European Union (Referendum) Bill

Lord Davies of Stamford Excerpts

Friday 24th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Richard (Lab)]

My Lords, I will deal first with the so-called constitutional argument that seems to have emerged in the past three-quarters of an hour or so, which is that somehow or other this House should not seek to scrutinise this Bill too closely, it should not seek to amend it and it should certainly not seek to do anything that sent it back to the House of Commons in a different form from that in which it arrived here.

Over the past two years I have listened ad nauseam to Members of this House, particularly some of those who have spoken today. I am thinking notably of the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, who lectured me continually on the virtues of the nominated House as we have it and the iniquities of possibly having an elected House and told me—as I say, very frequently and very loudly—that the function of this House was that we should scrutinise a Bill, we should revise a Bill, we should examine it in detail, we should send it back to the House of Commons if we thought it was right, and we should amend it. The phrase that I heard so often was that the main function of this House was to ask the House of Commons to think again.

I do not detect any dissent from the other side so I was rather disappointed when the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, at Second Reading and indeed today, repeated the argument that somehow or other this Bill is so special and so unique that we should not consider it, we should not try to amend it, we should certainly not succeed in amending it and we should certainly not ask the House of Commons to think again about what it has sent here. That is a nonsense: it is a constitutional nonsense; it is a political nonsense; and it makes absolute nonsense of the functions of this House.

We do have those duties. They are not just rights but duties. If proposed legislation comes before the House of Lords, the House of Lords has a duty to scrutinise it, particularly if it has not been done properly in the other place. The short answer to this issue and this amendment is very simple: it is that the Electoral Commission, an independent body, has looked at this issue and had some research done. It may be imperfect, as the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, told us, but the general effect of all that work by the Electoral Commission is that it has come up with a proposal for a question that should be put in the referendum. It is a question which on the Electoral Commission’s analysis is clear, unambiguous, neutral and fair, and it should therefore be one which this House should be prepared to include in the Bill.

For the life of me, I do not understand the attitude on the other side. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, said that, somehow or other, we would be strengthening the UKIP argument that the United Kingdom should withdraw from the European Union. If the noble and learned Lord had looked in the rows behind him at the moment that he said that he was against that, he would have seen the faces of those whose predominant passion as far as Europe is concerned seems to be that we should withdraw. It is quite extraordinary that the people who are most vociferous in support of this legislation are not the democrats in the Conservative Party but are, as somebody has christened them, the Tea Party.

So be it. That is what we are faced with. For the House of Lords not to accept that that is what we are faced with and for the House of Lords not to do its duty in relation to this Bill would be a derogation of its duties. I hope therefore that the House will vote strongly in favour of the amendment.

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

My Lords, I have great respect and regard for the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay—

[Lord Wigley (PC)]

My Lords, as someone who has put his name to two of the amendments grouped with the lead amendment, I am very happy to support the amendment put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong. As a relatively new Member of this House—it is three years ago this week that I took my place in this Chamber—I am acutely aware that I had to be conscious then of the role of this House as a revising Chamber but a Chamber, of course, which always gives way to the democratically expressed wish in the House of Commons.

At the Second Reading of this Bill, I was flabbergasted to hear the suggestion that we as a House of Lords should not consider amending this Bill in any shape or form even if there was a glaring weakness in it and that we should return it unamended to the House of Commons for reasons that I do not understand. I know from having spent 27 years in the House of Commons that it has the capability of creating the time, certainly if it is the Government’s wish to do so. If there is the extent of consensus in the House of Commons that has been suggested in this debate, surely that consensus would allow that time to be made available for it—or perhaps the consensus does not exist to the extent that has been suggested in this debate.

Be that as it may, I believe that the amendment before us is a vital one. It is one which I am conscious of in the context of the debate that we had some months ago on the position in Scotland. My good friend, Mr Alex Salmond, who has been roundly rubbished for suggesting a question other than the question being put forward by the Electoral Commission, had the good sense to accept the Electoral Commission’s suggestion. I believe that we should have the good sense to accept the words proposed in Amendment 1 that would provide for that to take place.

I invite the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, who is in charge of this Bill, to do what would be the sensible thing and accept the amendment. That would curtail the time that is being used and give an indication that this House still has a role on important legislation such as this. In doing so, he would change the tone of the whole debate from hereon in.

[Lord Lea of Crondall (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

I have given way already on two or three occasions. I think that I have shown considerable courtesy in giving way several times before speaking. I say with the greatest sincerity that I have nothing but the greatest admiration for the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay. Anybody who knows him knows that he is a man of the greatest integrity, and he was undoubtedly an extremely distinguished Lord Chancellor. But I was really quite shocked by something that he said this morning and I feel that, for once, he has allowed party loyalty to override his general judgment.

