a decade. It is unlikely that we will get such major European Union legislation short of that. It seems that there is a real...
Lord Owen: I quite agree. And because it is timetabled it is less onerous to ask the Government to accept that it should be primary legislation. I accept that it is certainly weaker. But it could be argued that they have now controlled the process to some extent and there do not have to be guillotines. Far from weakening my case, I think it strengthens it. I wonder what the Liberal Democrats' position...
Lord Owen: I hesitate to intervene, particularly after two speeches by a noble Lord and a noble and learned Lord whose views I respect and who, I am fully aware, know a great deal more about this subject than I do. I have been studying this legislation for a long time, every bit as long as the noble Lord and the noble and learned Lord. At one time I had the resources of a major department of state...
Lord Owen: I do not accept that judgment and I do not believe it is accepted in Germany either. I think that the noble Lord has allowed his personal views to sway him on the actual interpretation of the German constitutional court. As German people understand it, that court can strike out any aspect of any treaty entered into by their Government if it goes against the German constitution. It is put...
Lord Owen: They cannot change European law, but they can challenge the interpretation of European law within the context of the Federal Republic of Germany.
Lord Owen: The noble and learned Lord may be correct that it is a violation, but there is a conflict here. If it was so much of an overt conflict, it would have been much wiser for the Federal Parliament, when it came to accept the treaty of Rome, to have tidied this up and to have made it clear that the German constitutional court was a secondary body. It did not do so and it has inherently a conflict....
Lord Owen: I know that it is very difficult for noble Lords who have spent quite a lot of their time in the Commission, but I can only assure them that there is a conflict here, which is inherent in the whole of the European Union. There is a juxtaposition of European law and national law. There is a juxtaposition of supranationalism and national government. Some of these have never been cleared...
Lord Owen: I do not claim there to be a precedent. I claim the fact that this potential conflict exists. It is no use the noble Lord shaking his hands. This conflict exists. It is discussed in German politics and it is a factor behind the political decisions taken by federal chancellors over a period of years when faced by amendments of the Rome treaty. They take it into account and they are...
Lord Owen: If the noble Lord would look at the debate in the French Assembly, he will know that it was said that this was no longer possible, because there have been changes in the treaty of Maastricht which meant that it was no longer possible to invoke the Luxembourg compromise. The French Prime Minister came down to the Assembly and gave a very clear, legal interpretation that it had not been changed...
Lord Owen: If the noble Lord is saying that when the justices make the case they do not bear in mind the argumentation that goes on about what is said in both Houses of Parliament, then I am surprised. I do not deny that it is their judgment that makes the law of the land; the words and the interpretation of those words lies in the courts of law of this country. But in regard to the framing of those...