European Union Referendum Bill

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Wigley

Wednesday 28th October 2015 Lords Chamber

[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.