European Union (Referendum) Bill

Debate between Lord Taverne and Lord Hannay of Chiswick

Friday 24th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Taverne (LD)]

My Lords, I support the amendment for slightly different reasons. If there is to be a meaningful decision, the choice must be clear. Unfortunately, I think it is extremely likely that if the 2017 date survives in this Bill the choice will be anything but clear because, for reasons that I shall advance later when we come to Amendment 10, it is extremely unlikely that the negotiations that Mr Cameron wishes to enter on, which he has not entered on so far, will be concluded by 2017. There are many reasons why fixing a date is the last way of getting effective negotiations.

What could be the result? We do not know. We will not know in 2017 what kind of choice we are facing. What sort of Europe will we be invited to stay in or to leave? What sort of eurozone will there be? Personally, I believe the eurozone will survive but this is by no means certain. However, suppose it does survive, how big will the eurozone be? How tightly knit will it be? What will be the relations between that eurozone and the single market? There may be several countries which do not wish to support the British expansion of the single market.

There may also be several countries in the eurozone which may not wish to come to an agreement that will be favourable to the City. Certain forces in Germany would like Frankfurt to be the financial centre of the eurozone while others in France will want Paris to be it. All sorts of problems will exist and we will need some sort of knowledge about the assessment. There is a great danger that the City would be sidelined and that is something to which the impact assessment would have to draw attention.

What would happen if, as seems possible but not certain, the banking union will then be complete? What will be the relations between the banking union and British banks? I certainly get the impression that there is a growing movement among bankers that they would rather like to join the banking union. They are not as afraid of the new regulations because our regulations are tighter than theirs and they fear being excluded from these vital decisions.

I think that we will face a very difficult decision if we have a referendum in 2017. Negotiations should take place first and then there should be a referendum, rather than facing a decision at a time when it is very unlikely that negotiations will be complete. The whole question of whether to stay in or leave will need a very careful impact assessment, certainly if the date of 2017 is preserved.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

My Lords, I add my support for the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Roper. My name is added to the amendment and I want to explain briefly why I think that it makes very good sense, both for those who are extremely keen to see this legislation on the statute book and for those who are less keen to do so. I think that both should be united.

I doubt whether anyone in this House would assert that the information provided in the press and on television and so on about the European Union is very satisfactory. It is highly partisan in many cases and I fear that in the context of a referendum, if and when one takes place, that will continue to be the case. I may deplore that but, as an absolutely fundamental believer in a free press, I am certainly not going to go around saying that something should be done to stop that.

This amendment seeks to ensure that there is available to the voters objective information about the consequences of a no vote in a referendum. The consequences of a yes vote are less problematic because our membership would be entrenched further and we would, I hope, move on. I support the Prime Minister’s wish to see a reformed European Union and I hope that we would carry on in a reformed European Union. However, I suggest that the electorate—our fellow citizens—should be given a lot of basic facts about the consequences of a no vote.

The reports that we are suggesting should, in my view, under no circumstances be government policy; they should be produced by an objective body or bodies capable of assessing these things. No attempt is made in the amendments to suggest which they should be—that would be far too prescriptive—but a body such as the OBR could produce some of the information. I do not know; it would be for the Government to organise that in the context of a referendum but not to produce it themselves. There is a case for the kind of information on the four or five issues that we have suggested should be set out in this Bill, and there should be an obligation on the Government of the day, if and when a referendum is called, to organise that and to make sure that it is available to the electorate.

We have now crossed a watershed—perhaps not as determinant as the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, told us a few minutes ago it would be; nevertheless, it is a watershed—and I hope very much that the noble Lord will see that, as the Bill is being improved by this House, this is an amendment that he can accept. It does not cross any watersheds and it does not seek to do anything that those on his side of the House who have spoken very strongly in favour of a referendum should be in any dispute over. They surely want this objective information to be available to the electorate, and this is the best way to ensure that it is, although of course I am not suggesting that at this stage we should write out what that information would be.

