European Union (Referendum) Bill

Lord Kerr of Kinlochard Excerpts

Friday 24th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Giddens (Lab)]

My Lords, I follow up on the comment that the noble and learned Baroness has just made. I speak in this debate as an academic more than as a Labour Party member. If the UK were to leave the European Union, it would be a really wrenching process of readjustment. When a country is contemplating such a profound and consequential decision, it is crucial that the question chosen in the referendum should be as clear and impartial as possible. For that reason I think we should have some academic discussion of it, because, as has been said, questions are crucial in a referendum.

The report of the Electoral Commission is sound, sensible and well researched. For maximum clarity it makes absolute sense to have the formula proposed in this amendment, which is endorsed by the commission. Contrary to all kinds of political babble, I would hope that most Members of the House will support the amendment because it is in the interests of the country. It is not a party-political issue. It is in the interests of the country, if we have a referendum on a decision crucial to the future of the country, that the question asked is impartial and proper.

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)]

My Lords, I speak in support of the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong. I have a dog point—but the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong, made it himself. I would put it in a slightly different form. I would say, “Why have a watchdog and ignore its barking?”.

I also have a tartan point—but the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth of Drumlean, made it himself. When Mr Salmond put forward his question for the Scottish referendum, loud were our complaints and strong were our strictures, particularly from the former Secretaries of State for Scotland. Their wizened locks shook. In the case of the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, his head shook. Loud was our condemnation of Mr Salmond for ignoring the advice of the Electoral Commission. What happened? He listened to us, or he listened to the Electoral Commission, and he changed his question. He did as the House of Lords encouraged him to do. That seems to be quite a relevant precedent.

My third point you could call cui bono. I disagree with the noble Lords, Lord Grenfell and Lord Lipsey. They say that the question in the Bill—the slanted question—was written by Conservative Central Office. However, we know from the Second Reading debate that that is not true, because we were told then that the form of the question that the Tea Party in the other place has chosen to put in the Bill was not the one it was given by the Conservative Party hierarchy. The Conservative Party hierarchy provided a question very like the one proposed by my noble friend Lord Armstrong of Ilminster in the amendment before the House.

You have to say, “cui bono”. There will be people in this House who think that it is a very good idea to have a slanted question because they are not seeking a referendum; they are seeking a referendum that says we leave the European Union. Those on the other side who are thinking of opposing the amendment of my noble friend Lord Armstrong—and I hope they are very few—should reflect that this is not what the Conservative Party sought. This is a question that is not accidentally defective but deliberately defective. I support my noble friend’s amendment.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (LD)]

My Lords, I apologise on behalf of my noble friend Lord Lester of Herne Hill, whose name is added to Amendment 1 and the other amendments in this group, spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong. My noble friend is unable to be in the House this morning because he has a medical appointment.

I agree with Amendments 1, 28 and 31, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong, and with Amendment 32, and I want to speak briefly to them—but, before doing so, I want to take on what the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth of Drumlean, said. I tend not to tangle with the noble Lord—normally he is far too ferocious for me to lift my head above the parapet— but I remind him that it was Mr David Cameron, the Prime Minister, who undertook in a speech in January 2013, famously known as the Bloomberg speech, to negotiate a new settlement with our European partners. He said that once the settlement had been negotiated, there would be an “in or out” referendum in which the British people would choose to stay in the EU on these new terms or come out altogether. He undertook that this would be done in the first half of the next Parliament. He said:

“Legislation will be drafted before the next election. And if a Conservative Government is elected we will introduce the enabling legislation immediately and pass it by the end of that year”.

In fact, what has happened is that the Bill before us is the enabling legislation. It should not be before us in this Parliament; it should come as enabling legislation after the next general election.

I will now speak to the amendment. I note that I am the first member of this House’s Constitution Committee to so do and I regret that our chairman, the noble Baroness, Lady Jay, is unable to be here now. However, I draw the House’s attention to the Constitution Committee’s report on the Bill. The report is brief but clear. It clearly sets out that the Electoral Commission has, in Section 104, a duty,

“to ‘consider the wording’ of a referendum question and to report on its ‘intelligibility’. In doing so the Electoral Commission considers whether the question presents the options to voters ‘clearly, simply and neutrally’”.

