European Union Bill

Lord Stoddart of Swindon Excerpts

Wednesday 8th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dykes]

I rise briefly to speak enthusiastically in support of this amendment and to thank the noble Lord, Lord Williamson, for his remarks—I agree with them all. I was, like others may be, a little startled when the noble Lord, Lord Tomlinson, began to say that he rather agreed with the first part of the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Waddington. But I understand what he was getting at. The beauty of the amendment is that it can appeal to a whole range of Members of this House in deciding, irrespective of their own particular views on the virtue of referendums, or referendumitis, or the danger of referendums, or whatever, that this would be a good way of making more respectable a given referendum result with a turnout requirement—following the wisdom of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, in a totally different context—and would make sure that we were not trivialising the exercise in a way that would disconcert the public in a big way. The beauty then is that, if the threshold is not reached, the power goes back to Parliament and the Government as the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, would always wish.

On 5 April, in the early stages of the Committee of the whole House, the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Stamford, in referring to Schedule 1, said:

“if we present to the electorate the sort of issues in Schedule 1 and ask them … to turn out at the polls”—

in referendums—

“we are being not only completely unrealistic but deeply insulting to them”.—[Official Report, 5/4/11; col. 1694.]

I have left out a few of the smaller words, but essentially that is what he said.

The electorate would say that that is what they elect parliamentarians to decide. We could easily have participation rates of less than 20 per cent, and we would return, therefore, to the Vernon Bogdanor example. I believe that this matter is important for parliamentarians in both Houses, but particularly here, as this House has an opportunity to improve the Bill in a way that government Ministers have already started to do with their generous amendment. We must work hard to restore public faith in the public’s ownership of first-rate parliamentary standards of tradition, work and devotion to the public good. My personal view is that I am very fearful of referendumitis and this Bill would deliver a lot of it in the future if the situation were allowed to get out of hand.

Most sensible citizens are highly intelligent and quite rightly regard subjects other than mere politics as far more important and crucial. I often do. I would cite family and children, the local community, jobs and job prospects, football and—even better—rugby, holidays, the kids’ results at school and music. Very many of those things are more important than politics. The public want to enhance political quality by leaving the political decisions to their elected representatives, even if some of them in the other place are sometimes rather nerdy people, like Bill Cash or John Redwood. We have to remember the warning words of my noble friend Lady Williams when she spoke of the disastrous example of California, which had become a bankrupt state as a result of excessive referendumitis and foolish populism. This amendment provides a pragmatic way of making the results of referendum—if there has to be one—more respectable. I hope that this House will support it.

[Lord Stoddart of Swindon]

My Lords, I wish that the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, would not describe people who oppose his points of view in such terms as “nerds”. It does not enhance debate and it is quite unnecessary to lampoon one’s opponents.

The amendment has a certain superficial attraction, but we need to be extremely careful what we do. If you say that a decision on an item on which a referendum is to be held can take effect only if 40 per cent of the electorate vote, you could say that about almost every election we have. People are elected to the House of Commons—certainly in by-elections—on a turnout of less than 40 per cent of those entitled to vote. Why on earth should that be legitimate and a referendum on a matter which is to be transferred to European governance not be accepted? We have to be very careful not to create a precedent here which might be used in other circumstances that may be inconvenient to Parliament and certainly to local authorities, where the turnout is very often far below the 40 per cent of those entitled to vote.

The noble Lord, Lord Tomlinson, talked about the various alternatives that might be put on the ballot paper. If you pass this amendment, there is another alternative which is that you can campaign for people not to vote. That is good democracy, is it not? Or is it? If you encourage people not to vote to get the decision you want, that is extremely bad democracy. I do not want to delay the House any further, but I believe that before we vote we should be very careful about what we are doing.

[Lord Lamont of Lerwick]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Williamson, as always, made a very careful and thoughtful speech which places me in a slightly awkward position. I find it surprising that there is so much enthusiasm for this amendment from those who accuse the Government of obstructing the process towards greater European integration. They have said that the Government have been putting locks on moves towards further European integration. Here they are putting a padlock on the lock; they are putting another obstacle in the way of European integration. Let us not forget that one will get a referendum only when the Government are proposing to acquiesce in a step towards European integration. Therefore, I find it a little strange that those who are enthusiastic about more integration and think that the Government are being obstructionist about this want to put up another obstacle.

