European Union (Information, etc.) Bill [HL]

Baroness Ludford Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 20th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, I welcome the Bill and am pleased to speak in this debate. I salute the justified persistence and perseverance of the noble Lord, Lord Dykes. He has amply refuted the notion that this measure might be closing the stable door after the horse has bolted, because it is still essential that British citizens are informed about how the EU works. It will continue to be important to us. As even a Government who are pursuing Brexit acknowledge, we want at least a “deep and special partnership” with the EU. If it is deep and special, it is therefore not possible for our citizens to understand the world unless they understand the European Union.

The question in the 2016 referendum, although ostensibly about the EU, was rather along the lines of, “Are you happy with the status quo?”. After a decade of tightened belts, no wage rises and concerns about insecure jobs, inadequate housing and widening inequality, you did not need an EU peg for many people to answer with a big raspberry, but the widespread ignorance, misinformation and sheer malevolence in much of the press towards the EU did not help. As the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, said, the EU has become a scapegoat for everything that people do not like, whether or not it has any relationship or any causative role in those matters that are causing discontent.

On knowledge of the EU before the referendum, I shall quote someone whom I shall not name because I have not asked his permission. He is a remainer now, but he voted leave in 2016. This is what he has written:

“Prior to 2016 I had never really thought much about the EU. Indeed, the only time I was vaguely aware of it was when, on the rare occasion it did make the news, it was generally in either a negative (‘red tape central bureaucracy holding back business’) or comical (‘bendy bananas’) context”—


he perhaps means straight bananas—

“1 or 2 rare minutes of a news bulletin was about the maximum coverage it received. Never prior to 2016 (that I am aware of) did the British public have any objective and informed insight into what the EU is, how it came to be, what is represents, how it works, how we play our part in it and what benefits membership brings to our daily lives and that of business. In the months leading up to the referendum I therefore sought to better understand the EU as best I could”.

He continues along the lines that he did not find much guidance on that. That sums up better than I can the predicament in which many voters found themselves in 2016. They simply had not been prepared, through education or through the media, to be knowledgeable voters asked to pronounce on the EU.

We all know who started the Euro myth business of bendy cucumbers and straight bananas: the unlamented ex-Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, whose association with the truth has more than a touch of Trumpism about it. Other journalists felt under pressure after Boris Johnson, as the Brussels correspondent of the Daily Telegraph, started finding it fun to report just on jokey, and usually untrue, stuff. They were pressured by their editors to produce the same sexed-up stories, but nothing boring about what was going on in the Commission, the Council or the Parliament. No, let us have some fun stuff. That has done an awful lot of harm.

On the history of the Bill, as the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, has said, he first tried about 12 years ago to get this Bill through. He did not have a lot of help from previous Governments including, it has to be said, the Labour Government, who felt that it was unnecessary to try to increase the volume of information that British citizens had.

In 2013, Andrew Rosindell MP asked:

“the Secretary of State for Education what his policy is on the teaching of the history of the European Union in schools”.

The answer from Elizabeth Truss was:

“Should schools choose to teach their pupils the history of the European Union then they can do so at their discretion. However, as we have made clear in our proposals for the new national curriculum published earlier this year, we do not think it should be compulsory for them to do so. Where schools choose to teach this, legislation requires that they do so in such a way that pupils are not exposed to politically biased views, but are provided with a balanced presentation of opposing issues”.—[Official Report, Commons, 3/6/13; col. 1004W.]


We can hear an echo there of what many of us are criticising the BBC for these days: false equivalence. As soon as you start to say, “Please can people learn about the EU?”, there is an accusation that you are politically biased, when actually people just want factual information. Somehow you have to balance knowledge of what the EU does with negative criticism of it. That is what has dogged this issue.

I had long been meaning to do this, but the Bill from the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, prompted me to actually go and look at what is in the national curriculum about the EU. The answer is nothing. Of course the curriculum does not even apply to academies and free schools anyway, and certainly when you come to the citizenship part of the curriculum you are relying on good will and on a teacher being found to cover the citizenship theme, which I am afraid often gets shoved aside in favour of subjects that are going to be subject to examination; it is often a sort of afterthought.

