European Union

Baroness Smith of Newnham Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd February 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, the Government do not bypass Parliament. In one breath the noble Baroness berates the Prime Minister for not being here to deliver a Statement, but with the next she berates him, it seems, for wanting to make a Statement tomorrow on what is a complex issue, and therefore it is too soon. I sympathise with all Members of the House, in that I know they pay a great deal of attention to the renegotiations, as we should as parliamentarians. They have done so throughout the process and I will continue to do my very best to update them. Of course, it is as ever for the usual channels to determine when there are debates, and I know they are listening carefully to me because the need for Parliament to be closely involved in discussions on these matters is as dear to them as it is to me. However, the papers refer to a work in progress.

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, it is welcome to note that progress appears to have been made in all four of the important areas for reform that the Prime Minister has identified. Would the Minister reflect for a moment on one aspect of the sovereignty basket and the role of national Parliaments? As someone who hopes very much to campaign to remain in the European Union, and that the Prime Minister will be leading that campaign, I ask whether the Minister can explain how a red card system that requires 55% of Parliaments to make a case is really an improvement on the current yellow card system, which requires a third of Parliaments to do so. Might not an inter-institutional agreement that deals with and strengthens the current system be somewhat better?

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, I appreciate that the noble Baroness has done a lot of work on the academic detailed background to this, which is an advantage that many of us do not have. The 55% figure, which the BBC has reported, is not in the text released by Mr Donald Tusk, so the proposal for a majority depends on how that is defined. This is a working document, not a final agreement. The noble Baroness asks a very reasonable question about how a red card system is more effective. Those on a football pitch know what happens when they have a red card.

European Union Referendum Bill

Baroness Smith of Newnham Excerpts

Monday 23rd November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 24C to which I have put my name. I would like to thank the Minister for listening, as the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, said and for reflecting the views put forward at all stages of the Bill’s passage through this House.

Listening to the noble Lord, Lord Owen, I am slightly at a loss because last week we discussed the franchise at some length and voted on it and today we are thinking about reports and paragraph (a) of subsection (1) of the proposed new clause, to which the noble Lord referred, relates to Government Amendment 24B, not to an amendment which is being proposed by Back-Benchers or others.

I want to speak to parts of Amendment 24C. Most of the concerns that I raised at Second Reading about the need for reports have been answered by government Amendment 24B in terms of outlining what alternatives to membership might mean. It is important that we have objective information. I hear from both sides of the House—from the noble Lords, Lord Hamilton and Lord Pearson of Rannoch—that Amendment 24C is somehow trying to put forward things that pro-Europeans want to hear about. However, if the information that is being asked for is objective and membership of the European Union is bad for the economy, a report will make that clear. There is nothing in Amendment 24C that says that the report should outline the “benefits of” or the “disbenefits of”; it merely refers to the “effects of”, so it would be helpful if noble Lords took the wording of the amendment at face value. Some of us who are still very new to your Lordships’ House have put our names to amendments because we believe that they will improve the quality of debate and the information that is available to citizens.

I turn to paragraphs (b) (c) and (d) of Amendment 24C on the rights of EU citizens in the UK and UK nationals resident in other member states. If the vote is to withdraw, there will clearly be implications for those citizens, which was one of the reasons we discussed at some length whether those people should be enfranchised. Will the Minister confirm that issues about the rights of citizens resident here and in the other EU states will be taken into consideration by the Government under Amendment 24B and, in particular, will she focus on the relationship with Ireland? In Committee, my noble friend Lord Wallace and I raised this issue in an amendment, which was withdrawn. Clearly in addition to discussions with the devolved Administration of Northern Ireland, it is important for the Her Majesty’s Government to think about the implications for the relationship of the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland in the case of withdrawal. It is not simply a matter for the devolved Administration; it is a matter for two sovereign countries. The other devolved Administrations would not be affected in quite the same way.

[Lord Grocott]

I do not think there is any disagreement about the need to provide precise factual information so that people can make the judgment that they will have make when the referendum is called. That is clearly a benefit. The difficulty that arises—it is pretty obvious to me and I hope I can convince any doubters that it ought to be to all of us—is in determining what is factual, unarguable, objective information and what is a matter of judgment.

Looking at the amendments, I can certainly give an example of what is factual and what is not. For example, government Amendment 24B—leaving aside just for a moment the doubts of the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, about which countries might be included—is close to a factual requirement,

“examples of countries that do not have membership of the European Union but do have other arrangements with the European Union (describing, in the case of each country given as an example, those arrangements).”

Admittedly, the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, made me waver a bit when I heard his comments. There is deep uncertainty as to precisely which countries would be covered by this—perhaps the Minister will answer that point in her reply—but if you gave that to 10 top civil servants and said, “Right, you have to draw up these facts, these details, on this precise point”, they would roughly be in the same territory. They would spell out what deal Norway had got, what deal Switzerland had got and so on.

By complete contrast, I have to disagree with the Liberal Front Bench strongly over the idea that Amendment 24C, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, involves a kind of clear, objective and unarguable description about the consequences of withdrawal. The game is given away in the language of the very first line of the amendment:

“The report shall cover the possible consequences of withdrawal”.

