European Union Referendum Bill

Lord Goldsmith Excerpts

Wednesday 18th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Brougham and Vaux) (Con)]

My Lords, I must advise the House that if this amendment is agreed to, I cannot call Amendments 3 or 4 due to pre-emption.

[Lord Goldsmith (Lab)]

My Lords, first, I apologise to the House that I was not here in Committee. I was overseas and therefore unable to speak to the amendment. The noble Lord, Lord Green, is quite right: I indicated to him that I was sympathetic in principle to his amendment, and I will explain why. I preface that by making clear that my personal position about the EU is that I very much hope that everyone will vote to stay in, but that is for another day.

After I had left office, I was asked to produce a report on citizenship by the then Prime Minister, the right honourable Gordon Brown. It became clear to me as I did that, with the assistance of people in government, that the concept of citizenship today is very blurred. That is because rights that once upon a time belonged to citizens only now belong to others, and because we have few ways to distinguish citizens in the way that some other countries do. In a report that dealt with a number of recommendations, I looked at whether there were reasons to be clearer as to what being a UK citizen meant.

In saying that, I want to make clear that one thing that came across to me was that, despite that lack of clarity, many people were enormously proud of the fact that they were UK citizens, particularly those who had become UK citizens. I attended a number of citizenship ceremonies, and it was very moving to see how proud people were of the fact that they had become British. I tried to hold a ceremony at Wembley Stadium, which was a great success but for the fact that, apparently, rights to pictures of the stadium itself had been sold to commercial enterprises, so we had to keep the curtains closed during the ceremony.

It is for that reason—it is a matter of considerable importance in principle—that we should be clear about what are the rights and responsibilities of our citizens, and that I recommended we should phase out some of the anomalies that enabled people who are not UK citizens to vote in general elections.

I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Green, has dealt with the question of Irish citizens, because that was one qualification that I made in my report, and that his amendment, as it now stands, also has a form of phasing out, because that was also a recommendation that I made. But the principle remains right, and I am sorry that no Government have yet taken it up; this may turn out not to be the occasion for it to happen. But it is right that we should look at our citizenship regime and look at what being a citizen means so that people can feel not just proud but inclusive, not just because they have a closeness to this country but because they belong and are a part of it. At the time of the tragedies that took place in Paris—and we have seen similar things—nothing could be more important than that people feel a very strong affinity to their country.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

Would the noble and learned Lord agree that, if the next amendment were to be passed, it would change the franchise so that 16 and 17 year-olds, probably permanently, were entitled to vote in general elections as well as this referendum? Are we not saying that this is as good a moment as any to change the franchise on this one as well?

[Lord Goldsmith]

The noble Lord and other noble Lords will have their own views on the next amendment, which I support, but I do not think it affects the principle of what I have been saying.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

Could the noble and learned Lord confirm my own impression from reading the report he wrote and to which he referred, that the phasing-out approach that he took bears no relation at all to the phasing out in the amendment before the House now, which is not a phasing out but a guillotine at the beginning of 2017? If I remember rightly—he will correct me if I am wrong—he proposed that those Commonwealth citizens who currently have the vote from this country should not have it removed from them. That is a very different proposition indeed.

[Lord Goldsmith]

The noble Lord is right about that. Mind you, if the recommendation had been taken up in 2008 when I wrote the report, who knows where we would be today?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, since the noble Lord, Lord Green of Deddington, mentioned our conversation, perhaps I may say one or two things. We all recognise that our current franchise and our concept of citizenship are a mess and need attention. We are about to debate under some of the following amendments how much attention we should give to tidying up our franchise now, or whether it should be addressed more broadly later. On citizenship, I am very struck by the extent to which dual citizenship extends across Britain and elsewhere. I asked several times when in government how many dual citizens there were scattered around the world, and the answer was always that we do not know. I recall a visit to northern Cyprus in which my driver told me that he was a British citizen, a Turkish citizen, a Greek-Cypriot citizen and a Turkish-Cypriot citizen, and he enjoyed choosing between them as he travelled as to which passport he might take. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, said, the question of citizenship is extremely fuzzy.

The question of when we would have the referendum is addressed in the amendment. I hope we have it before 1 January 2017. I have some doubts as to how far we should address this broader issue now, in this specific case, although we will address it again under further amendments.

Finally, I congratulate the noble Lord on his argument that we should use this as an example of where we might harmonise with other member states. I assume that that comes from his commitment to ever-closer union.