European Union Referendum Bill

Debate between Lord Anderson of Swansea and Lord Flight

Wednesday 28th October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Flight]

My Lords, I rise in support of Amendments 3 and 4, proposed by my noble friend Lord Hamilton. The unspoken point here is that some people believe that whatever proposition comes first on a referendum has a marginal advantage because people react to the first thing that they read. I personally rather doubt that that is the case. But there is an argument that, if you have a referendum, you do not have one to say that you want no change—you have a referendum to consider whether you want change or not. Therefore, it is not unreasonable that the change proposition should come first. But there will no doubt be an ongoing tug of war on this issue, due to the view that whichever proposition comes first has some advantage. I would like to see evidence as to whether that is the case.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea]

My Lords, I defer to my noble friend Lord Wigley in his knowledge of the Welsh language and look forward to learning further from the Front Bench with respect to the validity of the Welsh question. I had the misfortune to attend a traditional Welsh grammar school, where I was able to give up Welsh for Greek at a tender age, but I look forward to the further debate on this—and I look forward to appearing on the same platform with the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, as we did in 1975. Indeed, the first time we met, when we got on famously, was when as a young industrialist he came to see me; I had been in the Foreign Office, working on a European desk, and he came to—wait for it—seek my advice on the European Union. We have not looked back since.

On the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, in the earlier part of this evening’s debate we decided that the rules should be set by the Electoral Commission. At this point, surely the presumption on a matter of this sort should be—this is the very purpose of the Electoral Commission—that we defer to it in respect of such rules and, if we do not follow those rules, we have a very good reason for so doing. With all respect to the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, and the presumption that I made, I have not heard from him a weighty case against the change and for the reversal he now proposes.