The term “possible consequences” contains within itself the possibility of different considerations that need to be brought into account in the event of withdrawal. The language of the amendment itself admits the possibility of debate, discussion and uncertainty. I am not a lawyer, but if that ever passed on to the statute book and 10 civil servants were asked to give a precise answer on those points, they would come up with 10 different solutions.

I will complete that point by including one particularly contentious example. I mentioned this in Committee but make absolutely no apology for mentioning it again. Amendment 24C says:

“The report shall cover the possible consequences of withdrawal from the European Union, including information on the effects of withdrawal upon … (g) the provision of financial support for agriculture in each region of the United Kingdom”.

Does that or does that not include a consideration of what support agriculture would get in the event of withdrawal from the common agricultural policy? In my book, of course that would be a possible consequence of leaving the European Union: there would be subventions from the British Treasury to British agriculture. The levels of that would be unknown, but it is a fair bet in my book that they would at least be equal to the colossal sums that we contribute to the common agricultural policy under the present arrangements. Whether I am right or wrong does not really matter: all I am saying is that the language of the amendment itself means that that is inevitably the kind of debate that would take place. Clearly, you cannot talk about the possible consequences of withdrawal from the CAP without giving some consideration to what sort of support would come from a country that was outside the EU. In trying to pretend that that is a kind of objective consideration, the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, must allow himself a little smile.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Smith of Newnham]

My Lords, as I understand it from a colleague at the EFTA secretariat, the way that the EEA agreement would work is that legislation on that part of the internal market would be disapplied. So it is possible to say that you do not like something, but then no part of that internal market legislation applies. That makes it somewhat more difficult than the noble Lord appeared to imply.

[Lord Lamont of Lerwick]

By interrupting, the noble Baroness illustrated exactly my point. She just said that it is more complicated than I had said. I am saying that government by fax is an oversimplification as well. These things are not capable of a single interpretation; they cannot all be reduced to numbers. In this debate, we have a series of people with different motives putting forward different lists that they think would help their case.

The noble Lord, Lord Lea, had an interesting exchange with the noble Lord, Lord Grocott. The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, responded to the reference of the noble Lord, Lord Lea, to various rights that existed, and made the point: could not the UK Parliament just legislate for each of those rights? I thought that the noble Lord, Lord Lea, did not answer that question satisfactorily.

It reminded me of a conversation I had many years ago with a friend before we joined the European Economic Community. My friend was an enthusiastic supporter of joining; I was a bit sceptical. I voted to join and made my maiden speech in the House of Commons in favour of joining, but I objected to the argument that my friend put forward for joining the EEC, as it then was. He said, “The reason for joining the EEC is that we can irreversibly freeze into law capitalism, free markets and deregulation”. That is how the EEC appeared at the time: it was something that appealed to economic liberals.

Of course, the whole nature of the EU changed as it involved and we had what the noble Lord, Lord Lea, referred to as the Delors doctrine, which was that you would enshrine permanently in EU law certain social rights. That is why the TUC changed its mind over membership, I think. The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, was quite right to say that you can have all those lists put forward in different amendments, but actually the UK Parliament is perfectly capable of implementing whatever rights or limitations on rights it wishes. That is one of the fundamental points about the EU and one of the fundamental objections to it: it is so difficult to repeal legislation because it is enshrined almost in aspic.

European Union Referendum Bill

Baroness Smith of Newnham Excerpts

Monday 23rd November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tugendhat]

I was going to come to that point, although not in exactly the form that the noble Lord put the question. I have now rather lost my train of thought. As I was saying, we would have a period of uncertainty.

Some noble Lords have suggested that, inevitably, a free trade agreement would be negotiated, but they talk about free trade agreements rather as if they are all the same. It is like saying a car will meet you at the station, but you do not know whether it will be a Rolls-Royce or a Mini—both are cars, but they are very different. Free trade agreements are all very different. To draw attention to what Singapore, Switzerland, South Korea or anyone else has done is hardly relevant to the situation that we have. The single market is a unique structure and finding a formula that will replicate the advantages of the single market would be very difficult to do.

Given that there would be a period of uncertainty and that we would not know what the outcome would be, although all of us would hope that it would be as favourable to this country as possible, the thrust of the amendment put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, which I support, to try to secure as much guidance from the Government as possible is an extremely useful exercise. Indeed, it has proved its utility, as the noble Lord said earlier, because it has enabled the Minister to look deeply into these matters and come up with an amendment of her own that goes a fair way towards meeting the objectives of the amendment to which I put my name. That seems a model way for this House to proceed—for noble Lords who have a concern to table amendments and for the Government to seek to react to them, as the Minister has done. Therefore, I am glad to have supported the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, in this matter and I congratulate the Minister on the progress that she has made in seeking to meet the point that we put forward.

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, I am somewhat surprised that many Members of your Lordships’ House seem to find the idea of understanding what leaving would mean somewhat strange. The question that will be put to the people of the United Kingdom is:

“Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?”.