European Union Bill

Debate between Lord Taverne and Lord Hannay of Chiswick

Wednesday 8th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Taverne]

My Lords, I want to make three short points. First, I refer to the argument of the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, who always argues his case with great force and effectiveness. However, on this occasion, it seemed rather strange. He said that if there is a low vote, it simply proves the lack of enthusiasm for the European Community, and the fact that people will not vote is equivalent to a no vote. The circumstances, as has just been pointed out, will be whether the Government support a change in the law. Suppose the next Government are a Conservative Government. They are not likely to make a major transfer of powers to Brussels. On some of these minor matters in Schedule 1, they might see the advantage in not having a veto and make that part of their case. If there is a very low vote, it is a toss-up as to which way it will go, but a 10 per cent vote in favour of a transfer of power and 9 per cent against is a quite a likely result. In effect, the argument put by the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, is that it makes a transfer of power more likely.

The noble Lord, Lord Lamont, says that it is not likely that there would be an individual vote on some of the minor matters set out in Schedule 1 because they would be packaged, which is also what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe, has told us on a number of occasions. But a package is particularly unsuitable to the referendum process. Let us suppose that some people in the country are passionately concerned about joining the European public prosecutor’s office, while others are passionately concerned not to have an extra judge in the European Court of Justice. Yet others may be very concerned about not having a new protocol for the deficit procedure. All those issues may be part of a package. Which way should people vote if they are in favour of one and against another? What should they do? It makes a nonsense of any sort of referendum.

The second point I want to make is that if this amendment is not passed, we are likely to be left with referendums on some of these minor matters. Are they really going to bind this country closer to Europe and reconnect the public with Brussels? Are they going to make Brussels more popular? Of course it is a result that I do not necessarily approve of, but would it not make referenda less and less popular with the public?

That brings me to my last point. The noble Lord, Lord Kerr, referred to Burke. I should like to comment on that since I was the first person to bring Burke into the argument. In his doctrine, Burke says that the will of the people should always prevail; it is the anti-Rousseau argument. What is interesting is that while there have been some tests of it, although only a very few, they suggest that Burke is actually quite popular. I shall give two examples. In my speech at Second Reading, I referred to a by-election in which I resigned on an issue over which I was unpopular in the sense that a local poll showed a majority of three to two against our joining the European Community. But I argued for the principle of Burke that I was entitled to exercise my judgment, and Burke prevailed by a substantial majority. I can give another example. One of my neighbours where I lived until recently was a Conservative MP I greatly respected. He was the late Norman Miscampbell, who was a Member for Blackpool. Many people will remember that a police superintendent was murdered in that town, and a campaign was launched by his widow to restore the death penalty for the murder of a policeman. It had overwhelming support in Blackpool, but Norman Miscampbell, on principle and very bravely taking the Burke view, voted against the restoration of the death penalty. His fellow Conservative MP in Blackpool, the late Peter Blaker, supported the petition and voted in favour of it. At the next election, Norman Miscampbell’s vote increased by somewhat more than that of Peter Blaker. Burke is not unpopular. When they reflect on it, people think it very reasonable that Members of Parliament should exercise their own judgment and not act as puppets.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

My Lords, perhaps I may make a few remarks in support of this amendment. I find some of the arguments that have been used against it quite bizarre. The noble Lord, Lord Risby, said that the vast majority of people in this country want these referendums. If so, he has nothing to fear from the amendment. If the vast majority of people in this country want referendums, more than 40 per cent of them will vote when a referendum question is put, and this Bill, as amended, will then provide mandatory outcomes. It has been suggested that this is all about engaging with the British people, but if we cannot get 40 per cent of the people to vote, is that not a failure to engage with the British people? Surely that is precisely what it is, which is why having a threshold makes sense.

I argue that we should not go down the primrose path of thinking that the referendum fashion is sweeping across Europe. First, we are not talking about Europe; we are talking about Britain. I do not see why we should accept that argument as valid in our case. In any case, I have a strong feeling that most people who have supported referendums around Europe now bitterly regret it. In the most recent one, last weekend, the Slovenians voted against raising the pensionable age to something quite a long way below the pensionable age in this country; not, I would have thought, a very sensible thing to have happened—something rather like the incinerator case, I suspect. I am very much in the same group as the noble Lords, Lord Deben and Lord Forsyth. It is not a very good idea to have these referendums. The Government could quite easily have avoided most of the petty referendums by drawing up a much simpler Bill, but they chose to throw in the kitchen sink. Given that, the case for a threshold is really rather compelling and I therefore support the amendment.

European Union Bill

Debate between Lord Taverne and Lord Hannay of Chiswick

Tuesday 3rd May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Taverne]

My Lords, the previous two speakers eloquently demonstrated the importance of these amendments. They made a passionate plea for a much more sensible and enlightened policy towards Europe. I will deal with one particular aspect: Amendment 23F and the banking crisis.