It recommends that the question be amended from the question in the Bill, which is:

“Do you think that the United Kingdom should be a member of the European Union?”,

to one of two alternatives. One is:

“Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union?”,

and several noble Lords have spoken to that, and the other is:

“Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?”,

with the possible answers to the second option being, instead of yes or no, remain or leave. We should discuss both options.

My personal preference is not, as this group of amendments recommends, that the question should require a yes or no answer but that it should ask whether the UK should remain a member of the EU or leave the EU, with a “remain or leave” option clearly put to the electorate. The reason I say that is that when the Electoral Commission conducted its research—in the way that the noble Lord, Lipsey, might have found flawed, although I will not address his concerns at this point—it discovered that significant numbers of the public were confused as to whether we were members of the EU or members of the eurozone, and indeed there were people who did not know that we were members of the European Union. In the light of that, the committee certainly suggests that the House should carefully consider whether it is satisfied with the question and that it should do so in the spirit of its obligation to carry out scrutiny and revision.

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For all those reasons, I strongly support the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Roper, and I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, will give very serious consideration to accepting it.

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard]

I, too, support the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Roper. The analogy with 1975 is interesting. As the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, has reminded us again and again, the House of Lords passed without difficulty the Bill for the referendum. Of course, the difference was that the governing party had had in its election manifesto a commitment to having a referendum, and the renegotiation was taking place; it had taken place by the end. It was not a future renegotiation and a referendum in another Parliament; it was a referendum in the here and now. It was completely uncontroversial as a Bill, the question was in no way slanted and it went through like a dose of salts.

That was a totally different situation from the one we face with the Bill in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs. In 1975 there was a public information campaign in a very narrow sense. There was in Whitehall a referendum information unit, staffed partly from public service, partly from outside, which provided— genuinely impartially—information to the two campaigns, and the campaigns made what use they wished of it. There was very little direct communication by the Government with the elector.

The requirement then was not nearly as great. It was not long that we had been in the European Union. People could remember what it was like to be outside the European Union. There had been huge debate about Mr Heath’s application. There had then been an election, which was fought on a number of issues but that was one of them. The public were pretty familiar with the issues. People who have for a generation and a half assumed that the rights they acquire by being members of the European Union are permanent rights, people who live in Spain or Italy or Ireland, and enterprises that have made their decisions about investment on the assumption that our membership of the European Union single market is permanent are going to have to think about how these things would change.

The noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, got it exactly right and I agree with everything he said. The noble Lord, Lord Hannay, was correct to say that the four assessments called for in this amendment would have to be genuinely factual, impartial and independently produced. It is a serious requirement which should be in the Bill. I agreed with the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, when he said at Second Reading that it was a principal defect of the Bill that there was nothing in it about facilitating unbiased debate before the referendum was held. This amendment would correct that defect, and I support it.

[Lord Kinnock]

I support the amendment. If I can be biblical for a moment, I shall take as my text what no less a person than the Prime Minister said in his Bloomberg speech. He said:

“If we left the European Union, it would be a one-way ticket, not a return”.

There can be few bigger questions ever to present themselves to the British people in this or any other age, certainly in peacetime—questions about war, of course, are characteristically not put to the British people. If that is the dimension of the decision, it is very clear that it must be subject to a full assessment, not as an addendum or an afterthought but as a basic prerequisite of conducting a referendum and a meaningful vote in it.

The reason for that is very straightforward: there is no commercial organisation of any dimension, even quite small concerns, which would begin to undertake any significant shift in its product range, in its marketing, in its location and in a proportionately big investment decision without undertaking a full evidence-based assessment of the impact of taking that decision. It would be an assessment of the impact not just on the firm and its labour force but perhaps on the locality, the environment and on transport needs. Anyone who has been part of such decision-making, as many people in this House, including me, have been, is familiar with the very refined techniques that now exist for undertaking comprehensive and thorough impact assessments. That is what the whole of commerce does. Indeed, it is what the whole of local government does. There can be no significant decision facing any council in this whole country that has any kind of recognisable implication for the community, the budget of the council or the well-being of the citizens that is not subject to rigorous impact assessment, particularly risk assessment. Useful techniques exist for undertaking those exercises in ways that are comprehensible to the citizens of the locality as well as to the decision-makers, executive and elected, in the council.

