European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Higgins Excerpts

Tuesday 30th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Higgins (Con)]

My Lords, this Bill and the debate on it clearly mark something of a milestone in the move towards Brexit. It is appropriate that we should therefore take stock of the situation we are now in. We are effectively debating the principle of the Bill, which tends to embody the result of the referendum. Not all that many of those in the Chamber today took part in the debate on the referendum Bill. I took an active part and what was absolutely clear was that the Government had introduced a Bill on a referendum which was advisory—it certainly was not mandatory—but this has been very carefully forgotten. Somehow, in the morning after the result was announced, the Prime Minister—perhaps somewhat surprised by it—came out treating it as if it were absolutely descended from the heavens and nothing whatever could be said in disagreement with it.

This raises the whole question of the role of referendums in our society. There is a popular view—not least in the Daily Mail and elsewhere—that referendums are democratic. They are not democratic in the sense of democracy as we mean it in this country, which is a representative system of democracy. They undermine that representative system. I certainly do not go along with the idea that we should have another referendum, and it is high time that Parliament asserted its position as far as that is concerned. My noble friend on the Front Bench said again today that we must honour the result of the referendum. It was the most sordid political campaign that I can remember in my lifetime—it was riddled with liars. Anyway, a majority of the British people did not vote for it. A large number realised that they did not understand the issues and decided not to vote, and even the majority of those who voted was not that large. So the argument that we must honour this seems a rather doubtful proposition.

The whole result of the referendum has been to undermine what we believe in this country: that Members of Parliament are representatives not delegates. Once you have a referendum they become, to a large extent, a delegate and not a representative, and do not have a chance to weigh up the arguments that are put forward. So, as far as that is concerned, we should take a more sceptical view than we have so far about the result of the referendum. The crucial thing is that, at the end of the negotiations, this House should make a decision. Another referendum might produce a result that I would be delighted with but, none the less, it is not the right approach. We, as a Parliament, have to reassert our position.

The other thing that puzzles me is that a doctrine seems to have emerged which says that, if you are in a negotiation, you must not say what you want, because that somehow undermines your negotiating position. This has been said quite explicitly, and the result is that the Government simply are not saying what they want. For example, on the crucial issue of the City of London there is a serious danger in the interim of people leaving and going to Frankfurt or wherever. We cannot have this degree of uncertainty. We must take a more positive line. Right at the beginning, when Theresa May took the referendum as mandatory, she seemed to rule out straightaway the customs union and so on, overlooking the fact that there is no conceivable answer to the Irish border problem if we do not remain in the customs union, in name or some other way. We should not have allowed that position to be eroded at such an early stage in the proceedings. We need to have a much clearer view of what the Government actually want. We have not been getting that. We desperately need it and soon.

Finally, we have in front of us a splendid report published by the Constitution Committee yesterday. It is very sad that the House of Commons did not have sight of this before they debated the matter. In all events, we now have it and it is really rather definite. It says:

“The Bill as drafted is constitutionally unacceptable”.


That is a nice clear statement. It raises the question of whether we should vote for the Bill. However, it goes on rather more optimistically to say that,

“its aims are valid and it can be amended to make it both appropriate and effective”.

We face the prospect of going through all the details to try to make the changes that the Constitution Committee has recommended. One ought to ask the Government whether it would not speed up the process—goodness knows we are running out of time—if they were to table amendments of the kind suggested by the Constitution Committee. We need to make progress and we need more clarity.

We certainly do not need any more referendums. I spend a lot of time in Holland. The newly formed Dutch coalition Government, having experience with a referendum on Ukraine, have come to the view that they should pass a Bill prohibiting any more referendums. I am heartened by that. Moreover, they would not have a referendum on whether you can have a Bill prohibiting referendums. That is something we ought to consider very carefully in this country.