European Union (Referendum) Bill

Lord Kerr of Kinlochard Excerpts

Friday 31st January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)]

My Lords, I strongly support Amendment 50A from the noble Lord, Lord Turnbull. It is most unusual for the Foreign Office to be in agreement with the Cabinet Office and the Treasury, but in this case it is. The Diplomatic Service is a separate service and takes no instructions from the Civil Service, so these arguments are my own.

I do not support the menu of amendments offered by my fellow countryman, the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes of Cumnock—there is a big difference between them and the amendment offered by the noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, supported by the noble Lords, Lord Grenfell, Lord Shipley and Lord Anderson. The assessments called for by the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, are descriptive. They are describing potential scenarios. The assessment called for by the noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, would be normative because it would be authoritative and be describing the situation we would be in if we went out through the door. If we left the tent, like Captain Oates, we might be out for some considerable time. We might find it cold out there. I think the country would wish to be told. I accept that the process of establishing an authoritative statement of what life would be like outside might take time—Article 50 of the treaty of Lisbon talks about seceding from the European Union being a two-year process—but this would be before that. This would be before the referendum. This would be the assessment that the country would need so it could weigh up the case for and against staying in or going out.

I believe it would be important not just to set out what the Government hoped, felt and wanted but what they believed was negotiable. There would have to be some process of discussion with other countries and principally with our partners in the European Union, which we would be considering leaving. That process would take time. This point is very relevant to the amendment on questions of timing which—encouraged by the noble Lord, Lord Cormack—I withdrew last week. We will be coming back to that on Report.

[Lord Lamont of Lerwick (Con)]

My Lords, I totally agree with the noble Lord that if there were to be a referendum the British public would be entitled to information about the consequences and the mechanism. However, that is completely different; the mechanism is a subsequent step to the referendum. All this Bill does is to establish that there will be a referendum. The point the noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, made when he drew the analogy with the Scottish debate yesterday seems to me not to be correct. We had a Bill about the referendum. The criticism about the lack of information came afterwards. The mechanism was quite separate. Although all the points the noble Lord is making might be correct, they are not for this stage. This stage is just about the referendum.

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard]

Precisely the same argument could be applied to the second of the amendments we made last week. The House did not buy the argument last week and the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, was good enough to say today that, in his view, both the amendments laid last week were improvements to the Bill and did not impair it. If we are passing a Bill on this referendum it is very important that we do not pass a defective Bill that omits important elements. Nobody in this House has proposed an amendment to Clause 1(1), which says that there shall be a referendum. In my view, this House is trying to do its job and get right the conditions and rules for that referendum, which is a point that we will need to come back to and which has been raised by several noble Lords this morning. We will have to come back to how the referendum will be conducted and—the point I am concerned about, for reasons well explained in the first leader in this morning’s Financial Times—the timing of the referendum.

I believe that the crucial thing about the assessment called for by the noble Lord, Lord Turnbull—who is completely right—is that it would have to be authoritative. It would be wholly irresponsible to produce for the country a prospectus based on conjecture. If the country chose to leave the tent and found outside a landscape different from the one that it had expected and a climate much colder, the Government who did that would never be forgiven.

I hope all shades of opinion in the House will understand that the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, is precisely in the category that the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, was talking about—amendments that genuinely improve the Bill. In my view—on the Cross Bench one speaks only for oneself—this would be a genuine improvement and I urge the House to support it.

[Lord Low of Dalston (CB)]

My Lords, can I just ask the noble Lord for a point of clarification before he concludes? He said that he was in favour of the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, and against the set of amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, on thresholds for participation and assent. Are these two mutually exclusive? He can vote for both of them.

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard]

I apologise. I was unclear. I was not commenting on the amendments that have been discussed—those put forward in the first group by, among others, the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes of Cumnock. I was commenting on amendments in the current group, linked alongside the one proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, which are all to do with assessments to be made available before the referendum takes place.

[Lord Low of Dalston]

I am grateful to the noble Lord. That is very helpful. Thank you very much.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine]

My Lords, one of the other things that we want to seek in a referendum would be transparency, as the Electoral Commission recommends. Of course, in general elections, the public know precisely how people have voted in different parts of the country because of the constituency system. So you can tell how many people are returned from which party from the respective countries of the United Kingdom, and it is very clear. In that sense, I am rather tempted by the amendment, which would allow that level of transparency to come in, not as finely defined as that but broadly, for us to be able to tell where opinions lie in one direction or the other. It would help us to reflect on what to do next and how we might best reflect the opinions of those constituent parts of the United Kingdom, depending on the outcome of the referendum, along the lines of the amendment that we have just agreed.