He seemed to suggest—I wish I could believe that I had misheard him—that we should allow in this place any kind of rubbish to become the law of the land simply on grounds of political expediency, as a substitute for party manifestos as a declaration of future intent or something of that sort. That seemed to me an extraordinary thing for any Member of this House to say, particularly a former Lord Chancellor.

We have a duty, which it is perhaps not an exaggeration to call a sacred duty, to make sure that anything that goes forward from this place on to the statute book has been thoroughly examined. If we see something coming from the House of Commons which we believe to be anomalous or improper, or not up to the highest standards of a democratic legislature or false in any way, we must do everything possible to modify and improve the text before it leaves this House.

Equally, there is really no doubt that there is something very false about the text of this Bill. There is something very artificial about the language of the question. We all in this House think that we understand the English language. We think that we understand the difference between the verb “to be” and the verb “to remain”. We know perfectly well in any context, be it a newspaper or a novel, that if we changed every use of the verb “to remain” to “to be”, we would fundamentally change the meaning and produce complete chaos and nonsense in many cases.

If I were to say to a friend of mine, “Do you think that I should be a member of a trade union?” or “Do you think that I should be a member of my local rotary?” or “Do you think that I should be a member of the Mormon church?”, and if, subsequent to the conversation he discovered that I was already a member of a trade union or a member of the local rotary or a member of the Mormon church, I think that he could come to only two conclusions. One would be that I was going slightly mad, perhaps showing the advanced symptoms of Alzheimer’s; I can see some noble Lords who have felt for years that I have had that. Alternatively, he would feel, with reason, that I was being very disingenuous and slippery and that he needed in future to be very cautious in his understanding of everything that I had said. That, I am afraid, is the position of the Government, or the position of the Tory party, or the position of the proposers of this Bill. They have subscribed to a use of language which is clearly very slippery and disingenuous, and we have to ask why they have done it.

I have no doubt that they have done it because the spin doctors have said that people confronted with a question will be inclined to vote for the status quo, particularly if it is a matter not of immediate concern to themselves or their families—we know that Europe is not a matter of immediate concern to most people and their families—and particularly if it is a slightly complicated matter. That is the easy option—some people would say the lazy option—so that, if you want to get an answer against membership of the European Union, you imply, although it would be quite false to do it, that our membership of the European Union is something new and is not the status quo. We all know that that is the game that they are playing. The question is whether the Government, or the Tory party more precisely, should be allowed to get away with that or whether the House of Lords should feel it wants the Government of the day to get away with that. That is the question that we have to weigh very carefully, because on that depends the integrity to a very large extent of our processes here.

If it becomes known in the country that the Government of the day can get away in a referendum with posing an obviously slightly bogus and biased question, what does that say for the integrity of our democracy? What does that say for people’s confidence in our political processes? There is already enough cynicism in this country about politics without adding to it in this fashion.

Even if there was no such thing as an Electoral Commission in this country, quite openly and straightforwardly on the basis of the two texts we are comparing this morning, the one put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong, is undoubtedly the one we should go for. However, there is an Electoral Commission. We have established it as an umpire to deal with precisely these matters, to give better confidence to the British people that politicians cannot get away with dirty tricks. Here, the sponsors and supporters of the Bill propose that we should simply override the views of the Electoral Commission—the umpire. Two things follow from that. First, it would be quite clear that there is no point at all in having an Electoral Commission. Why are we spending public money on an Electoral Commission if the Government of the day—or anybody who can get a majority in the two Houses—can always override its views? There would be complete cynicism about the Electoral Commission. Secondly, there would be even greater cynicism about all our political processes. I have my name to several amendments in this group but I am delighted to support the amendment put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong.

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch (UKIP)]

My Lords, I do not know if others of your Lordships are in the same position as me in that I remain confused about procedure between your Lordships’ House and the House of Commons on this Private Member’s Bill. I am fairly sure that very large numbers of the British public would be similarly confused having listened to this debate so far. I refer here particularly to the helpful interventions from the noble Lords, Lord Forsyth and Lord Elystan-Morgan, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern.

I will not make more of a speech on the Bill itself except to remind your Lordships, yet again, that the Bill passed through the House of Commons unopposed and is on a subject upon which a very large majority of the British people say they want a referendum. Of course, it would be a very foolhardy Government in future who dared to repeal this Bill if we passed it.

