European Union Referendum Bill

Debate between Lord Green of Deddington and Lord Hamilton of Epsom

Wednesday 18th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

All the time, we seem to be trying to change the existing electoral register in favour of those who are more likely to vote to stay in than they are to leave. This is quite clearly changing the whole thing in favour of those who want to stay in the EU. I do not know why the noble Lord actually denies this. Does he really think that people living in the EU for more than 15 years will vote to come out? It is extremely unlikely. He knows that as well as anybody else. We have established that there is an electoral register and now we are starting to mess about with it. Once it includes the 16 and 17 year-olds, a whole host of other people can be put in. That moves totally away from the original register on which we were having this referendum.

If everybody wants to hold a referendum in this country which is narrowly won by those who say we should stay in the EU when there is all the gerrymandering that has been going on, do noble Lords really think that that decision will be accepted by the country when it is obvious that the whole thing has been slewed in favour of those who want to stay in the EU?

[Lord Green of Deddington (CB)]

I can help the noble Lord. He will not be surprised to hear numbers from me, or that I am repeating them. We are talking about 1.3 million people, according to the UN Population Division. Some of those will be minors because that figure does not distinguish between minors and adults, and some will have been in Europe for fewer than 15 years. There are no statistics and no way of knowing exactly how many people would be covered by this amendment, and I am not suggesting that there is. However, if we start with that 1.3 million, probably 0.3 million of them are minors, so we are left with 1 million, of which—who knows?—maybe 0.5 million or 0.3 million have been in Europe for more than 15 years. Whichever way we look at it, the noble Lord is quite right that this is a significant number of people, running into hundreds of thousands. We should be aware of that when we consider the amendment.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

I am grateful to the noble Lord, and it is very helpful to have a few statistics to bring everything more vividly to light. I give way to the noble Lord.