If we are faced as a country before 2017, or maybe after it under the terms of European Union Act 2011, with this monumental choice whether to book a one-way ticket, not a return—in the words of the Prime Minister—an assessment of impact that is comprehensive, thorough and communicated in understandable language would be a basic, vital requirement.

To the list that exists in the proposed “Referendum condition” clause, which is commendable and touches on most of the issues that would be of significance to people, we could add some more words from the Prime Minister. He said that we would have to think about,

“the impact on our influence at the top table of international affairs … That matters for British jobs and British security”.

It is not a detached, academic consideration of whether we have lost an empire and still seek a role, or anything esoteric at all. He said, rightly, that it matters for British jobs and British security.

We could add that question to the list: can we realise the Prime Minister’s and the Chancellor’s ambition of remaining in the single market, whatever happens to our membership of the European Union? The Prime Minister said that that is the most important single reason for us belonging to the European Union. If that is the case, surely the issue must be examined with great rigour. What would be the impact, that we could assess, on our participation in the single market? The results of that assessment should of course be available to the British people for prolonged discussion and comprehension before they come to casting the fateful vote.

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Moved by

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard]

10: Clause 1, page 1, line 4, leave out subsection (2)

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard]

My Lords, the amendment would remove the specific 2017 date from the Bill; it would not, of course, remove the insistence in Clause 1(1) that there should be a referendum but would merely leave open the date.

At Second Reading, in my usual low-key, modest, respectable, Cross-Bencher way, I touched on the reasons why I, as a negotiator, thought it unwise to put our negotiators in the forthcoming renegotiation under time pressure by locking them into a 2017 requirement for the successful completion of a renegotiation, which it seems that we will not start until 2015. Reading Hansard and seeing what I said at Second Reading, I am reminded of Warren Hastings in Westminster Hall at his impeachment, standing amazed at his own moderation.

I am struck by the fact that we do not know what it is that we will be renegotiating. We do not know what we want. The noble Lord, Lord Owen, had a point at Second Reading when he suggested that we should start now trying to win friends and influence people on whatever it is we want to achieve. I rather agree, but we do not know what we want to achieve. We have seen three or four hints in recent weeks. We have been told that we may want to scrap free movement of persons, in Article 3 of the treaty, or to have the EU drop its Charter of Fundamental Rights, in Article 6 of the treaty, and resile from the European Convention on Human Rights.

We may want to roll back EU competence in labour and social law and change the single market rules to give Whitehall a veto on EU laws on financial services. Indeed, on that, we have been told that the message for the foreigners is, “Reform or we leave”. All that sounds quite big stuff, involving fairly fundamental issues. Putting it as mildly as I can, I warn the House that all that would take time. Perhaps I should touch very briefly on the timetable for treaty revision.

[Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton]

My Lords, will the noble Lord please explain to me—if he is able to—when he uses the term “we may”, which “we” is he talking about? Is he talking about “we” meaning the country, “we” meaning the Government or “we” meaning part of the Government?

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard]

I am sorry; I spoke loosely. I was talking about the Government of the day in the United Kingdom seeking treaty renegotiation.

There are four stages to treaty amendment, and the Conservative Party has argued that renegotiation will end in treaty amendment. It has defined success as treaty amendment. Stage one is that one has to find 14 other member state Governments who agree that one’s proposals for change make sense, or at least that they are worth considering in a convention. You have to have a simple majority.

The second stage would be a convention in which the national Parliaments, the European Parliament, the Commission—

[Lord Cormack]

I just want to say that many of us cannot hear the noble Lord. There must be something wrong with the loudspeakers.

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard]

I hate to deprive the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, of my wisdom, and he has been far too polite in the past.

