European Union Referendum Bill

Debate between Lord Grocott and Lord Hannay of Chiswick

Monday 23rd November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott]

I do not think there is any disagreement about the need to provide precise factual information so that people can make the judgment that they will have make when the referendum is called. That is clearly a benefit. The difficulty that arises—it is pretty obvious to me and I hope I can convince any doubters that it ought to be to all of us—is in determining what is factual, unarguable, objective information and what is a matter of judgment.

Looking at the amendments, I can certainly give an example of what is factual and what is not. For example, government Amendment 24B—leaving aside just for a moment the doubts of the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, about which countries might be included—is close to a factual requirement,

“examples of countries that do not have membership of the European Union but do have other arrangements with the European Union (describing, in the case of each country given as an example, those arrangements).”

Admittedly, the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, made me waver a bit when I heard his comments. There is deep uncertainty as to precisely which countries would be covered by this—perhaps the Minister will answer that point in her reply—but if you gave that to 10 top civil servants and said, “Right, you have to draw up these facts, these details, on this precise point”, they would roughly be in the same territory. They would spell out what deal Norway had got, what deal Switzerland had got and so on.

By complete contrast, I have to disagree with the Liberal Front Bench strongly over the idea that Amendment 24C, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, involves a kind of clear, objective and unarguable description about the consequences of withdrawal. The game is given away in the language of the very first line of the amendment:

“The report shall cover the possible consequences of withdrawal”.

The term “possible consequences” contains within itself the possibility of different considerations that need to be brought into account in the event of withdrawal. The language of the amendment itself admits the possibility of debate, discussion and uncertainty. I am not a lawyer, but if that ever passed on to the statute book and 10 civil servants were asked to give a precise answer on those points, they would come up with 10 different solutions.

I will complete that point by including one particularly contentious example. I mentioned this in Committee but make absolutely no apology for mentioning it again. Amendment 24C says:

“The report shall cover the possible consequences of withdrawal from the European Union, including information on the effects of withdrawal upon … (g) the provision of financial support for agriculture in each region of the United Kingdom”.

Does that or does that not include a consideration of what support agriculture would get in the event of withdrawal from the common agricultural policy? In my book, of course that would be a possible consequence of leaving the European Union: there would be subventions from the British Treasury to British agriculture. The levels of that would be unknown, but it is a fair bet in my book that they would at least be equal to the colossal sums that we contribute to the common agricultural policy under the present arrangements. Whether I am right or wrong does not really matter: all I am saying is that the language of the amendment itself means that that is inevitably the kind of debate that would take place. Clearly, you cannot talk about the possible consequences of withdrawal from the CAP without giving some consideration to what sort of support would come from a country that was outside the EU. In trying to pretend that that is a kind of objective consideration, the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, must allow himself a little smile.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

I am not smiling very much. As I explained in Committee, that was not the intention of the people moving these sorts of amendments. We wish to have a factual, objective statement of the consequences of withdrawal. I noticed with some pleasure that when the Minister opened the debate this afternoon, she included a recognition that there would need to be, in the paper provided under Amendment 24B, some consideration of that matter. I never suggested—and I twice replied to the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, on this point in Committee—that we should go into the speculative area of what the Government might do to replace the common agricultural policy, which would have been withdrawn from British farmers. I am sorry, but the noble Lord is simply barking up the wrong tree. There is therefore no difference between us and no difference with the Minister. This is important information. It was not intended to enter the speculative realm of what would replace it.

[Lord Grocott]

In that case, the noble Lord really should have put down a different amendment. In my book, possible consequences means possible consequences. Possible consequences of withdrawal from one organisation will include what will happen to the beneficiaries, if that is the right word, of the common agricultural policy in the event of withdrawal. If there is no possibility of uncertainty, remove “possible” from the amendment. The noble Lord has to defend his amendment as written. In any conversation interpreting the meaning of the amendment as written, there would be any number of possible—I use the word myself again—ways in which the consequences of withdrawal could be written.

I think that the noble Lord will be frank enough, as am I, to admit that he does not come from a completely neutral position. If he thought that his amendment would result in a large number of statements and heavy tracts one or two inches thick pointing out what disastrous consequences there would be for Britain if it remained within the European Union, I am quite sure that he would not have put the amendment down. He has put the amendment down precisely because it is consistent with his perfectly sincerely held view—and we know that almost irrespective of what the Prime Minister brings back he will be voting to stay. I just find it unacceptable in terms of the language.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

I am sorry, but I really must reply to this point about possible consequences. If I had put “consequences” without “possible” that would have entered the speculative realm because it would have needed to bring in what was done to replace the common agricultural policy. By putting “possible consequences” it merely stays in the factual realm—what will be removed from the British agricultural sector if we were to leave. It does not enter into the conjectural area of what would replace it. That was the reason for the wording.

[Lord Grocott]

I think actually it is much clearer from the noble Lord’s perspective if he says “consequences” and does not put “possible”. I think we are beginning to dance on pinheads now, but test it out in the pub. What are the possible consequences of you not paying for your pint? There are a whole range of possible consequences. Anyone who is asked might say: you might go to prison; it might result in a fight. Any number of consequences are possible from an objective fact. The objective fact, which is acknowledged, would be withdrawal from the common agricultural policy. I am simply putting to the noble Lord that with “possible consequences” the language itself implies that there could be lots of different interpretations. I put it no stronger than that.

European Union Referendum Bill

Debate between Lord Grocott and Lord Hannay of Chiswick

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.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

--- Later in 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.