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard]

My Lords, before the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, replies to the debate, I should like to speak briefly on the Gibraltar point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Anderson. I should also like to raise a bigger point for the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, to think about.

On Gibraltar, I point out first that no one has an amendment tabled to Clause 4; nobody in this House objects in principle to the idea of Gibraltar voting in the referendum. Although it was not in the original Bill and was added in the House of Commons, nobody here is objecting to it, and I certainly do not do so. It is a little anomalous that a British overseas territory should vote, of course, but that the Gibraltarians should be able to vote is not nearly as anomalous as the expatriates across the frontier in Spain being unable to vote. Gibraltar is a country member of the European Union; large numbers of European Union rules do not apply there—it does not have VAT, and it is not in the customs union, the common commercial policy, the CAP or the CFP. On the other hand, expatriates would see a very serious change to what they might legitimately have expected, if the referendum produced a no—but we will come to that under a later amendment, and I shall not pursue it now.

The very small point that I would like to make is on the Channel Islands, which are much more closely integrated into the European Union than is Gibraltar. They apply the common agricultural policy, and their main export is to France—agricultural goods and products derived from them. I do not know why the drafters of the Bill included Gibraltar and not the Channel Islands. That is a legitimate question to ask the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, to think about and come back to. I am speaking in support of what was, I think, a probing amendment about Gibraltar and asking that the probe should go a little wider and include the anomaly of the Channel Islands.

I come to my bigger point about the nature of probing amendments. We worked quite hard for quite a long time a week ago. A number of noble Lords withdrew amendments, for which there was quite a lot of support around the House, on the understanding that there would be reflection. I have heard nothing from the sponsors of the Bill on the major amendment I withdrew. I have heard from one distinguished Member of this House—he is now in his place—but I am not going to embarrass him by saying who he is or what he said. Probing amendments are well worth it if they are designed to see whether the sponsors will accept them or will come back with a different version of them. However, on none of the amendments that were withdrawn in our eight-hour debate last week with a view to coming back on Report, have the sponsors subsequently been in touch with the proposers. What is the point of a probing amendment? It seems to me the only way one can get the defects in this Bill corrected is in the Division Lobbies. The House has voted three times, and three times by substantial majorities has amended the Bill.

It has been suggested more than once that, once one amendment was carried and therefore the argument that the Bill must stay intact had collapsed, there was no cost to the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, in buying an amendment. Indeed, there might be considerable advantage. I had hoped that today’s debate would take place in a less confrontational way than last week’s one started and that we would be more consensual and try to find areas of agreement. However, on the previous amendment on which we have just voted, the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, must have known from the debate that the Division Lobbies would not give the result he wanted. Why did he not feel that he could accept the amendment? Why do we have to force it on him? If anything is wasting time, it is this.

We had an hour and a half’s debate and then a Division on something that plainly was correct and was going to be written into the Bill one way or another. The only argument that the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, produced against it was that it was unnecessary. He did not say it would be damaging. I do not think he was right. The House did not think he was right and clearly thought the amendment was necessary. If the noble Lord thinks that it is unnecessary but does not do any harm why does he not buy it? What does the House expect to happen when it puts forward probing amendments and takes them away again? It expects something to occur, perhaps in the gap between Committee and Report. The gap is there for approaches. I had hoped that there would be an approach to me about Amendment 10 by now and I am very sorry that has not happened. It is pity to force us into the Division Lobbies. It wastes a lot of time. It would be much better, and we would make progress with this Bill, if the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, was prepared to accept amendments.

I am not saying that the Gibraltar issue, let alone the Channel Islands issue that I have raised, is one that deserves an immediate answer or anything like that. Mine was a genuine probing amendment. I do not know why the Channel Islands are not in and Gibraltar is. The biggest question is that I do not know how we make progress with this Bill if no amendments can be accepted other than through the Division Lobbies.

[Lord Woolmer of Leeds (Lab)]

Following up on that contribution to the debate, the Isle of Man, which is a Crown dependency, is in the same situation. Its relationship with the EU is determined by Protocol 3 of the 1972 accession Act. The United Kingdom has traditionally been responsible for the foreign relationships and foreign affairs of the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. It would be helpful to know—not necessarily today, but on another occasion—to what extent the United Kingdom Government are committed to consultation with the Crown dependencies, such as the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man, on the effect of a possible withdrawal of the UK from the EU, and doing so in advance of any referendum, to take their views and to enable them to be made clear. If the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, is able to comment today, which is possibly unlikely, that would be helpful. If not, perhaps we could return to it on a future occasion.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine]

My Lords, I, too, support this amendment. The alternative vote referendum, the legislation for which was passed during this Parliament, had the franchise as proposed by my noble friend Lord Shipley that we ought to include local authority areas. The forthcoming Scottish referendum has exactly the same provisions.