The second stage of the process of amending the treaty is the calling of a convention. The last and only convention so far lasted for just over 18 months. The convention has to end up with consensus. The next stage is an intergovernmental conference in which one needs the unanimous agreement of every other member state to one’s propositions. Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed. The final stage would be ratification of the outcome. If it involved treaty amendment, the changed treaties would require new national ratification in every member state’s capital. I assume that before we have the referendum, we would want to know, and be able to tell the country, whether the renegotiation deal had stuck and had been accepted in other member states. A very awkward and complex situation would arise if you had a referendum on the assumption that the renegotiation deal would be ratified everywhere, and that turned out not to be the case.

We do not begin those four stages until after an election in 2015. It does not add up. The first stage, the bilateral diplomacy, we do not appear to be doing. We do not appear to be collecting the 14 friends to get past the first hurdle. As to the second stage, the convention, I do not know how long it would take. It might take much less than the 18 months taken last time, but it is a finite hurdle to get over and it will take time. As to the third stage, the intergovernmental conference, Maastricht took a year. This one might take less but, on the other hand, it sounds as if the propositions that the Conservative Party envisages bringing forward are rather fundamental. Finally, as to ratification in 2017, one would be asking the French and the Germans in their election years to agree with the British on, say, restraining free movement of persons, taking human rights out of the treaty, exempting the British from social law or giving them a veto on financial law. You would be seeking agreement on that in the year in which a French Socialist President was seeking re-election, and a German Government who strongly believe in human rights would be facing the polls.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

The noble Lord has not mentioned the danger that ratification would not have taken place. If the British had a referendum and wished to remain in the EU, but ratification did not take place after that decision was made, that would put us in a constitutional position of great severity.

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[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard]

I entirely agree with the noble Lord. The point that I am trying to make is: because the renegotiation is envisaged to take place before the referendum, the date set for the referendum in 2017 cannot be right. It does not work.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

I am struggling with this argument because we are going to have a referendum in September on whether Scotland should remain part of the United Kingdom. The proposition then is that the referendum should be held before the negotiation. I did not think that the noble Lord had any difficulty with the idea of that referendum.

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard]

It depends on where you are starting from. It is not an easy position, but if the position of the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, is that he wants to get us out anyway and we should not bother with renegotiation, that is fine. Why not? However, the Conservative Party’s position, as clearly explained in the Prime Minister’s Bloomberg speech—in which, by the way, he was speaking explicitly as leader of the Conservative Party, not as Prime Minister—was that he hoped to renegotiate a different relationship with Europe, put it to a referendum and recommend that we stay in the European Union. I am just saying that that timetable does not work. It does not add up.

At Second Reading, a lot of noble Lords commented on the date. A lot of noble Lords made the point—better than I am making it—of the unwisdom of locking the negotiators’ feet in concrete and putting them under time pressure. That is not a wise idea. The noble Baroness, Lady Falkner of Margravine, said the date was arbitrarily picked out of the air. We have not been told in this debate why it has to be 2017, other than that was the date in the Bloomberg speech.

[Lord Spicer (Con)]

The noble Lord makes some very interesting points but are they not rather academic in view of the votes that have now taken place and that the House to some extent has already passed wrecking amendments?

[Lord Spicer]

That is the likelihood. This House has been so careful of the interests of the British public against the shenanigans of the other place that it is going to deny them any voice at all.

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard]

Nothing in this amendment in any way affects the first line of this Bill that says that there shall be a referendum. This amendment concerns only whether it is wise to set in the Bill the end date by which time the referendum must have been held. That is my sole point. I have heard no rationale for the 2017 date. I look forward to the explanation of his rationale from the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs. It will not be sufficient for me to hear that the Prime Minister said in the Bloomberg speech that it would be by the end of 2017. He said the first half of the Parliament. That would not be a sufficient rationale for me because it was not put in advance through the political process and raised in Parliament and is not, as I understand it, government policy. It is the policy of the Conservative Party, just as the Bloomberg speech was the policy of the Conservative Party. If we have to have a date in the Bill and it has to be the end of 2017, please tell us why. I can think of only one reason and I am not of a suspicious mind. If you wanted a referendum to produce the result that the UK leaves the European Union, you could not pick a better time. You are saying that the Government must bring their renegotiation to a head in what must be, because of the French and German elections, absolutely the worst year to do it. You are saying that they have to try to cut corners and accelerate the timetable, which the European Union will want to follow. You are maximising the chances that they lose friends, fail to influence people and do not get the renegotiation objectives they have in mind—

[Lord Anderson of Swansea]

Clearly the date chosen—before 2017—appears to be the worst possible time, as the noble Lord properly points out. It is also during the UK presidency and it will prove extraordinarily difficult for the UK objectively to be chairing the European Union as president and at the same time be pursuing objectives the purpose of which we do not yet know.

