European Union Referendum Bill

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Monday 2nd November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, I would like to make a brief intervention, having heard the words “matter of principle” used by a number of contributors. As someone new to this particular debate and this group of amendments, it is slightly odd—is it not?—that a British citizen living in Stockholm under this amendment would be able to take part in the referendum but a British citizen living in Oslo would not. I certainly cannot see an issue of principle that would establish why that should be the case other than what seems to be a weak argument—certainly a very weak argument if it is elevated to being an argument of principle—which is that somehow or other one’s entitlement to vote in an election, whatever the election happens to be, should be dependent on someone else’s assessment of how significant the outcome of the vote would be for the individual concerned.

We do not do that in any other election that I am aware of. If you have young children at school, you are more likely to be affected by the outcome of a local government election than if you do not, because, as we all know, the bulk of local government expenditure goes into education. A person’s right to vote is simply not dependent—or it could never be described as a matter of principle to be dependent—on our estimate of how greatly or significantly the outcome of the vote will affect them. I wonder whether in the rest of the contributions we could acknowledge the validity of that argument.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

My Lords, just before the noble Lord sits down, could I possibly correct him in so far as my own reference to a principle was concerned? When I introduced the amendment I said that I did not think that there could be any difference of principle between those of us moving this amendment and the Government who represent a party which in its manifesto said that it was going to give these people a vote. That was the issue of principle which I said did not exist between us; I did not widen the reference.

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, I was not pointing the finger at any individual and certainly not at the noble Lord, Lord Hannay; I was simply making what I think is a very valid point that it is not for us to judge how significant an election outcome is to someone when we are proposing either to give them the franchise or to withhold it from them.

[Lord Dobbs (Con)]

My Lords, I very much welcome the Government’s manifesto commitment to give votes to all expats, no matter how long they have been abroad. It is a very welcome commitment which I look forward to seeing being put into place—but whether it is iniquitous that they have not yet been given the vote, as my noble friend suggested, I am not sure. These are matters of balance and practicality and it is to the practicalities that I will refer very briefly.

I take the point of my noble friend Lord Flight, who asked why, if we are giving votes to people in one part of the world, we should not give them to British citizens in all parts of the world. The Oslo and Stockholm example that the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, offered is very telling. There are something like 5 million British expats living abroad and 2 million of them, give or take a few, live in the European Union. For a very long time they have had the right to vote if they have been there for 15 years or less and I find it deeply distressing, because I believe that they should take an active role in their democracy, that fewer than 20,000 British expats in the European Union have taken up that right to vote. Despite all the efforts and the funding that has been given to advertising by the Government to get them involved, as a group they have shown a very sad lack of willingness to get involved.

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[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer]

My Lords, I warmly thank all those who have spoken in this interesting debate, which I think has fleshed out some of the major questions. I would like to make a couple of points. The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, asked what the difference is between someone living in Oslo and someone living in Stockholm, and other noble Lords had that question in their minds. The difference is that the people living in EU countries, when they decided to work or to retire abroad, for example, did so on the basis of being EU citizens, not citizens of anywhere else. What we are possibly about to remove in the EU referendum, if it goes the other way, is that EU citizenship. That puts them into a totally different category.

[Lord Grocott]

But, my Lords, as soon as you start speculating about other people’s motives, you end up in pretty deep water. It might be that someone has gone to live and work in Oslo because Norway is not a member of the European Union. You simply cannot make those kinds of judgments about people’s motivations.

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer]

I am clearly not going to agree with the noble Lord on that one. I think that there is a basic difference between us in our understanding of what being an EU citizen is. However, I was not as depressed by that argument as by the one put forward by several noble Lords—notably the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs—that it really all seems to be much too difficult. There are too many people and how would we reach them? That is not a reason for not giving people the vote.

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These amendments are designed to persuade the Government to include in the Bill certain obligations to provide, or to have provided, information of an objective kind that will enable the electorate to make up their own mind—not to tell them how they are to vote. There will, of course, be a huge amount of advocacy from both sides in the months ahead. That is exactly as it should be. This is a democratic process and advocacy is part of that process. I am not for one moment criticising the fact that that will take place, but it will not be designed to provide objective information. It will be designed to present information in a persuasive way, and that is a different thing. As I say, there appears to be a rather wide lack of objective information on this area of the European Union. I hope that the Minister, who is always extremely good at listening to points that are put, will consider that very carefully.

[Lord Grocott]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. I do not disagree at all with what he is saying about providing as much information as possible on the consequences of withdrawal. As other amendments propose, that information should also address the consequences of remaining in. Both sides should be presented. What I am not absolutely clear about is his suggestion that there can be an objective set of propositions on these matters. How would one present an objective position on, for example, the costs of the common agricultural policy?