The Electoral Commission, in its briefing to us for the second day of Report, points out that:

“It is important for voters to have access to information about the consequences of voting to remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union, to help ensure they are able to make an informed decision on how to vote. However, any provision in legislation for this should ensure that voters can have confidence in the accuracy and impartiality of the information. There should also be sufficient balance given to the consequences of both a majority vote to remain a member of the European Union and a majority vote to leave the European Union”.

Amendments 24A and 24B went quite a long way in that regard but, if the Minister may not be able to envisage what the Government might say in terms of the relationship, can she at least tell us a little more about what “leave” might mean? The voters of the United Kingdom need to understand what “leave” means just as much as “remains”. We are almost there, but not quite.

[Lord Higgins (Con)]

My Lords, in Committee and this evening, a number of amendments have requested reports on a large range of subjects. I suggested in Committee that the extent to which these reports are likely to be read by the majority of people voting in the referendum is small. The reports might be of some use to parliamentarians and other people preoccupied with the issue, but they would be of very little use in determining the outcome of the result of the referendum. However, it suddenly seemed to me that there was some case for a particular report on a matter where there seems to be some confusion—namely, a report on what the process of withdrawal would be.

I was most interested in the point made by my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay that seemed to suggest that in the course of that process we would necessarily, and perhaps almost as a first step, repeal the 1972 Act. There was a large amount of other legislation, including that on devolution, that was based on that Act. I imagine that that would create an enormous problem in terms of the legislative programme that would follow any decision to leave. I do not know whether my noble friend on the Front Bench can shed any light on that, but the case for rather more attention as to how it would be done if there were to be a vote in favour of withdrawing may well have a rather strong argument in favour of it.

European Union Referendum Bill

Baroness Smith of Newnham Excerpts

Wednesday 18th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendment 18. Amendment 13 is to do with the EU Commission and the EU generally in terms of financing, by one means or another, this referendum. We were reassured in Committee that there are two reasons why we should not worry about this. The first was that an undertaking had been made by the EU Commission not to interfere in this referendum and the second was that John Penrose had said in another place that the EU is not so stupid as to get involved in a UK referendum.

I agree with him on one thing: the EU is not stupid. Just to give an idea of how much it is intending not to interfere, it has an EU task force to do with the UK referendum which is made up of six administrators and two assistants. In 2014, the EU spent €560 million on self-promotion. The reason why it is not stupid is because it has spent money before interfering in other people’s referenda with enormous success. It spent €1.5 million to persuade the Irish to vote for the Lisbon treaty and €3.8 million over three years to persuade Croatia that it was a good idea to join the EU.

If you judge the EU, and the EU Commission particularly, on what they do rather than on what they say, the answer is that they have moved into the former offices of the Conservative Party in Smith Square. I have no doubt that there is a very large number of people sitting there, and do we really imagine that they are going to be sitting on their hands doing nothing during a referendum on whether the United Kingdom should leave the EU saying “It’s nothing to do with us. We’re completely neutral on all this. We’re just going to sit here and answer emails and provide information where it is requested”? Come on—let us live in the real world. In Ireland it went so far as to spend a very large sum of money on issuing 1.1 million pamphlets to the Irish about why the EU was such a good idea. The problem with all this is that the EU has set itself up so that it can interfere in our referendum, and because of the total lack of democratic accountability—

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords—

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

I will give way in a moment. We cannot actually stop the EU interfering in our referendum because it is written into its treaties that it is allowed to spill out information at will and there is nothing we can do to stop it.

[Baroness Smith of Newnham]

My Lords, I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, may be conflating two different things. The first is the period of renegotiation that Her Majesty’s Government are undertaking at present and the second is the referendum. My understanding is that the task force is actually to deal with the renegotiation, which is at the request of the Government, not an initiative of the European Union, and therefore is not an interference in the referendum. I also believe that such interference would be misguided; it would not be right for the EU institutions to be involved.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

At the end of the day, the EU thinks that it is free to issue information. Information can take many different forms, and I do not see that there is anything that can be done. The Minister has already said that we cannot actually stop the EU financing activities because they are all done in the name of information—and what is the difference between information and propaganda?

European Union Referendum Bill

Baroness Smith of Newnham Excerpts

Wednesday 4th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Courtown (Con)]

It is in the next grouping.

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, we have heard a lot of history this afternoon. Although the lessons of 1975 might be of interest, they are, in fact, history, and we are debating a Bill for a future referendum, rather than the past. I am speaking on behalf of the Liberal Democrats to support the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, as this amendment fits with the views of the Constitution Committee and appears to be very sensible. As to the role of political parties and how much they are funded, although it is very easy to look back and say, “Well, in 1975 this happened, that happened and the other happened”, since that time we have passed the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act. The Bill relates to and amends that legislation. My party has no objection to the Government’s position on that.

The final amendment that I want to speak to in this group is Amendment 58, tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Liddle and Lord Davies. Although I can see an intuitive allure in the amendment, there is another issue here which goes back to the PPERA question and pre-empts Amendment 55, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, on purdah. It is clearly in the interest of everyone to understand the Government’s position. At Second Reading in the other place, the right honourable Philip Hammond, the Foreign Secretary, talked about wanting to suspend Section 125 of the Act because the Government would want to come back and sell the deal that they had renegotiated. In practice, if purdah is in place the assumption will be that circulating three documents—remain, leave and the Government putting forward their own case—is in danger of breaching purdah rules. Although Amendment 58 sounds intuitively interesting, it is quite difficult to support it as currently drafted.