I do not accept the argument of the noble Lord, Lord Williamson, that there is a danger that we will have lots of referendums on trivial subjects such as the number of advocates-general or the voting system for having advocates-general. There are several reasons, which we went through in Committee, why we will not get a whole series of trivial referendums. First, these sorts of changes tend to come along in packages after major treaty revisions and we have been assured there will not be major treaty revisions. It seems unlikely that any one country is going to invest a huge amount of political capital pressing for a change in the voting system for choosing advocates-general. If some power has not been given to Brussels even after the Lisbon treaty and the Maastricht treaty—the series of constitutional treaties we have had—if powers are left to individual countries, there is a very good reason for that. Obviously in previous negotiations countries have not wanted to cede those powers. The idea that we are going to get a lot of referendums on trivial matters is unrealistic and is a chimera. If that was the basis of the noble Lord’s argument I would not accept it. There are many subjects that are by no means trivial, such as our borders and our criminal justice system, where it would be wholly appropriate to have a referendum. That is why I am broadly a supporter of the Bill.

I said at the beginning that the noble Lord, Lord Williamson, places me in a slightly awkward position because I was, as some of my noble friends will remember, a very strong supporter of the 40 per cent threshold for the referendum on AV. Indeed, I voted twice against my party on it. I do not like to make personal comments but I got to my feet largely because of my noble friend Lord Dykes, who I have known for many years. On the AV question, my noble friend was a very firm opponent of the 40 per cent threshold to which he has put his name on this occasion. As I am placed in an awkward position and he is also exposed in an awkward position, I am prepared to do him a deal. If he will not support this amendment, I will vote for it.

--- Later in debate ---

The noble Lord, Lord Kerr, also described this as a constitutional innovation. I have tried to describe why I believe that is the right description. It is a constitutional innovation of a very profound and difficult kind, and one born of the fear of taking responsibility for taking difficult decisions ourselves as parliamentarians. Of course there are the issues that should be put before the people of the Untied Kingdom; I hope that I have illustrated what those might be. Alongside this are those instances where it is quite right that Parliament and the Government of the day should say no. In light of this Bill, this amendment stands as the optimum extent to which it is possible to defend the historic role of Parliament and to ensure that the responsibility of Parliament is not given away in needless circumstances.

[Lord Stoddart of Swindon]

My Lords, before the Minister gets up, I have a point of order.

[Noble Lords]

No.

[Lord Stoddart of Swindon]

I will make the point of order whether there are interruptions from other parts of the House or not. The noble Lord, Lord Triesman, said that we had had enough of this debate and that, when he got up, no other noble Lord would be able to speak. This is not in accordance with the Companion to the Standing Orders and Guide to the Proceedings of the House of Lords. If noble Lords turn to paragraph 8.139, on page 152, they will see that, as long as the House accepts that they should do so, noble Lords may speak until the Minister gets up. After this, there shall be no speeches. However, before the Minister or spokesman gets to his or her feet, with the permission of the House, any Member of the House may speak

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

My Lords, if the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, is correct, as I have got up, this debate now comes to a close.

As always, it has been a fascinating debate with many profound remarks. It has predominantly been a debate about referenda, but I do not agree with the noble Lord, Lord Williamson, that the debate has been entirely separate from the Bill. Speaking as one of the, I suspect, rather few ex-Ministers who have taken a referendum Act through the other place in the distant past—the Northern Ireland referendum Bill—I suppose that, in the eyes of my noble friends Lord Deben and my noble and learned friend Lord Howe, I am damned before I start.

Nevertheless, let me set out one or two of the arguments that have perhaps not been exposed as clearly as they should. We know that the purpose of these amendments is to include a minimum turnout threshold for any referendums arising as a result of the Bill. If the threshold is not met, regardless of the result, hey presto, the referendum would become advisory and not mandatory. This proposition has a whole string of disadvantages, which are not all obvious but become clear if you think about them. First, as many of your noble Lords have pointed out, instead of it being mandatory on the Government, it leaves the British people in real doubt about what the effect of their vote will be. The noble Lord, Lord Triesman, is incidentally entirely wrong that it will be mandatory on Parliaments; it will be mandatory on Governments, though it is true that Governments often, but not always, control Parliaments. However, this goes by the board if we pass the amendment. It will be the end of the British people’s mandatory certainty and they will be back where they started, passing the ball back to Parliament and the party and Government controlling Parliament. This is where the record has, frankly, not been brilliant or reassuring. This is one of the reasons why we are facing these problems.