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

I am sorry to disappoint the noble Lord but the amendments to which I am speaking do not relate to presenting anything about the common agricultural policy. That is not in the list of areas provided here. These amendments, and the request for a report from the Government, address factual areas where people’s rights or responsibilities will be affected by a vote to leave. The previous Government provided a lot of evidence-based material of that nature in the balance of competences review—a review which the present Government seem to prefer to forget that they had any paternity interest in, but they did. It was, I thought, a pretty good piece of work and there is a huge amount of material there. However, it is not yet addressing satisfactorily some of the factual areas. What are those factual areas? First, there is the question of the rights—

[Lord Grocott]

I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord again and I am grateful to him for giving way. He slightly threw me by saying that this has nothing to do with the common agricultural policy. However, subsection (2)(d) of the proposed new clause refers to,

“the legislative and statutory consequences of withdrawal for each government department”.

It would be very strange for the information on the consequences of withdrawal for the department concerned with agriculture not to include a reference to the common agricultural policy.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

I am sorry. I will get to that. I hope that the noble Lord will be patient and wait until we get to that part of the amendment. I will then explain what it is intended to suggest.

The first area where it is suggested that it would be valuable for the electorate to have a factual assessment of the consequences of a decision to withdraw relates to the rights of individuals, including their employment rights. It is not important to tell them how these rights would be affected by a decision to stay in as in that case the rights would be the same as they have now. The second area concerns the effect of withdrawal on the rights of EU citizens in this country, many of which are secured under EU law. They also need to know what the consequences would be.

The third category is the rights of British citizens in the rest of the EU, the people about whose ability to vote we were discussing in the previous set of amendments, but who have serious rights bestowed on them under EU law that they would lose if we left. I am afraid that it is no good, as the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, kept saying in stating that it is sure to be all right on the night, and that there are an awful lot of EU citizens here and an awful lot of our citizens there, and that it will all roll out. That is the leap in the dark proposal. People who leap into the dark sometimes find that they have fallen rather a long way.

Then there is the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, which is a further category—the legislative and statutory consequences of withdrawal, department by department, and addressing the legislative burden. That asks the Government what they would have to do in order to replace the common agricultural policy if we withdrew. Presumably nobody in this House seriously believes that the British agricultural economy could survive without any governmental involvement. There would have to be a British agricultural policy and that would have to be enacted by Parliament. There would have to be a British policy on research and on business regulation, and a whole range of things, many of which are contained in European Union law. This amendment asks the Government to set out what those requirements would be in the circumstances that I am describing.

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[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, will agree that it is essential to any dispassionate debate—if such a thing is possible—that both sides of the argument should be presented. All the amendments in this group are of a similar character—they all seek further information to present to the British public before the British public make a very important decision. I do not have a problem with any of the amendments because I am in favour of the British people having all possible information. I would like them to have even more information, were it possible.

I cannot find a way of tabling an amendment on this subject that would be in order, but I would love the British people to be able to consider—on the principle that it is better to look in the history book than in the crystal ball—the last time that a major decision in relation to the European Union was made in this country, which was when we decided not to join the euro. I think that that was a splendid decision by the last Labour Government. They went to some lengths to present to the British people the facts of the arguments of those who were in favour of Britain joining the euro as well as the facts as to whether the forebodings of their prophets of doom came into being. I remember that there were all sorts of arguments about the collapse of inward investment into Britain should we not join the euro, and so on. However, that point is out of order so I shall not speak to it at length.

The only problem I have with these amendments—it was part of my interventions on the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, although it does not, in my book, disqualify the amendments—is that I have considerable doubts that I could say that the word “objective” is a characteristic of every amendment in this group. By way of illustration I will refer again to the common agricultural policy. I mentioned the amendment in the name of the noble Lord—I was about to call him my noble friend, although he is not far off—Lord Wigley, with whom I agree on so many things. I agree with him very much that it is extremely important that there should be support for British agriculture in difficult terrain such as north Wales. The noble Lord knows far more about that than I do, but it is extremely important that there is support for that economic activity in our country. However, if we are to have a report on the consequences of coming out of the common agricultural policy, do we or do we not include the presumption—and only a fair-minded person would have to make this presumption—that some of the moneys currently spent by the British taxpayer on the common agricultural policy should be spent directly on British agriculture by the British Treasury?

[Lord Wigley]

That is, indeed, a central question. However, it is not a matter on which we should make an assumption. We should be told whether or not that will be the case.