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard]

I agree. Again it is the cui bono question. Why would you want to set this timing unless your aim is to get us out? I look forward to hearing an alternative, more encouraging explanation of the rationale from the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, and until I do, I think that we should take this date out of the Bill.

I am very uneasy about the whole renegotiation process. I am very uneasy that we are raising public expectations in this country by saying week after week, issue after issue, “Yes, we will sort that out in the renegotiation”. Everybody agrees that the EU needs reform but reform is an amorphous, amoeba-like creature, and it seems to go off in different directions depending on whatever the Daily Mail says this week. We are always told, “Don’t worry, it’ll be dealt with in the renegotiation”.

I think that there are issues that can be renegotiated, and I am absolutely not, in principle, against renegotiation. However, one has to be clear with the country, preferably before the election, about precisely what kind of European Union one is trying to create and whether it is going to work—how many friends you have and how negotiable are your aims—and one needs to be honest about it.

If your Lordships want a renegotiation and they want it to succeed, Amendment 10 deserves their support, because a successful renegotiation is incompatible with a 2017 deadline.

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[Lord Dobbs]

I could dig out another quote, but that would take another five minutes, and I think that this debate has gone on long enough and I wish to conclude.

In conclusion, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, for the positive engagement that he has encouraged between us outside the Chamber on the issues; it has been very helpful to me. Of course, we disagree about this matter across the Floor of the House, and I think that it is now time for us to decide. With great respect, I ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard]

My Lords,

“Half a league, half a league,

Half a league onward,

All in the valley of Death

Rode the six hundred”.

—or 158, I think.

I have great respect for the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, and the Earl of Cardigan was not responsible for the loss of the Light Brigade, although he was the commander. Missing was the Earl of Lucan—he is in Davos, I think—and the Earl of Raglan, the commanders of the Army. It has been a very gallant charge and it was probably the case that halfway down the valley of death, the Earl of Cardigan turned to the chap on his left and said, “We have made a lot of very good progress today”.

It is very difficult to answer this debate, because I am supposed to deal with the objections to my amendment; I am still waiting. The most interesting suggestion, which I am rather inclined to follow, was in the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Higgins. Act I of the play was quite nasty, with a lot of talk about people misbehaving—hijacking was a word used from the Front Bench—and plotting. In my view, that was not worthy of the House. Act I is over. As the noble Lords, Lord Higgins, Lord Cormack and Lord Deben pointed out, we are now in Act II and our job is to try to turn the Bill, which a lot of us think is a rather bad Bill, into a good Bill. We need to amend and improve it.

I do not know why the date is here. I thought that I had argued, with a degree of support from around the House, that it does not make sense, because the renegotiation cannot be completed. The noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, says that we could change the date, but we would need a darn good reason. I thought that we had given two hours and 10 minutes of darn good reasons. However, I think that the noble Lord, Lord Higgins, is right: in Act II one ought to try to be a bit co-operative. There is a point knocking around here which I have not quite grasped. It is not the point of the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, about distrust, but the point of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, about an enforceable undertaking. Although I do not agree with that point, one needs to think about it because it seems a solid point.

The provision does not need the date of 2017; I am not even sure that it needs a date. Perhaps it should be something about “the term of the next Parliament”, and it may be that an amendment could emerge from the Earl of Raglan and be voiced by the Earl of Cardigan. The question that the noble Lord keeps asking us—if not then, when?—is a question that we are entitled to ask him.

[Lord Spicer]

The noble Lord talks about Act II. How long is he going to go on with these acts—until Act X? Will he give a date for that, and will that be somewhere in the middle of summer?