[Lord Tebbit]

My Lords, what the noble Baroness says is right. This would offend against the purdah rules. Even more, how will the Government produce a leaflet to set out their position? Would they set out the position of the majority in the Cabinet, or the position of two groups in the Cabinet? It would be a jolly task, would it not, to set out the views of the Eurosceptics in the Cabinet, as well as the—

European Union Referendum Bill

Baroness Smith of Newnham Excerpts

Wednesday 4th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tebbit (Con)]

My Lords, it seems to me that this is a piece of nonsense. Wales is not a member of the European Union, nor is England, Scotland or Northern Ireland. The United Kingdom is the member of the European Union. Therefore, it does not matter a damn whether some region or another—whether it is Wales, London, Ponders End or wherever—votes one way or another. The only thing that matters is which way the United Kingdom votes.

I do not intend to be provocative at this time of night—good lord, I never intend to be provocative—but it is worth remembering that there is considerable doubt over whether, if Scotland had voted to leave the United Kingdom, either it or the remainder of the United Kingdom would have continued to be a member of the European Union. The state which entered the European Union was the United Kingdom; if the United Kingdom had ceased to exist, then probably neither Scotland nor the remainder of the United Kingdom would have been a member of the European Union. It would have been up to the Scottish— and possibly the Welsh at some time or another—to negotiate entry into the European Union. We could all have a bit of a chuckle about how that would have gone, but essentially this is just a piece of nonsense which is not even worth discussing at this time of the evening.

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, I do not want to detain the Committee for long. I am aware that the last two evenings I have said I would be brief but then was not; this evening, I really do want to be brief. As for Amendment 61, as the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, has said, the assumption is that we will hear the results by region and possibly by constituency. Therefore, including in the Bill the idea of counting by nation, rather than state or region, is unnecessary—although we will all be delighted to know what the result is in Gibraltar, given that we have spent so much time talking about it. So many of the amendments and briefings seem to talk about Gibraltar.

Amendment 61C is the more substantive. Although it is clearly important that we listen to the views of all four nations—I suspect the Cornish, if they were standing here, would be saying that they wanted to be heard too—and that all parts of the United Kingdom are heard, in practice, as we have heard from most parts of the Chamber, if not from the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, this is a vote by the United Kingdom. Amendment 61C seems, in that sense, inappropriate.

[Lord Collins of Highbury]

My Lords, I begin by saying just how much I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit. The question is about the United Kingdom’s membership—there is no other question being asked and therefore the answer will be that we remain or that we leave. There is no doubt about that, but I will pick up just one point.

No matter how tempting it would be for me to enter into a long discussion about the history and politics of Scotland, I will resist that. However, I think the first amendment, tabled by my noble friend Lord Liddle, is unnecessary. I cannot be certain about the exact process, but what we all want is a very clear, transparent declaration of a result. I can assure all noble Lords that nobody would be satisfied with a computer output saying, “In the United Kingdom, X million voted this way”. We must have transparency: every voting area must declare and we must be able to see how that result is made up. That is how we have always done things and I cannot see any reason for changing that. I therefore think my noble friend Lord Liddle’s amendment is a bit unnecessary. However, this still does not avoid the point that whatever the result, it must be the result for the United Kingdom. One possible scenario is that England will vote, potentially by a small minority, to leave, while the rest of the United Kingdom will vote by large majorities to stay. That could happen, but it would not change the result. The result would be very clear: if we vote that way, even by a majority of one, we leave the European Union.

EU Migration: Valletta Summit

Baroness Smith of Newnham Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, although this issue is not related to the Question on the Order Paper, which concerns the Valetta summit, I appreciate the real concern around the House on these matters, so, with the leave of the House, I will respond to the noble Lord. My right honourable friend the Prime Minister announced that over this Parliament we would take an extra 20,000 people from Syria who are in desperate need—so it is not a quota but a judgment regarding those in desperate need—and gave a commitment that 1,000 of those would be in this country by Christmas. All departments across Government are working to make sure that they have safe accommodation and care when they are here. Overall, we have led the way in providing aid to ensure that those in unsafe zones can have a life there. At the moment, £1.15 billion has been invested in the Syria and Iraq area.

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, the International Organization for Migration estimates that over this weekend alone 28,000 refugees and migrants tried to enter Greece. That puts the figures into perspective. That is 40% more than Her Majesty’s Government are saying they will take from Syria over the course of a whole Parliament. The Minister mentioned that one of the focuses of the Valletta summit is addressing the root causes of immigration. Another one is establishing and organising legal migration channels. Can the Minister tell us whether Her Majesty’s Government will engage in this aspect of the Valletta summit, or will they merely opt out?

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, it is clear that everybody who will participate at Valletta will consider what legal routes of migration are appropriate. This Government have already made it clear that migration has assisted this country but it needs to be managed and legal. Other aspects will need to be discussed at Valletta. There will be an agreement at the end to make sure that all parties understand that we need to assist those in greatest need and in the greatest crisis areas across all of the Horn of Africa and north Africa.