I still have a question on which we need an authoritative answer from the government Front Bench. I regret that the noble Baroness the Chief Whip is not in her place but the noble Lord the Leader of the House is—or perhaps it is the duty of the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, to answer this. The question is, quite simply: what happens if we pass any amendment to this Private Member’s Bill? Will there be time in the Commons to consider it and get it back to us, or will we in effect kill the Bill? What are the prospects of a similar Bill in the next Session and before the general election? Even if the wording in the proposed question may not be perfect, are we in effect killing this Bill if we vote through this or any other amendment? We should be very clear about that before we vote.

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[Lord Davies of Stamford]

My Lords, each of the last three speakers has put very significant questions to the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, and we all look forward to his response. The House will have listened with particular attention to the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Higgins, as he has long experience of public life and the logic of his intervention seems to me very compelling.

I very much enjoyed the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan. I agreed with every word of it. He and I have had pretty much the same views on this subject during the 25 years we have known each other. I am as confident as I ever was that the judgment that we have taken on these matters over the years will be vindicated by history.

The noble Lord, Lord Kinnock, said some very wise things that I hope have been taken good note of. It will have struck the House—and I trust that it will strike the public—that we have heard in the course of the past two or three hours from the four Members of the House who have the greatest experience of dealing with the European Union and European Union affairs— that is, the noble Lords, Lord Kinnock, Lord Tugendhat, Lord Hannay and Lord Kerr, coming from the two major parties and from no party. All that they said and the advice they gave to the Government, which I think was very sound, was strikingly in harmony. That is probably a very significant point.

I put my name to several amendments in this group, a number of which—Amendments 13, 14 and 15—I saw, and continue to see, essentially as probing amendments designed to illuminate the issue and clarify the options. In that respect, as I shall explain in a moment, my expectations have been more than fulfilled. However, if we want to make the Bill a little more viable and a little less absurd, the right agenda for the House now is to agree Amendment 10 of the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, and Amendment 16 of the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, to which I put my name. That would produce a coherent solution to the problem the House now faces.

There has been a lot of comment in the course of these debates to the effect that what we are faced with in the Bill is a series of absurdities. It is absurd to have a referendum that is supposed to take place up to four years after the decision to hold it is taken. I do not think that in the whole history of referenda, which as far as I can recall started with Napoleon I’s plebiscites, anybody has ever had such a ridiculous notion before. How could the Government possibly have come up with such an extraordinary notion? The whole thing looks suspect from the start.

What also looks very suspect from the start is the fact that the Prime Minister, the Chancellor, the Foreign Secretary and the other Conservative members of the Government have all apparently had this damascene conversion over the past year and a half in favour of having a referendum Bill when a short time ago they opposed it, using very much the arguments that we continue to use quite genuinely against the whole idea.

It is also very suspect that intelligent men—they are intelligent men; they are not fools—cannot have worked out for themselves the compelling logic set out by the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, which makes this date an absurdity if there is to be a renegotiation or some sort of change in our relationship with the European Union as a result of the initiatives launched by this Government. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, has persuaded everybody, including—this is the point that I am coming to—those who have brought forward the Bill, have pushed for it and have forced the Prime Minister to go along with this initiative: that is, the people who have been described in this House several times already today as the Tea Party.

The most eloquent spokesman I know of the so-called Tea Party—the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth—appears to have accepted the logic of the noble Lord, Lord Kerr. I noted that in his intervention, which was a dramatically important one, he said that the referendum might take place before the renegotiation. He had obviously abandoned the idea of making anybody believe that there was a reasonable chance of concluding the negotiation before the referendum, so he decided to switch it round and say that the referendum might take place first. I think what has happened this afternoon is that one more cat has been let out of the Tea Party’s bag, because a referendum which took place before the negotiation would make our leaving the European Union almost inevitable. Why? Because, in having a referendum, the Government would have to get a mandate for a particular negotiating agenda. They would have to say, “We are going to change this, change that, demand this and demand that”, and that would be the agenda that the public would then endorse.

Unless the Tea Party believes, rather like Napoleon I, that we could proceed in our European policy on the basis of diktat and simply lay down to 27 other nations exactly, in the finest detail, what they will and will not do, and what they will and will not subscribe to, there is no way in hell, if I may say so, that we would ever end up with a final agreement that corresponded exactly with the negotiating mandate that the Government had obtained the consent of the British people to pursue. In other words, such a referendum would be doomed to certain disaster. It could not possibly lead to a successful conclusion or any position other than there being a gap between what had been promised at the time of the referendum—and the deal that the British people had presumably endorsed if they had accepted the referendum and supported the Government’s negotiating agenda—and what emerged from that negotiation.

