European Union (Referendum) Bill

Debate between Lord Liddle and Lord Triesman

Friday 31st January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Triesman]

I promise that I shall be even closer to the noble Lord later.

[Lord Liddle]

My Lords, this debate has raised another set of issues that need to be properly and thoroughly addressed before we put arrangements in place for any kind of referendum on our future in the European Union. On this side of the House, Members would be very sympathetic to the principle that my noble friend Lord Kinnock set out that we should have the broadest possible vote on this fundamental issue. I know the sort of arguments that some people might make against this. One is that that it would set a precedent for voting in general elections and local elections, but I do not think that it would. An EU referendum is fundamentally different; it is certainly not a vote for a councillor, an MP or a Government. It is a vote not for eternity, perhaps, but for generations ahead. The Prime Minister’s phrase about “no return ticket” comes to mind. It is a different type of vote from any other that we are likely to have in this country in the near future, and therefore needs to be considered differently.

There is a second, more low-level political point. Even now, with the debate that we have had, I am sure that we run the risk of seeing some headline in the Daily Mail that says, “Peers demand the vote for foreigners in British EU referendum”. I can well imagine that being the headline—and I see that the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, thoroughly agrees with that proposition and thinks that such a headline would be right.

The question of EU citizens living in this country and of British citizens living in the EU has to be treated in the same breath. It is basically an issue about the people who have shaped their lives around the fact that we are members of the European Union. This referendum proposes to put at serious risk the rights to live, work, study, retire, marry, partner and do whatever else you want, which are enormous enhancers of human freedom. Let the UKIP people say how they would deal with these rights. As a simple matter of the rights of these citizens—both EU citizens here and UK citizens in the rest of the EU—this matter deserves the greatest consideration.