European Union Referendum Bill

Baroness Smith of Newnham Excerpts

Monday 2nd November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard]

No, I cannot confirm it. I think I said nearly 50%; that is what I understand. It is over 40%; I think it is nearly 50%, but the noble Lord may be right.

Secondly, half the trade surplus of the EU with us is accounted for by the Netherlands and Germany. Among the other 25 member states, a considerable number run a trade deficit with us. They might be less generous in the sort of showdown—dreadful thought—that I am talking about. Their withers might not wrung quite so much by Mr Peter McKay’s threats.

Thirdly, it would be the Commission across the table from us, because what we would be negotiating—if, under Article 50, the withdrawal clause of the treaty, we were negotiating our withdrawal—would be a treaty not between us and the other member states but between us and the EU. The Commission would, I think—it has always said so—attach particular importance to retaining the EU’s decision-taking autonomy, if only to prevent Norway and all the other neighbours, all unhappy with their present, subordinate status, seeking to secure the seat at the table which we would be seeking.

Fourthly, the procedures under Article 50, paragraph 2, become highly relevant. The Commission would need to secure a qualified majority in the Council for any deal that it struck with us. We of course would have no vote. It would also need the approval of the European Parliament and the Commission would be operating on the basis of guidelines laid down by the European Council, which would operate by unanimity. Yes, we would have friends and advocates, and yes, there would be bits of German industry that in practice would be lobbying on our side in this debate, but everyone would have to be on board, and unanimity in the European Council is what we would need to secure. That is why my amendment asks the Government to report to the electorate before the referendum, not just on what form of relationship they would envisage between us if we left, and the EU that we had left, but on its acceptability to every remaining member state. I beg to move.

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, I very much support the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Kerr. It is important that we think about the implications for the UK of its relations with the EU, should there be a vote to leave it. Before dinner, we heard of concerns about fear and claims that the pro-Europeans wanted to talk about withdrawal and its dangers only because we wanted to whip up fear. There is a danger that comes from Eurosceptics such as Dan Hannan, who says, “You pro-Europeans invent things. We don’t want to be Norway”. That is certainly something that was suggested in your Lordships’ House at Second Reading. The noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon, has already suggested today that the UK does not want to have a Norwegian model or a Swiss model; it would like its own model. In order for the citizens of the UK, and anyone else who may be enfranchised in the forthcoming referendum, to understand the implications of what they are doing in the vote, it is important that they have an understanding, and that the Government make clear, what the implications of leaving would be for our relationship with the EU.

The noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, intervened earlier on my noble friend Lord Wallace of Saltaire to ask whether arrangements could not just carry on as they are if the UK were to leave the EU. That strikes me as a very strange sort of club. If you say to your golf club, “I’m not going to pay my dues any more; I no longer want to be a member of this club”, it is not going to say, “That’s fine, you can come and play golf again on Sunday”.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

We were actually talking about the arrest warrant and the legal arrangements that we have. There seems to be no reason why those should not be negotiated to continue as they were before.

[Baroness Smith of Newnham]

I thank the noble Lord for his comment. It would indeed be perfectly possible to negotiate a whole range of things associated with access to the internal market, the European arrest warrant and many other aspects of the relationship that the UK currently has with our European partners. However, we would need to consider, and the Government would need to be able to explain, in what areas they would envisage having relationships with the EU.

The idea that things could just carry on as before, as was suggested in a previous group of amendments, is rather complacent. Legislation that the UK has on its statute books would certainly persist, and on day one it might look very similar, but with regard to access to markets there is no reason whatever to assume that the EU 27—particularly acting by unanimity on Article 50, which the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, has just referred to—would simply say, “The United Kingdom is so important to us that we will give it free access to our markets”. There would have to be negotiations, and there is no reason to assume that our current colleagues in the EU would open up the markets without extracting some sort of quid pro quo with some sort of agreement. I know it is not palatable to everyone to hear yet again about the European Economic Area, but looking at those relationships reveals that the member states of the EEA have effectively signed up to a huge amount of the EU’s acquis but without a seat at the table. They have to accept what the EU agrees.

The United Kingdom may be out-voted while we are a member of the European Union but if we play our cards right as a member we can negotiate, we can work with partners and we can amend legislation. On the outside we would be policy-takers and we would be doing what the European Union asked us to do. If we felt it was in our interests we might sign up to it but the costs are likely to be significant. If we engaged in a relationship that looked like a Norwegian model, we would end up paying into the Union budget, taking policy and having even less influence than now.

Noble Lords may say that I say that only because I want Britain to remain in. I am simply suggesting that it is important for citizens of the United Kingdom to understand the implications and that the Government should make clear what the implications of leaving would be and how they envisage the relationship of the United Kingdom with the rest of the European Union.