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard]

My amendment would remove any date. That seems clean and surgical and would leave the options open to the Government of the day. However, I accept that it does not meet the point of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern. It would still be a Bill to have a referendum, and Clause 1(1) would still say, “There shall be a referendum”. The noble and learned Lord believes that there ought to be some time factor in there and he may be right. I do not know, but I am inclined to act now, on the advice of the noble Lord, Lord Higgins, and withdraw my amendment at this stage, while asking the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, to consult with his friends and the commanding officers when they come back. If there is no satisfactory amendment proposed by the proposers of the Bill, I will revert to Amendment 10 on Report.

Amendment 10 withdrawn.

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[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, I am not seeking to interrupt for bad reasons the progress of the Bill or to prevent the next Peer speaking on the amendment. For the last hour or so, Members of the House have been asking what happens next. When my noble friend Lord Popat was challenged about rising times, he was unaware that amicable discussions were going ahead between myself and the Opposition Chief Whip with regard to today’s business.

The expectation of the Opposition Chief Whip and myself is that the House will rise after the conclusion of Amendment 48, which is shortly ahead of us now. I am saying this now so that those who wish to speak to the amendment after Amendment 48 but may not be involved in the rest of today’s business will have a better certainty about the planes and trains they need to catch.

There is an agreement that we should conclude today’s business at the end of Amendment 48 and I shall not seek to prolong the Committee stage beyond that. At that stage I shall seek to resume the House and shortly after that I shall adjourn the House. I will, in the normal way, as a courtesy to the House indicate formally—I am doing it informally now—that we will continue the Committee stage of this Bill next Friday, 31 January at 10 o’clock. My expectation is that the Committee stage will conclude on that day and, given the progress today, I believe that is a reasonable assumption.

I hope that that is helpful to all concerned who, in different ways, have been working hard on this Bill and for different reasons. I now invite those noble Lords who are taking part in the debate on Amendment 40 to continue to do so. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, for the helpful discussions we have had today.

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard]

I have added my name to probing Amendment 49, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Quin, has just spoken.

The credibility and authority of the result of a referendum is very important. I do not buy the argument that a referendum will lance the boil. The 1975 referendum singularly failed to lance the boil given the positions adopted by the Labour Party within a few years afterwards. Lancing the boil is not a good argument.

However, if you are seriously contemplating leaving the European Union, you should not do that unless you have a clear majority in favour of doing so. This is a very conservative argument which I put forward for the delectation of the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, and his colleagues. The status quo should be changed only if a majority of the country want the change. That is why I support the threshold amendment proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Quin.

However, I, too, do not wish to press the amendment now. I hope, following the suggestions of the noble Lord, Lord Higgins, today, that when we come back on Report, when we will be in Act 3 of the play, there will be a different spirit about, the question of thresholds will be approached in an apolitical way and people will be presenting constitutional arguments rather than party politics. On that basis, like the noble Baroness, Lady Quin, I shall be happy not to press Amendment 49 at the moment.

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[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard]

This debate is in danger of being hijacked by a filibustering gang of Montagnards opposite—the Robespierre and the Danton, the noble Lords, Lord Cormack and Lord Higgins. They are behaving disgracefully, leading us away down these alleyways. We are talking about how many angels dance on the head of a pin. Whatever the referendum is called, consultative or mandatory, it will be decisive. There is no doubt that if the country voted to leave the European Union, the Government of the day would have to start the Article 50 procedures laid down in the treaty for secession. There is absolutely no doubt about that.

The question is simply, as the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, says, should the Bill be honest and say that the people are being consulted? The noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, says that there is no need to do so because that is all it is: a consultative referendum. I have no idea who is right but if the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, is correct that it is a consultative referendum, then I agree with the noble Lords, Lord Hannay and Lord Foulkes, that it should say so. But it should also be clear—and we should be in no doubt—that once the people have been consulted and have spoken, that is it.

[Lord Dobbs]

My Lords, would it help us if I made this suggestion? I agree with the passion that the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, puts forward on this and with so many comments that have been made by my noble friends. If it is consultative, it is perhaps up to me to find a way to make sure that it is unambiguously consultative. If the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, will allow me to engage in some conversation with him at a little later date, I will see what I can do. Certainly, my heart is entirely in line with his on this issue and on that basis, I beg him to withdraw the amendment.