Baroness Joyce Quin:

I thank the Vice Chairman. Obviously, a large number of issues have been raised and I will try to touch on a few of them.

Deputy Joe O'Reilly stated it would be a big blow if the United Kingdom was to vote to leave the European Union, a view with which I concur. I am perhaps less pessimistic about the certainty of a referendum being held than Mr. Halligan. It is more than likely there will be a referendum. If there is a referendum, the result is likely to be a vote in favour of continuation as a member of the European Union. I say this because once one has a big open debate with discussions up and down the country, as happened in the 1970s, the unattractiveness of being outside the European Union, particularly in the context of trade, will be brought home to people.

Public opinion is in an interesting state as far as the European Union is concerned. It has been very negative towards the European Union for a while, but recently the movement has been somewhat more in favour of staying in the Union.

One has to look behind the headline figures on public opinion. For example, in my old parliamentary constituency there was a difference in view between people who because of their employment were more familiar with the European Union and others. There were many in the constituency who worked in the very successful Nissan car plant in the north east of England. No matter what job they held in the firm, they were very much aware that Nissan was in the United Kingdom in order to have access to the European market. In the course of their daily work most of them were dealing in euro rather than pounds. There would be a different debate if the publicity considered regions where there were industries which thrived because the United Kingdom was in the European Union Single Market, including supplier industries and the overall employment linked with these industries. Having been Europe Minister, I remember vividly that, although the newspapers were full of horror stories about the European Union, I received almost no letters from my constituents about it. On the whole, they raised matters to do with health, employment, education and so on. In terms of public opinion, we need to think deeply about this.

The transatlantic trade and investment partnership, TTIP, was mentioned in the context of whether, if the United Kingdom was outside the European Union, it would try to have an independent deal with the United States. It is possible that it would, although it seems that, even though we have a close relationship with the United States, it is much more difficult to argue from a position of strength if one is not part of the European Union Single Market.

In respect of alternatives that might be raised in a public debate, some people in the United Kingdom look enviously at Norway, but its economy and size are very different from those of the United Kingdom. It is a striking fact that Norway is the tenth largest contributor to the EU budget because in order to have access to the Single Market, it must pay quite a substantial fee and it is also bound by EU trade rules without having a seat at the table and being able to negotiate the rules. When these issues become public knowledge more than they are now, it will influence the debate.

Mr. Halligan and members of the committee have mentioned that the European Union has grown significantly. I agree, although it has grown in certain ways that were not foreseeable at the time such as the measures on the environment which were not thought of in the early days because the environment and climate change were not such big issues at the time.

In terms of there being an ever closer union, the record is mixed, partly because of the very welcome enlargement of the European Union and it is quite hard to enlarge and deepen at exactly the same time. Mr. Halligan and I are old enough to remember when Economic and Monetary Union was designed to come into effect by 1980. It did not and there are many provisions in the Treaty of Rome about harmonisation of taxation which have never come about. We have to see the reality and clarify in the context of the debate in the United Kingdom that it is a democratic structure, that there is no inevitability that certain things will be created. Therefore, we should not be too alarmed or frightened about rushing helter-skelter into an overarching European government which would tell us all what to do every minute of the day. That is not justified by its history.

Senator Terry Leyden said something about archives and the debate which took place in the past. Reading some of the records is a salutary experience. In Britain people tend to say we only joined a free trade area and that now we are lumbered with unpleasant changes. In fact, we had been, with Ireland, part of the European free trade area and at the time the debate was about the contrast between a free trade area and the European Economic Community as it was then known. It may make me sound like a rather sad nerd, but before I came here, I read some of the debates that had taken place in the House of Commons in the 1970s before the referendum was held and they were not just about a free trade area, they were about a great deal more than this, including worries about the loss of sovereignty, agriculture and fisheries policy and so on. People need to be reminded that these things did take place and I hope we can learn from the archives and the information mentioned.