European Union Referendum Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Wednesday 28th October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard]

I would add a footnote to the important point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Suttie. I am afraid that I disagree with the noble Viscount who has just spoken. Perhaps the Scots are getting more than their fair crack of the whip in this debate, so I will be brief. The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, was right to say that it was the SNP which gave the Scottish 16 and 17 year-olds the vote in the independence referendum. The noble Baroness, Lady Royall, was also right, as was the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, that the door was opened for them by the previous Government. But the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, is correct: the 16 and 17 year-olds in Scotland all know that it was Edinburgh which gave them the vote. If the next thing they hear is that London will not give them the vote in the next referendum, it is an amazingly strong court-card to hand to the SNP.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I had not intended to intervene at this stage, but I hear people saying that we should not make piecemeal changes. The Committee should read Clause 2, to which we are debating an amendment, because it makes piecemeal changes. There are several lines which refer to allowing Peers to vote in this referendum—800 of us. A number of further lines then spend a lot of time on Gibraltar— all 22,000 of them—and then the Irish and Commonwealth citizens in Gibraltar. I have been unable to discover how many there are of those, but I think there are probably around 100. These are piecemeal changes.

The problem was raised by a number of people at Second Reading that this referendum will be an exceptional vote. There is therefore a case for looking exceptionally at who should vote, whether it is in this set of amendments or in the following three groups, which we will be discussing later on tonight. The question is really: for this very important vote, which will affect the future of this country for the next 40 years, what are the appropriate changes that we wish to make in the electoral system? Clause 2 as it stands offers a number of changes. The question is what other changes we might wish to make for this vote.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, I hate to say this, but noble Lords opposite have challenged my thinking on the Bill, as a general issue, but I agree that piecemeal reform in this area is not desirable. I share the noble Earl’s anxieties. Noble Lords, particularly the Liberal Democrats, consistently argue that someone under 18 is a child, but when it comes to an issue of this magnitude, they suddenly then become an adult.

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[Lord Wigley]

My Lords, I had not intended to speak in this debate but there is one dimension that perhaps I can bring to the debate that few others could.

In Wales, perhaps in Scotland as well, apart from constitutional nationalism there is always a fringe of more extreme nationalism and there are fringes that impinge on racism. It is something that throughout my political career I have tried to stand against. I have made the point time after time, ad nauseam, that all people living in Wales, whatever their language, colour or creed, are full and equal citizens of Wales. It is a concept of civic involvement in the community in which they live. These amendments touch upon this. If we are going to go down the road of starting to differentiate on the basis of some concept of nationality as opposed to citizenship, we could be in very serious trouble indeed.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, perhaps I might briefly raise the question of what sort of numbers we are talking about. The noble Lord, Lord Green of Deddington, suggested that we had 2.7 million. I have to say that sounds high.

I spent some time in the EU balance of competences review trying to discover the best estimates of the numbers of citizens from other EU countries in Britain and of British citizens in other EU states. I am well aware that it is very difficult to get the numbers but the best estimates we came up with, with the help of the Home Office, the FCO and the DWP, were 2.2 million British citizens living in other EU member states and 2.4 million EU citizens from other states living here. If we then ask how many of them have been living here for five years and how many are entitled to vote, we probably come down to something in the order of 1.5 million to 1.75 million on the five-year limit. I suspect a very substantial number of those will be of western European origin, including the many people who are in mixed marriages—British-French, British-German, British-Dutch, whatever it may be. Those are the sorts of figures.

It would help, if we are going to return to this on Report, if the Minister could manage to discover between now and then how many citizens of other EU member states are currently on the British electoral register. That figure must be obtainable. I accept that the estimate of how many there are in total in this country is very difficult to pin down but that other figure at least we must be able to have.

[Lord Green of Deddington]

My Lords, there is not much between us. The noble Lord said 1.75 million; I said 1.9 million.

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[Lord Green of Deddington]

In that case, will the noble Lord explain why British citizens are not able to vote in a referendum in Ireland?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, this amendment demonstrates more than any other that our franchise consists of a series of historical anomalies and needs thorough reconsideration. We are clearly not going to get that for this referendum, but it is one of many problems with the current structure of our constitution.

I agree strongly with the noble Lord, Lord Davies, that the Irish dimension is extremely important. We all know that the Irish Government are actively concerned about the implications for Anglo-Irish relations of Britain voting to leave the European Union. It would very much be Anglo-Irish relations. I think Scottish-Irish relations might then become rather different, but we will see.

I question how conservative the noble Lord’s proposals are. As he notes in the amendment, there is a series of gradations of British citizenship, and full British citizens have a different status from British overseas citizens. I am not entirely clear why someone from the Cayman Islands, for example, or the British Virgin Islands should have the right to vote on our future in the EU, or actually someone from the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man, which are not part of the EU and which pay virtually no tax within Britain, should also be regarded as entitled to vote in a referendum on Britain’s future.

[Lord Green of Deddington]

The noble Lord asks a very good question. People from the islands he mentions—I think they are all islands—would have the vote if they were resident in Britain. The numbers involved would be trivial. This is a de minimis situation. As the noble Lord said, this is a very complex question of nationality, so there is no answer that will be entirely perfect, but I reckon my suggestion is as close as one can reasonably get.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

If I may tempt the noble Lord a little further, I recall Migration Watch suggesting at one stage that children of immigrant mothers should be counted in our immigrant population. I do not know whether those people are less than fully British.

[Lord Green of Deddington]

That is wrong.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I think I read it in a Migration Watch suggestion. There was a question of whether people born outside Britain really are fully British citizens. I do not press that because I am aware that both Douglas Carswell and Daniel Hannan were born outside the United Kingdom—one I think in Ecuador and the other in Tanzania—and would lose their rights to vote under this. Wherever we stop we run into difficulties in defining who is fully British and entitled to vote, and who is not. I merely remark that since the concept of British citizenship is itself one of the many muddles we must contend with perhaps we need to be very careful how far down this road we go.

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[Lord Lexden (Con)]

I would like to make a small point of clarification, if I may, as far as the Irish Republic is concerned. At some point under Mrs Thatcher’s Government—I cannot remember the exact year—the Government of the Irish Republic extended to British citizens living there those voting rights that Republic of Ireland citizens have here. If British citizens are excluded from a referendum in the Irish Republic, it is because there is a separate electoral roll for that. As far as parliamentary elections are concerned, we are on all fours with the Irish Republic and have been for some years.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

May I ask a factual question of the Minister, which, again, he may not be able to answer immediately? Are we sure that we can identify on the British electoral register who are British citizens, who are Irish citizens and who are Commonwealth citizens? I am not aware, from my time looking at electoral registers, that these are listed separately. If they are not listed separately, would it be possible to identify them between now and a referendum that might be in six or 12 months’ time? That seems highly relevant to the ability to apply this amendment, if passed.