European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Earl of Clancarty and Lord Adonis

Committee: 11th sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Wednesday 28th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, I added my name to an amendment in this group. I spoke at length to a similar amendment, my own Amendment 210, earlier in the Bill, so I will be fairly brief.

I fully support everything the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, has said. It is important that we should understand that the loss of EU citizenship would affect British citizens resident in the UK as well as those living abroad. That is a huge number of individual citizens whom the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, avoided referring to in reply to my own amendment but who are aggrieved at that potential loss of individual citizenship. In that same reply, the noble and learned Lord said:

“Let us be clear that EU citizenship is linked directly to citizenship of a member state”. —[Official Report, 7/3/18; col. 1081]


I do not argue with that. The court case begun in Amsterdam is to determine the nature of such linkage and whether a citizenship, once held by a citizen, cannot be taken from them against their will whatever actions are taken at the national level.

It is young people who will feel the loss of EU citizenship most keenly, not just the principle of European citizenship; it is young people who feel most European. Also they will feel the real practical effects of that loss, particularly if we also leave the single market. As others have pointed out, young people have found a strong voice in the group Our Future, Our Choice—one of whose founder members, incidently, was a leaver who changed his mind. We have all learned a lot since the referendum; that is something that, as a country, we should freely admit.

In the EU citizenship debate in the House of Commons on 7 March, the Immigration Minister, Caroline Nokes, said:

“We are content to listen to proposals from the EU on associate citizenship for UK nationals”.—[Official Report, Commons, 7/3/18; col. 351]


So I ask the Minister: has there been any development on that front, bearing in mind that such a citizenship, according to Voelker Roeben, would not depend on revision of the founding treaties? I warmly support the amendment.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, I completely understand the motivation of the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, and I am of course entirely with him in wanting to stay in the European Union, but I am at a complete loss to understand how it is possible for British citizens to continue having European citizenship after we have left the European Union. I simply do not understand how it is possible to have citizenship of an organisation of which we are not a member. The specific issue of what happens to European Union residents in Britain, given that the Government have already committed that their rights will be guaranteed for a further seven years, is a completely different point. Assuming that the noble and learned Lord will be replying to the debate, will he tell us what the precise relationship will be between the European Court of Justice, European law and the seven-year guarantee of the rights of EU citizens currently resident in the UK?