This is another example of the cat being let out of the bag. These are people who are devising methods, fair or foul, to ensure that, whatever happens, we come out of the European Union. Another cat was let out of the bag last week. A letter from 95 or, as some people said, 100 members of the Tory Party told the Prime Minister that the Government should introduce a Bill that would give the British Parliament the right, whenever it wished, not to fulfil but to derogate from any rule, directive or resolution of the European Union.

Again, these are not stupid people. They knew what they were doing. What would happen if we were to pass such a Bill in this Parliament? De facto, we would have left the European Union, because immediately we would be in breach of the treaty of accession. De facto, we would be out, but without a referendum. We would be out without the British people having realised what the process was that was leading to our inevitably having to get out. Unfortunately, they still have not woken up to that.

So much for democracy and for the idea that you cannot make such a move without the consent of the British people. We must be quite clear what the agenda of members of the Tea Party is in taking over the Conservative Party in this way, which they have done so successfully—to get us out of the European Union by hook or by crook. It is therefore important that in our debates we throw light on that and open up the truth, because it is a terrible truth, about which the British public should be in no doubt.

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords, I do not think that the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Stamford, could accuse me of being a member of any Tea Party. I well remember when he was a Conservative and enthusiastically cheered on the party, sitting by my side in another place. He has had a dramatic conversion, but I do not want to talk about that.

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

I have to ask the noble Lord to let me intervene because he said something about me that I cannot accept. Of course I have never suggested that the noble Lord is a member of the Tea Party, and I do not know why he supposed that I was saying that or could draw any such imputation. He has indeed known me for a long time in two parties; he reminds me of an embarrassing part of my past. However, I hope he will acknowledge that I have never changed my views on this subject, and I am glad to say that many other Members of this House here, including on this side of the House, will vouch for that. I have not moved on that question, and any imputation to the contrary—the idea that I was cheering a contrary view at some point—is utterly wrong, and I hope that he withdraws it.

[Lord Cormack]

I did not suggest any such thing. The noble Lord should keep his cool. He may always have supported Britain’s membership of the European Union, and so have I. I made it plain at Second Reading that I had advocated an “in or out” referendum since the Maastricht negotiations. I felt that the boil needed lancing. I also made it plain that in any such referendum I would campaign enthusiastically for our continued membership. If I had to give a single reason for that, it is that I was in the House of Commons long before he was. I remember when Romania, Bulgaria, Poland and all those Eastern bloc countries were in the Soviet bloc and under the grip of the Soviet Union. I rejoice that they are members of the European Union today. That alone is a reason for keeping the European Union in being.

I have been somewhat chided today by the noble Lords, Lord Grenfell and Lord Richard, for what I said at Second Reading. I take it in good part, as they meant it in good part. However, in my speech I sought to put a case for giving the Bill a fair wind. I think it was a reasonable case and anyone reading the whole of the speech, and not merely quoting selectively from it, could come to only that conclusion.

I wanted to intervene at this point today because we are now in a rather different place. The advice that I gave was certainly not heeded. It was comprehensively unheeded in the first vote. I say to my noble friend Lord Dobbs—whom I have been very glad to support and will continue to support and who has been doing a valiant and very difficult job—that the Bill has not been ruined by the two amendments that have been passed, and it is now up to the House of Commons to grasp that fact. When the Bill goes before another place on 28 February, all it has to do is to accept our amendments and the Bill will pass into law. I hope that that counsel of pragmatism will prevail and that is what will happen.

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[Lord Davies of Stamford]

Why is the noble Baroness continuing to use “we”, referring to the Government, when she says that she speaks merely on behalf of the Conservative Party? The list of so-called achievements she has just reeled off are—if they are achievements—achievements of the Government as a whole.

[Baroness Warsi]

They are—and that Government are headed by a Conservative Prime Minister and a Conservative Foreign Secretary, who have led on these matters in the negotiations.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

Since it is not easy to know what the pronunciation is of Welsh, it would be an awful pity not to have this passage in Hansard. Would the noble Lord like to read out in the Welsh language the text of the question that he has drafted?

[Lord Wigley]

I am more than delighted to do so. I think that it will be in Hansard anyway as it is an amendment, but it says:

“A ddylai’r Deyrnas Unedig barhau yn aelod o’r Undeb Ewropeaidd neu adael yr Undeb Ewropeaidd?”,

which says exactly the same as the English version.