We have the glorious assertions of excellent and eloquent spokesmen like the noble Lords, Lord Tomlinson and Lord Triesman, that the only need is for the Government to say no. However, they have not said no. They have said yes, when many people have felt that this yes was the wrong and inappropriate proposition. The fear is that, now that we have said yes to Lisbon, we have said yes about handing many important powers to the European Union. We work with the European Union and believe that they should have powers. However, will it be a no or yes in future? The doubt remains. The doubt must be removed. The reassurance is not there. For the vast majority of the people, the call is for the reassurance to be there. Though the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, will not agree with me, I suspect that the vast majority in this country want us to be good Europeans and to be effective in Europe and effective in allowing Europe to use—and not have us unravel—its vast range of existing competences. They are, however, worried as to whether it will be a yes or a no in future. The noble Lords do not seem to have grasped this central point. It is simply not right to lead people in doubt about what their role will be. It leaves them with a doubt—a dangerous doubt—about whether they will be listened to, about the lack of clarity and about whether their views will count.

The noble Lord, Lord Kerr, brought us back to Edmund Burke. I love Burke. He is one of my favourites. However, he is not particularly my favourite when he warned that democracy only works if, as he put it, there is a policeman within each one of us. It is slightly different from the proposition about parliamentary democracy. We all know perfectly well that Burke was not operating in today’s situation. He perhaps did not foresee the iron discipline of party politics, where some parties get a complete grip on Parliament. Has the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, recently read—or ever read—Lord Hailsham on elected dictatorship? In it he would find a heavy antidote to the glorious idealism of the Burkean age, in which the noble Lord, Lord Deben, and Mr Burke could speak out to their conscience freely unaware of any party restraints. I have spent 31 years in the other place and I am afraid that every day I was aware of party restraints.

I cannot see that this 40 per cent threshold would reconnect the British people with the decisions being taken in their name at the EU level; it certainly would not do so. These devices do not serve to solve the problem, as astutely identified by a great many commentators day after day on the radio or in the newspapers. I see that my brief refers to the BBC’s Europe editor, who said the other day that,

“Across Europe voters feel insecure, suspicious of an elite with its own vision of an ever closer union but which doesn't necessarily address their hopes or fears”.

I would hope that this wise House of Lords, where we wear our party allegiances somewhat more lightly, would support efforts to resolve this concern and to see the European Union on a more solid basis than, frankly, it is today, not only for lack of popular support but because it is facing very serious policy issues as well. For those of us who want to build a better relationship between the British people and the EU and, indeed, people generally and the EU right across the 27 countries—soon to be 28 or more—I would have thought that this is the way to go.

By the same token, the amendment before us undermines that whole aim of the Bill. That is the first point which must be taken into account and cannot be dismissed, unless those who do so think that popular support and consensus are irrelevant, do not arise and that parliamentary wisdom is so entrenched and admired that anything decreed by Governments in Parliament will be immediately accepted—it will not. Secondly, the point has rightly been made that thresholds of this type encourage game playing during a referendum campaign rather than a proper presentation of the arguments to achieve a desired result. For example, if supporters of the yes campaign know that Parliament supports the treaty change in question, they have a huge incentive to keep the vote down below 40 per cent rather than going out and making the case for change.

Thirdly, the Government believe that we should encourage public participation rather than providing reasons for keeping that down. We could wish that the internet age had never occurred and that the days of massive and wide public consultation had not developed, but they have. As my noble friend Lady Nicholson rightly pointed out, are we saying that local elections are not legitimate? We can wave a hand and say that they are different but that is just an assertion. I do not think that they are all that different. Are we saying that the European parliamentary elections are not legitimate? What does it do to the trust in the body politic if a majority have voted no in the referendum but Parliament decided, because it has the power to do so, to go ahead anyway? That would be extremely damaging.

Fourthly, the Lords Constitution Committee, to which some of my noble friends referred, in its wisdom—it is a very wise committee—shares opposition to thresholds. Its report on referendums in the UK concluded that,

“there should be a general presumption against the use of voter turnout thresholds and supermajorities”.

Thresholds are bound to distance voters from the issues on which the British people want to have their say. Incentives to campaign to abstain would be vastly increased.

There is a further question. During our first days in Committee on the Bill, the wise noble Lord, Lord Kerr, said that during the debates on the EEC Referendum Act 1975, the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher—then Margaret Thatcher—had objected to the possibility of the referendum being mandatory. She also said:

“The Government might regard themselves as bound, but the result could not fetter the decision of Parliament”.—[Official Report, Commons, 11/3/1975; col. 315.]

That, of course, is exactly our point. That is why I fear that the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, is wrong. These referenda, or the referendum that might occur—I think that it will occur only once every few years, but I will come to that in a moment—are mandatory on government. That is the whole point of the Bill. However, they are not mandatory on Parliament. They cannot be. Parliament’s view of the treaty will be taken during the passage of legislation for the referendum. If Parliament did not support the treaty, it would not pass the legislation, so Parliament has its say and remains supreme in every sense.