[Lord Grocott]

It would be fine if that happened, but the figures are worth reflecting on. I find it difficult to imagine that the contribution to British agriculture would be less than it is currently via the common agricultural policy. I took the precaution of getting an up-to-date figure—I assume that responses from Ministers are accurate on these matters. I asked the Government two or three weeks ago what the current cost of the common agricultural policy was and the answer from the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner of Kimble, was €55 billion for 2015. He went on to say that the CAP accounts for 40% of the EU budget.

Noble Lords who regularly contribute to economic debates—which I do not—will be able to do these figures in their heads. However, €55 billion is the total cost of the CAP. That represents 40% of the EU budget. The UK contribution to the EU budget as a whole is €16 billion. Let us work that out. Off the top of my head, I think the British contribution to the cost of the common agricultural policy is 2 billion or 3 billion euros. I repeat that I have doubts about the use of the word “objective” in this kind of discussion, but it seems that anyone considering this objectively would have to consider that a very substantial contribution to agriculture—that vital industry in this country—would have to come from the British Exchequer if there were less support coming via our contributions to the CAP.

[Lord Davies of Stamford (Lab)]

My noble friend asked rhetorically whether there was any reason to suppose that, if we came out of the EU, our level of support to our agricultural sector as a separate country would be any less than it currently is within the EU. I put it to him that there is one obvious ground on which one might expect that our support to agriculture would be much less if we were outside the EU. The political weighting of the agricultural sector’s interest is markedly less in this country than on the continent, in the Republic of Ireland or in other EU member states. If the noble Lord goes to Ireland, Germany, the Netherlands or France—let alone Poland or Romania—he will be able to satisfy himself of that. We have one of the very lowest proportions of population—which of course means voters—who are directly dependent on the agricultural sector: about 1%. That means that the political balance is very different here when agricultural matters are discussed from how it is on the continent, where there is much more political weight behind agriculture. Inevitably that will be reflected in the amount of money coming through to agriculture and in the willingness of the Treasury to continue to support agriculture at the current level, which is based on the aggregate weight of agricultural interests in the European Union as a whole and not on their weight within this country in terms of domestic and political debate.

[Lord Grocott]

My noble friend makes my point very effectively: these are matters of debate. There is no objective analysis of the cost of the CAP and the likely expenditure in the UK that can be resolved by putting statistics into a computer. He makes a perfectly valid argument from his own perspective.

I am tempted to go down memory lane. Believe it or not—this may come as some surprise to the House—40 years ago, in 1975, I would occasionally go to meetings of the Agriculture Ministers of the European Union, in my lowly capacity as a Parliamentary Private Secretary. I have to say that the conclusions reached by the Council of Ministers at the time were not always in Britain’s interests.

However, let us not go down that road, because I am not disagreeing with my noble friend. These are not matters of fact but matters of judgment. Part of the judgment might be whether—

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. All afternoon, he has been making a very persistent effort to draw our discussion on to grounds that are not covered by the amendments. If he reads the amendments carefully, he will see that nobody is suggesting that the Government should be asked to quantify the support it would give to agriculture after we withdrew. They are being asked to state, purely as a matter of fact, what the consequences would be—statutory and legislative—if we ceased to be in the European Union and ceased to have the common agricultural policy applied to us. That information can be provided factually: so much in structural support, so much in market support, and so on. These facts are all to be found in the budget of the European Union. The amendments I have tabled do not ask the Government to speculate on other matters, although they do ask the Government to say what would be needed by way of legislation to fill that gap.

[Lord Grocott]

I am afraid that the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, has a different reading of the amendments from mine. Amendment 29, in the name of my noble friend Lord Wigley, inserts a clause that states:

“No later than 12 weeks prior to the appointed date of the referendum, the Secretary of State shall publish, and lay before each House of Parliament, a report on the consequences of withdrawal from the European Union on the provision of financial support for agriculture in each region of the United Kingdom”.

Presumably he is saying that no part of that consideration would take account of the support, if any, to be given to agriculture in the event of our not being in the European Union. My contention is that undoubtedly there would be support for agriculture should we not be a member of the European Union. That is why my comments are entirely relevant to these amendments—and certainly to that one.

In any event, my broad point is that any discussion of this sort inevitably goes beyond dry legal jargon. It ends with a matter of judgment at some point, as do nearly all matters of foreign policy—if I am allowed to refer to relations with the European Union as matters of foreign policy. The noble Lord, Lord Hannay, knows that better than most of us. It seems to me that we either support all of these amendments or none, but we do it with the acknowledgment that they will not solve the problem for anyone. At the end of the day, people will still have to make their own judgments.