Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne: Perhaps the noble Lord will explain, given his right and proper loyalty to the sovereignty of the United Kingdom, why he supports amendments that make the euro, which after all is a financial mechanism, of greater value in sovereignty terms than defence, which was the issue that I raised.
Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne: I-
Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne: Does the noble Lord agree, when he makes a comparison between the United Kingdom exercising a great deal of authority inside other alliances, that there is a bit of a difference between, say, NATO or the UN and the European Union? None of the other alliances of which we are an important member has the acquis communautaire, and none therefore binds us so tightly into legal provisions that we...
Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne: Does the Minister not agree that the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, is in fact a misunderstanding of the purpose of this Bill and that his remarks and the remarks of so many of those who oppose this Bill still relate to overwhelming ownership by government of all these decisions? The purpose of the Bill is to bring the British public and the voter into that decision-making...
Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne: My Lords, I am a little dazzled by the complexity of the millions and billions and almost trillions of pounds and euros that the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, has laid in front of us. Indeed, while I was listening to him most closely, I recalled a moment of great happiness when I was begging for charity recently and I received a cheque with so many zeros that they fell off the end of...
Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne: I am very grateful indeed to the noble Lord. It is most courteous and gallant of him to allow me to make a brief comment. Would he not agree that our great leader who led us in that battle and standalone fight, Winston Churchill, was in fact a supporter of the Treaty of Brussels, which in 1947 would have greatly enlarged our integration into what has now become the European Union with far...
Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne: My Lords-
Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne: I follow the noble Lord with further comment about the applicability of a sunset clause for this type of Bill at all. We must provide certainty for the British public, which as a former Member of the European Parliament I must say is sadly lacking for them at the moment because of the way in which European Union business has previously been dealt with by the British Parliament and...
Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne: I thank the noble Lord very much. Perhaps I may continue. The day a Government believe this Bill should be changed, they can do exactly that through the proper mechanisms; they can repeal the Acts that introduced them. However, repealing the Bill and giving discretion back to Ministers is not the answer as it is with the other Bills that I have quoted. As I recall from my time in the House of...
Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne: The sunset clause is inappropriate because, as I have said, this Bill attempts to do something quite unusual with regard to EU legislation and successive British Parliaments and Governments. Traditionally, British Governments, and to a lesser extent British Parliaments, had not involved themselves in EU legislation. Your Lordships' House is very different from the other place. I am pleased to...
Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne: I beg to continue, because although the noble Lord's reasoning is always crystal clear-I often disagree with him entirely but I always respect the way in which he puts forward his views-in this case, I am not quite clear what his point is. I therefore conclude by asking the Government to assure us that if and when this Bill goes through without the sunset clauses, as I hope it will, Ministers...
Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne: My Lords-
Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne: I pay tribute to the Minister and to the Government for listening with such deep concern to what seemed to me to be perfectly acceptable phraseology, but which gave noble Lords opposite considerable difficulty. It seems to me odd that something that is comfortable, which we already passed in the UK 2008 Act, should somehow become a discomforting phrase here, but I am none the less absolutely...
Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne: Would the Minister recommend to other European Union member states that have territories that are not specifically part of their geographical parameters-such as Spain and the Canary Islands, and France and her piece of territory in north Africa-that they follow the lead of the United Kingdom in drawing more fully into their embrace the territories that belong to them?
Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne: This amendment is not in fact about the absolute underpinnings of this Bill, although it is a very tempting set of red herrings that have been laid in front of your Lordships' House. This set of amendments is about whether or not there should be a 40 per cent threshold and, with your Lordships' permission, I would like to comment purely on that point. The 40 per cent threshold seems to me, as...
Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne: I was merely making the general point that 50 per cent-plus is our normal modus operandi. It is impossible to see why it should be any different for this referendum.
Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne: The noble Lords opposite will not be surprised to hear that I find it very difficult to accept this amendment. Coming from the Brussels angle, I remind noble Lords that in Brussels the word "urgency" relates to the French word "urgence", which means of powerful importance. I recall that week after week, month after month in Strasbourg and Brussels, we had urgency debates which took place many...
Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne: Since the noble Lord has such confidence in the judgment of Ministers that he wishes to recentralise the possible decision-making that would come through referenda, why does he not have confidence that the judgment of Ministers would be that something inessential would not come to Parliament in the first place? There is an illogicality in his circular argument.
Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne: My Lords, I rise to support the noble Lord, Lord Reay, in the excellent Bill he is putting before this House, to support its committal and to thank him most warmly for the effort he has put into creating the Bill. This is a very important topic indeed, and I believe it has been underresearched, underdiscussed and, perhaps, underdebated. I shall explain my interest. My colleagues behind me...
Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne: My noble friend's argument might hold water if wind power or the other alternative renewables were able to provide the 86 per cent of our energy that conventional fuels provide. Since conventional fuels have to back up renewables, I cannot give credence to his argument. Conventional fuels have to be around to back up the intermittent wind power that is all we get in the United Kingdom. I...