On Amendment 32A, could the Minister bring back to the Committee some thoughts on how the Government envisage the relationship with the Republic of Ireland if there were a vote to leave the European Union? That relationship is sui generis. The relationship between the Republic and Northern Ireland and the fact that there is currently no land border would be fundamentally changed. Withdrawal has implications for the United Kingdom and this one particular close neighbour in the European Union. I ask the Government to look again at that relationship.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, Amendment 26, in my name, is of similar import to the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Kerr. Mine, of course, is a political adviser’s amendment. It is sloppily drafted and not the expert amendment that you would expect of a senior Eurocrat; therefore, I am happy not to move my amendment in favour of that moved by the noble Lord. In my view if we wanted to educate the public about alternatives to EU membership we could do a lot worse than to ask the Government to send a printed copy, suitably amended, of the speech by the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, to every household in the country—I thought it was brilliantly argued. We are going to hear a lot of these arguments in the coming year, and I shall not reiterate them now.

I want to make a couple of observations which I think are relevant. First, on the arguments about Britain’s strength to negotiate its own arrangements, I used to think in the same way as the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart. When I was a young man I am afraid I rather bought into the line of the German Social Democrat leader of the time, who described the Common Market as a conservative, cartelist, capitalist, clerical conspiracy. I was rather of that view but when I learned about it and read its history I realised that the Macmillan Government tried very hard in the 1950s to negotiate the kind of free trade agreement which the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, thinks is the solution to all our problems, but they came to the conclusion that it could not be done. The only possible alternative for Britain was to become a full member alongside the original six. I think that that judgment, which was made around 1959-60, is still sound, even though the European Union has transformed itself. So, too, has our economy. When I listen to some of the arguments of the anti-Europeans here, I think they still think in terms of British companies exporting to Europe.

European Union Referendum Bill

Baroness Smith of Newnham Excerpts

Tuesday 13th October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, it is with some regret that I stand here opening for the Liberal Democrat Benches this morning as my noble friend Lady Ludford is not able to be with us for personal reasons. We send her and her husband good wishes.

It is also somewhat with regret that I participate in this debate at all. The Minister said she was delighted to open this debate bringing forward the Government’s proposals to hold a referendum on whether Britain should remain in the European Union. As a committed pro-European who joined a pro-European party more than 30 years ago, and believed that the question of Britain’s membership of the European Union had been resolved while I was still a child, it is somewhat demoralising to think that the question is being reopened, and that somehow a major constitutional issue which should have been resolved in 1975 is back on the drawing board.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

Am I wrong in thinking that at the election before last the Liberals had a manifesto commitment to give Britain an in/out referendum? What is the noble Baroness talking about?

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Smith of Newnham]

My Lords, the noble Lord is correct: the Liberal Democrats had a commitment to an in/out referendum and I will come to that in a moment. Temporarily, if he will allow me, I am speaking personally and I do not think that referendums are necessarily helpful. However, it was party policy for the Liberal Democrats to hold an in/out referendum at the time of treaty change in line with the 2011 EU Act passed during the coalition Government. That was not to hold a referendum on the basis of reform renegotiation along the lines of the Conservative manifesto of 2015. We recognise as a party that the Conservatives won the general election and that we are to move towards a referendum. That is absolutely clear. We will not get into the detail today of whether we will have a referendum: it will clearly happen.

Rather, I will flag up some areas that my colleagues will want to elaborate on during the debate. These are issues of the franchise, the question and reports, of the nature that the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, touched on. In particular, we will want to talk about the franchise. Here, the Minister said she had heard people calling for votes for 16 and 17 year-olds. I suspect that noble Lords will hear a lot more calls for votes for 16 and 17 year-olds in the course of today’s debate and through the passage of the Bill. It is the future of this country that matters. The Minister already said that this Bill is about the future of the United Kingdom, but if it is about the future of anybody it is that of our young people. The referendum last year in Scotland demonstrated that 16 and 17 year-olds can be trusted to vote and engage in political decisions, and these are questions about their future as much as that of Members of your Lordships’ House—many of whom already had a vote on whether Britain should remain part of the then European Community in 1975. Our 16 and 17 year-olds did not and it is their future as much as ours that is at stake.

In addition to 16 and 17 year-olds, many residents of the United Kingdom are disfranchised. These are EU nationals, who exercise their rights under the EU treaty to live and work in the United Kingdom and who thought they would be here as EU citizens. Surely they have at least as much interest in this referendum as Commonwealth citizens who happen to be resident in the United Kingdom. Therefore, I would like the Government to reflect on the extent of the franchise and votes for EU nationals, who contribute so much to the United Kingdom.

The Minister pointed out that another pledge in the Conservative manifesto of 2015 was to extend the franchise to Brits who have lived abroad for more than 15 years. In many cases that includes British nationals who are resident in Brussels and work in the EU institutions precisely because the United Kingdom is part of the European Union. I believe it also includes some Members of your Lordships’ House who are resident in France or in other countries. They will be enfranchised through the provision that Peers who are resident in France will be able to vote, but other British nationals who have been abroad for more than 15 years would not currently have the franchise. Yet surely they are exercising their rights under the EU treaty. Do they not have a right to have a say? It is not simply British nationals resident in the United Kingdom who have a profound stake in this referendum; it is also British nationals resident in other EU countries, who are benefiting from the current legislation to which we, the United Kingdom, signed up. Therefore, I ask the Minister to look again at the franchise and to help us, as Members of your Lordships’ House, and the citizens of the United Kingdom and our partners and allies in the European Union, to understand what the British Government want and what the question really means.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, pointed out, the question has been reframed by the Electoral Commission. The Liberal Democrats, like the Labour Party, are happy to accept the revised question. It may indeed create maximum neutrality, as the Minister suggested, but it does not necessarily reflect maximum clarity. The previous wording,

“Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union?”,

with a yes or no option, at least appeared clear. We know what such membership entails, and to campaign or to vote on whether we stay or do not stay would appear to be clear. If we add into that the question of leaving, then we surely need some explanation of what leaving means. At one level it might appear to be entirely straightforward. We walk away from the European Union and from everything we signed up to in 1973. We walk away from the whole acquis communautaire that has been delivered ever since—legislation that the United Kingdom has indeed signed up to, which has been approved by both Houses of Parliament. That would be the relatively easy way of doing things—simply to tear everything up and start again. Superficially it is—to walk away, to be in splendid isolation, an autarchic country. That may be the UKIP position, but I suspect that it is not the position of Her Majesty’s Government, nor indeed of many Eurosceptics who wish to leave the European Union and who believe that there are alternatives—which could be the European Economic Area or the Swiss model, or perhaps something sui generis.

The question then becomes: are any of these other models more beneficial? We heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, that the European Economic Area may not be the deus ex machina that many people think. It is sometimes suggested that we could be like Norway. Indeed, we could try to be like Norway. It has the advantage of sovereign wealth funds. It has the advantage of being a small country that is integrated into the European markets. It has also signed up to much of EU’s acquis communautaire. But it does not have a seat at the table. It has what many people have referred to as “fax democracy”. I am told that that term is outdated. It is no longer fax democracy. Maybe it is e-democracy. The point is that the Norwegians are not able to sit at the table, as Her Majesty’s Government Ministers are able to sit at the table, and to legislate. They simply take what is given through the acquis.

It is true that the European Economic Area agreement has not been changed since 1994; it is in that sense static. But it is dynamic in the sense that, since 1994, 7,000 EU legal Acts have been incorporated into the agreement annexes. So the idea that somehow shifting to be part of the European Economic Area along with Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein would be in any way preferable raises a whole set of questions. The United Kingdom would simply become a policy taker without a seat at the table. Nor is the Swiss model any better because, essentially, the Swiss are required to do what they are told. The Swiss bilateral agreements at the moment include 100 sectoral agreements that already provide for considerable integration, and the European Parliament as recently as July this year reminded us that the free movement of persons is one of the fundamental freedoms and a pillar of the single market. It has always been an inseparable part of the preconditions for the bilateral approach between the EU and Switzerland. So the Swiss model is not necessarily going to be any better than the EEA model or, indeed, membership of the European Union.

It is important that we understand what “leave” means, and I ask the Minister what provision the Government are making for reports that explain what it might mean and what the alternative models might mean. Could she also explain to us her understanding of Article 50? If the citizens of the United Kingdom, whether or not on an expanded franchise, are voting to leave the European Union, Article 50 suggests that the other 27 member states will decide what agreement they will make with the United Kingdom. We will not have a seat at the table. So the idea that we can set out scenarios of what we want may in any case be fanciful. I ask the Minister to explain further what the Government understand by “leave” and to bring forward a report to explain what the alternatives would be and how they would be explained to the British public.

European Union Committee on 2014–15 (EUC Report)

Baroness Smith of Newnham Excerpts

Wednesday 15th July 2015 Grand Committee

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, I am somewhat of an interloper here this afternoon as I think I am the only person who is neither a Front Bench spokesperson for foreign affairs nor a member of the committee or any of its sub-committees, whether rotated on or off. I am coming to this not with any experience of having served on the committee, but from the other side of the fence, having followed the work of the European Union Committee as an academic. The reference by the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, just now to the work on EU enlargement reminded me that I have been reading House of Lords reports for more than 20 years. When I was a graduate student in Oxford, if you wanted to know what was going on with EU enlargement, the place to look was House of Lords reports which you always had sitting in hard copy in EU depositories and libraries. That was a very effective way of doing research 20 years ago, and the work of your Lordships’ committee remains outstanding. As the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, noted in his opening remarks, the fact that the former President of the European Commission has pointed out the excellence of the work is testament to the importance of the work that the European Union Committee has done.

However, there is a paradox. We are an unelected Chamber, yet the role of the EU Committee is recognised across the European Union. I was picked up on that when I gave a lecture a few months ago in Leuven. I was talking about national parliaments and Europe generally, but I said a little about the role of the House of Lords. I was taken to task during questions when somebody said, “It’s all very well for you to say what a good thing the House of Lords is, but it is not elected. How on earth can the House of Lords help improve democracy and legitimacy in the European Union?”. That was an important point, and wearing my academic hat I have to go away and think about it. The report on the committee’s work for 2014-15 and the programme of work for 2015-16 absolutely make the case for how important the committee’s role has been and how it is becoming more important. The decision to invite the Minister for Europe before Council meetings is hugely important. I seem to recall that in Governments up until 2010, the Prime Minister used to give pre-Council statements. We do not have that at the moment, but pre-scrutiny or holding the Government to account before Ministers go off to negotiate is very sensible.

