European Union (Referendum) Bill

Debate between Lord Dobbs and Lord Kinnock

Friday 31st January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dobbs]

Of course I could but quite clearly I am not going to. It would deprive us of hearing the noble Lord, Lord Kinnock.

[Lord Kinnock (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord. Although I endorse entirely the appeal made by my noble friend Lord Giddens and indeed others, I suggest to the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, that he could accept this amendment, and he could do it with the approval of the Prime Minister. My authority for claiming that comes from no less a source than the Bloomberg speech, which I am now quoting so frequently that I am beginning to think of it as the Bloomberg bible.

In that speech, the Prime Minister was very clear—indeed, commendably clear—that:

“If we left the European Union, it would be a one-way ticket, not a return”.

That is a very sobering thought and a very grave proposition. To his further credit, the Prime Minister was balanced in his treatment of the issues in much of that speech. He said, quite correctly, that:

“Britain could make her own way in the world, outside the EU”.

He then, in a very balanced way, went on to say:

“But the question we will have to ask ourselves is this: is that the very best future for our country?”.

He said that of course we,

“would be free to take our own decisions … But we don’t leave NATO because it is in our national interest to stay and benefit from its collective defence guarantee”.

The only question that I would pose to the Prime Minister and to the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, on this aspect is: how free would we be to take our own decisions?

In a further balancing item, the Prime Minister responded to such a rhetorical question by saying:

“If we leave the EU, we cannot of course leave Europe. It will remain for many years our biggest market, and forever our geographical neighbourhood. We are tied by a complex web of legal commitments”.

He continued:

“Even if we pulled out completely”—

and I do not see that there is any other option other than a complete pull-out, given what the Prime Minister said about it being a one-way ticket—

“decisions made in the EU would continue to have a profound effect on our country. But we would have lost all our remaining vetoes and our voice in those decisions”.

If the Prime Minister was willing to say that a year ago in the Bloomberg speech and to spell out the implications of our departure, what conceivable resistance could there be to accepting an amendment that would make it mandatory to provide an assessment of the United Kingdom’s intended relationship with the European Union in the event of withdrawal? In fact, on this occasion I am being as uncharacteristically helpful as I possibly can be to Mr Cameron. Maybe one day he will reciprocate that.

Of course, the question remains: how free would we be to make our own decisions? This House will know that if the search is for sovereignty, then the definition of sovereignty as the power to make effective decisions must be predominant in our minds. Outside the European Union in the world of the 21st century and beyond, we have to wonder how a medium-sized economy with a population of around 60 million, abutting the world’s biggest single market, would fare if we had to conduct our own relationships individually—dare I say unilaterally?—with emerging and emerged global powers. How would we fare in terms of resolving the crisis of the environment or in terms of combating international crime, were it not for the fact that inside the European Union we can exert substantial influence on the direction of affairs and on the nature of international relationships in an increasingly complex and interdependent world?

European Union (Referendum) Bill

Debate between Lord Dobbs and Lord Kinnock

Friday 24th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dobbs]

If I may be allowed to make progress, I will do my best to do precisely that and to answer the questions that have been raised. They are about the questions in the amendment which the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong, tabled. I am afraid that I simply do not have time to acknowledge all those who have spoken, although I thank noble Lords for their, by and large, reasoned and reasonable contributions, and in particular for the elegant way in which the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong, introduced his amendment.

I am not entirely unsympathetic to what has been said. As I said at Second Reading, the case about the question is arguable but not overwhelming. Although some noble Lords have implied that we are standing at the gates of hell, and that almost any question would be better than this one, it is worth remembering that the Electoral Commission did not condemn out of hand the question that stands in the Bill. Some of the references to the commission’s findings that were made during this debate were hugely exaggerated. I have its findings here and have read every word. The commission said:

“We found that the wording of the question itself”—

the question contained in the Bill—

“is brief, uses straightforward language, and is easy to understand and answer”,

not that it was confusing and misleading, as the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong, suggested. The Electoral Commission had its reservations, of course—

[Lord Kinnock (Lab)]

Since the noble Lord is quoting from the Electoral Commission’s report, his quotation, in order to be accurate, should be precise. Exactly after the phrase which he has quoted, the words of the Electoral Commission are,

“however … the phrase ‘be a member of the European Union’ to describe the referendum choice is not sufficiently clear to ensure a full understanding of the referendum as a whole … The question wording does not make it clear for some people what the current status of the UK is within the EU, and the referendum choice as expressed in the question is likely to lead to confusion”.

If that is not a clear dismissal of the version of the question that the noble Lord is offering, I do not know what is.

[Lord Dobbs]

I thank the noble Lord. That is precisely why I do not wish to take too many interventions.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Dobbs]

If I can lean on the noble Baroness’s patience, I suggested at the start that I needed a little time to cover these issues and I will—precisely, right now—get to the very point that she raised. We need a date. Why do we need one? For the people. We do not need more empty promises. We need a date not as a straitjacket but as a sensible commitment to the people, one they will trust and that will rebind us in their trust because we have failed them. We need a mechanism for this country to be able to move forward. Simply saying that we will have a referendum at some point is not good enough. Why 2017? It is a specific date. Without a specific date, the mistrust that has built up will never be swept away. I already explained that it is not a straitjacket. It has all sorts of flexibility to it but it is an ambition, target and objective that we can all work towards.

[Lord Kinnock]

Can the noble Lord enlighten us? The undertaking to have a referendum by 31 December 2017 arises precisely out of that given by the Prime Minister in his speech from January last year in saying that it had to be in the first half of the next Parliament. Does the noble Lord realise that he is now trying to argue that we must still have the referendum before 31 December, regardless of whether the absolutely vital negotiations have been completed, the achievements —let us call them that—have been agreed to and all the other processes in the European Union have reached conclusion? We have heard about the implausibility of that kind of time schedule. In other words, he would rather stick to the date than employ any common sense whatever.

[Lord Dobbs]

I beg the noble Lord’s pardon, but I do not think that he heard what I said. I said that the date could be changed, but it would have to be for a darned good reason, a reason that the people would accept.