There are two aspects to the current financial crisis in Europe: sovereign debt and bank liquidity. Many continental banks are undercapitalised. They need more rigorous stress tests as a basis for recapitalisation. National regulation and supervision have failed. We need a special EU-wide resolution regime. We need new, more effective European regulation. If we have that, it will of course give new powers to Brussels and that, as I understand it, would trigger a referendum. The question arises: what sort of question would be posed in a referendum dealing with bank regulation?

Leaving that aside, it will mean that in the course of negotiations taking place in Europe, when negotiators are being very careful and thinking that they can achieve something without triggering a referendum in Denmark or Ireland, or an adverse ruling of the German constitutional court, our negotiators will have to have regard to the fact that there will have to be a referendum. They will be inhibited and looking over their shoulders: they will be negotiating with their hands behind their back. Since this will be an obstacle to reaching a very important area of agreement, the likelihood is that we will be bypassed.

Already we are being bypassed in many important respects. While John Major wanted to be outside the eurozone in a multipolar Europe, it seems that Mr Cameron has more or less accepted that there will be a small but very powerful unit in Europe. We will find that being in the outside lane of a much less congenial Europe is not a particularly effective experience for very important aspects of our economy. I have heard Treasury officials saying that we are now in the same position as Latvia, asking what agreements are being reached in rooms where the important people are meeting.

A story was told at a conference I went to about an occasion when Gordon Brown insisted on being present with eurozone Ministers. They said that they would meet him, but the press outside were speculating on how long he would last: would he be out in five minutes? In fact, that was precisely what happened: after hearing him for five minutes, they thanked him, said that they must now have their private meeting and asked him to leave. He could not face the press after five minutes, so he stayed in the lavatory for half an hour.

It is not very dignified to be outside the corridors of power. This, however, will be much worse. Obviously there were problems about joining the eurozone, but the regulation of banks will affect the City profoundly, and it will be another case where we are likely to be bypassed.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

My Lords, I will address Amendments 23C, 23D and 23E, as did the noble Lord, Lord Deben, who gave us a brilliant illustration of why flexibility in this area is not only desirable but necessary.

I have, off and on, had quite a few dealings with the issue of energy in the European Union, and I have to say that we have got it comprehensively wrong. In the 1970s we fought desperately—of course, Mr Tony Benn was the Minister at the time—to avoid the European Union having any responsibility in this field whatever in case it stole our oil, which it was never going to be able to do because European law is perfectly clear on that point, and so we prevented any policy emerging then. Then, when the Single European Act was passed, we allowed—I agree that by then we were not favouring it—energy to be kept out of the single market at that stage because of the objections of the French and the Germans, and that was a disastrous mistake. Now, when we have discovered that we are not one of the three major oil and gas producers in the world, we have discovered, surprisingly, that we could do with a common energy policy, but it is quite difficult to get; and, as the noble Lord, Lord Deben, has said, it is in an area of shared competence. So it may very well be that, sometime in the not too distant future, we will want to support some changes that will give more powers to Brussels in the area of energy security, competition, interconnectors and all these things; yet here we are subjecting all that to a referendum requirement under which the no campaign would no doubt say yet again, “This is the European Union coming to take all our North Sea oil”, and so on. The result may very well be negative because that campaign would be very emotive. Heaven knows what the Scots would think about it—quite a lot, I should think.

I do really feel that this illustrates the case for flexibility—and the same is true on climate change. It is rather clear that the European Union will struggle under its current institutional arrangements to find a way forward through the next 30, 40 or 50 years on climate change. Things are going to be very different. Crises are going to emerge and Europe is going to have to find a response to them. Some of those responses may involve new powers for the Union as a whole. And yet again, this will be made extraordinarily difficult by the provisions of the Bill.

I am not saying that these particular amendments are the last words in wisdom on this particular issue, but I do really think that the Government ought to be taking this a bit more seriously. We have not had a single serious response from the Government since we began this Committee stage on any point that has been raised. I am waiting now for the response to this debate to have, for the first time, a serious response to the substance, because we have not had it so far. Those are issues of major importance. I think that if the Government were to go away and reflect on this now, they would see the wisdom, at the very least, of truncating the list of issues on which there need to be referendums.