The report was incredibly useful in raising some of the issues that perhaps go undiscussed and unannounced to most people, including interparliamentary co-operation, which has the danger of sounding as if it is about people just wanting to go and travel for the sake of it and have a nice lunch in a nice location or about who goes to which place and why. One academic colleague who follows interparliamentary conferences was greeted like an old friend at a conference that we held on national parliaments in Europe by none other than Sir William Cash, the very long-standing chair of the European Scrutiny Committee in the other place, which does not seem to have quite the same crop rotation or chair and membership rotation.

We discovered that if you keep talking to people, the discussions and the informal communications, thanks to interparliamentary conferences and interparliamentary co-operation, are incredibly important precisely because they give the opportunity not just for academics and practitioners to talk to each other but, far more importantly, for members of national parliaments and the European Parliament to meet on a regular basis and exchange ideas. Therefore, when it comes to issues such as the current yellow and orange cards and the prospect of the green card, the fact that members of parliaments know each other and can say, “Look, how about doing this?” is hugely important.

The fact that this report outlines the number of activities that Members of your Lordships’ House have attended is incredibly helpful. Even more interesting would be to have a sense of what the other place is doing as well—I realise this is heresy, and that this report was about only the work of the House of Lords EU Committee—because clearly it is engaged in many issues. It is disappointing that there is not more engagement between the two Chambers. Clearly, each Chamber is sovereign. We talk about interparliamentary co-operation in a general sense but there is not a huge amount of exchange between the two Chambers. Although both the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, and the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, talked about the House of Commons, we have not yet found ways of creating effective synergies. At the moment there is still a danger of overlap or duplication—everyone wants to do a report on the role of national parliaments or on EU-Russia—or you get lacunae: between the two Chambers, we do not cover everything. If we could find ways of greater co-operation between the two ends of Westminster, that would be most welcome.

I would like to pick up on a couple of other things in the report. The balance of competences review, which has already been mentioned, ran to very many weighty tomes—I think it was 32 different reports—and the Minister for Europe and the former Minister, my noble friend Lord Wallace of Saltaire, spent many hours going through them. The balance of competences review is mentioned in the annual report with a suggestion of the analysis being important, and there is a criticism of the failure of the Government to produce a synthesis of the reports. An overall analysis is vital if the review is to have an impact on the wider public debate on the UK-EU relationship. I am rather sceptical because the previous Government tried to keep the debate off the agenda rather than putting it on to the agenda, and I think that that was a lost opportunity. There is a wealth of information in the balance of competences review which has tended to go under-reported, with the exception of the expert communications that the committee has achieved, as the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, pointed out: a lot of coverage for the report on the balance of competences review and the frustration of Members of your Lordships’ House at precisely the fact that it had gone under-reported and under-debated. So I congratulate the committee on its work and the traction it has got in the media.

There is a great similarity between committee chairs, who are obviously being told that they need more visibility, and academics, who are told to have impact and to engage more with practitioners. I think most academics working on the European Union would be incredibly grateful to welcome Members of your Lordships’ House to any of our academic conferences on co-operation between national parliaments and other EU institutions. There is clearly an opportunity for co-operation and co-ordination. A report has just gone to the Economic and Social Research Council a year after the project I was involved with was completed, where I was supposed to demonstrate impact so I stressed the fact that my colleagues and I had talked to the EU Committee and vice versa. I hope there is at least a half-life to such engagements between academics and practitioners so that the exchanges can continue.

My final point is about the future. I very much welcome the point that was made in the report about the upcoming referendum and the fact that the committee will be looking at ways of engaging with the renegotiation, considering how best to scrutinise both the renegotiation process and its outcome effectively and proportionately. The noble Lord, Lord Boswell, has suggested that the work will be done objectively and impartially. It is hugely important that such work is done, because it is not done by the media and it is not done effectively by Members of the other place. Academics may try to do it, but the more that it can be done by Members of your Lordships’ House, the better. Although my reading of the report is that it is down to the committee to engage in this way, I suggest that it is down to all Members of your Lordships’ House to ensure that there is a well-informed debate ahead of the referendum.

In light of the comments about following up reports, could there be further work on the eurozone and the potential of Grexit or associated issues which are already having a significant impact on the debate in the UK? This is being pushed particularly by Eurosceptics saying that the way Greece is being treated is clearly a reason for us to campaign for no, but there is a real danger that even among pro-Europeans, people are saying that the EU does not seem to be delivering, that there is no support for a country such as Greece. That is increasing the possibility of a no vote. While your Lordships may need to be objective and impartial on your committee and in its reports, I do not feel the need to be so impartial right now.

[Lord Boswell of Aynho]

Before the noble Baroness sits down, she will want to know that although there is no current representative of the EU Financial Affairs Sub-Committee with us, it held a very interesting evidence session today with some extremely big hitters on the specific current issue of the Greek situation. We are keeping a very close eye on that matter.

[Baroness Smith of Newnham]

I am very grateful for that. I was drawing towards my final point, so I shall not detain your Lordships any further.