I want to illuminate my request that European Union citizens be included in this vital matter affecting them from a personal perspective. I therefore declare an interest. I am married to a German citizen. There are many reasons why large numbers of EU citizens live in our country, which has the largest number of expatriate EU citizens of all the EU countries. However, one fact is indisputable, as other noble Lords have mentioned: that they pay taxes in this country. We incurred the wrath of the Polish Foreign Minister, Mr Sikorski, only five or six weeks ago when, in the hostile debate against eastern European workers on the whole, he reminded our country that those people live here and that they contribute, work and pay taxes here. I do not think that we won a friend in Poland by having gone out of our way intentionally to annoy member countries whose citizens have made such a positive contribution. No one who has had to have construction work done, or who needed babysitting or anything else, in the south-east in the past 15 years can doubt that.

Noble Lords on the Conservative Benches might wonder why, if some of these citizens make such a positive contribution—in the case of the one I know, it has been a contribution of 20 years—they do not become nationals of this country. In that case, they would be entitled to vote. I want to address that specifically. There are certain countries which have, as Germany had in place, a statute against the holding of dual nationality. That can be one reason why people do not take the nationality of the country in which they have worked and lived. It does not diminish for a second their loyalty here. If you look at their voting records, in terms of their entitlements, they take up their entitlements when they can.

There is another possible reason, and in my case this is a very personal one. I travel to lots of countries where a white person or—I am afraid to say, after the Iraq and Afghanistan wars—a person associated with the foreign policy of our country may not necessarily consider themselves safe. My origins lie in Pakistan. My daughter was young and we went back to Pakistan frequently to see my aged parents. I requested my husband not to adopt British nationality in the light of the Daniel Pearl murder because I could see, palpably around me in Pakistan, that no white person ventured into the country. You could see that even in the queue for immigration. There was a period when business investment and everything collapsed because the Pakistani state was incapable of guaranteeing people’s safety. There were particular attitudes in these countries towards the West in general and the United Kingdom specifically.

On that basis, there may be numerous other reasons why all sorts of people come and live in this country but decide not to take nationality. I know of Americans who have lived here. They tend not to take British nationality for taxation reasons. That does not mean that they should be denied a franchise on a matter of such vital interest not only to them but to us as British nationals.

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard]

My Lords, my name is on the amendment so ably moved by the noble Lord, Lord Shipley. I have very little to add to the arguments that he advanced. I pay tribute to the arguments advanced just now by the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner.

I want to pick up something that the noble Lord, Lord Bowness, said. The noble Lord is a very nice man. His suggestion about the motive for not following the precedent of the Scottish referendum and for past precedents being broken with was that this was just the quickest and simplest thing and that there was no policy intention. I am not a very nice man. I am not as nice as the noble Lord. I ask the “Cui bono?” question. Why should the sponsors of the Bill want to exclude the citizens of the European Union who have come here under the conditions set out in the treaty and who are living here, paying their taxes here, working here and possibly being officers on local councils here? Why should we want to deny them the vote? The only reason I can think of is that the sponsors of the Bill are not just seeking a referendum. In this case, as on the question and the timing, they are looking for a referendum that is likely to produce the answer, “Let’s get out”. I strongly support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Shipley.

[Lord Grenfell]

My Lords, I strongly support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Shipley. I declare what may be a tangential interest: I am entitled to vote in local elections in France.

I feel very strongly that people who are entitled to vote in local elections here as EU citizens should not be denied that right. My fear is that if we were to deny them this right, we would be reinforcing the image of a country that was on its way out of the EU. You could look at it the other way around, too: if we were to allow this amendment to go through, which I hope we will, then to my great pleasure we might be reinforcing the image of a country that was engaging properly with its European partners.

I think particularly of my French friends, who are living here in Britain. There are thousands of them living here—not all of them my friends—and maybe I will be destroying my own case here by saying: do not count on all of them to vote in an “in or out” referendum for Britain to stay in. Some of them may think that Britain is too much trouble to keep in the European Union. I venture to add that I think the vast majority, if given the vote, would want Britain to stay in, not just in their own personal interest but in the interests of Britain, France and the European Union.