On the question of citizenship, the curriculum says that at key stage 3:

“Pupils should be taught about … the development of the political system of democratic government in the United Kingdom”.


You cannot understand government in the UK without understanding the origins of EU law, and we have just been through all that in the European Union (Withdrawal) Act. We are asking people to completely not understand how EU law is made and how it is democratically arrived at between democratically directly elected MEPs and democratic Governments, so it is no wonder that you hear the accusation that the EU is not democratic. There may be a legitimacy issue about the EU, because it is seen as remote and so on, but it is undoubtedly democratic. However, we are telling our pupils that they do not need to know about that, so the myths about how the European Commission dictates everything easily take hold.

So there is nothing about Europe or the EU at key stage 3. At key stage 4, pupils have to learn about,

“local, regional and international governance and the United Kingdom’s relations with the rest of Europe, the Commonwealth, the United Nations and the wider world”.

This is as if our relations with the rest of Europe are only about bilateral intergovernmental relations, on a par with the UN and the Commonwealth. There is no mention at all of the EU or how its supranational governance—it is not a superstate, but it is a supranational organisation—affects law and governance in the UK.

Under the history curriculum, key stage 3 pupils learn about,

“Renaissance and the Reformation in Europe, … the Enlightenment in Europe and Britain”,

and then,

“challenges for Britain, Europe and the wider world 1901 to the present day”,

including,

“Britain’s place in the world since 1945”.

There is absolutely no mention of the history, creation and development of the EU.

Lastly, under the geography curriculum, pupils are expected to,

“extend their locational knowledge and deepen their spatial awareness of the world’s countries, using maps of the world to focus on Africa, Russia, Asia … and the Middle East”.

Europe does not exist, apparently; it is literally erased from the map. Then we come along with a referendum asking, “Do you like the European Union?”, and find that they do not know anything about it.

So if there is one silver lining of the referendum, it is that in the two years since then we have had more discussion about the EU and, I hope, better chances of learning about it than in any previous time since we joined it. Really, what I am agreeing with is the absolute need for the Bill proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, but particularly with the focus on the national curriculum. Why does the national curriculum not have a single mention in citizenship, history or geography—and I am not aware that it has it in any other subject—of the European Union as such? It is quite astonishing.

[Lord Dykes]

I am very grateful to the noble Baroness for her remarks. Indeed, the EU is a democratic institution, with the European Parliament—and she has attested that herself with her own career there as a very hard-working MEP, as well as an extremely hard-working Peer in the House of Lords, dealing with European issues. I thank her for all that. I live in France, too, because I had to try to live in a eurozone country, even if it was not Belgium—and France is nearer for us. Can she say why she gets the impression that other countries are more enthusiastic and why Britain is less enthusiastic? As I am sure she has, I have been confronted by people visiting from France and other countries saying, “Excuse me asking, but this proposal to leave the European Union—are they all bonkers?”. I get that a lot. Would she explain why she thinks that is so? Why are we different? Why do we not have the confidence, as a sovereign country, that the other members have?

[Baroness Ludford]

That would take more than a few minutes to answer, or more than 30 seconds. One problem is that the membership of the European Union has been a party-political football for the entire time we have been a member. No one has been able—certainly not those in the driving seat in government—to rise above that and say, “Whatever the political controversies about our membership of the EU, we are in it and, while we are in it, we owe it to our young people, growing up as citizens, to understand how it works”. It is not propaganda or indoctrination, but that is how it has been seen; it is about simply empowering citizens to understand how the EU works and, indeed, how it should be reformed and improved. No Government have been able to rise above that party-political issue to see it as a matter of simply enabling our citizens to understand the world.

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[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

My Lords, having the Chief Whip at my right elbow is either an indication of great praise or it reveals something much more alarming, which is that he fears that something dreadful will happen and he might have to intervene to rectify it. However, I thank him for his presence on the Bench with me.

I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, on securing in the ballot this Private Member’s Bill on making provisions for information and statistics about the European Union to be available in various public places, and to provide information to further the establishment of twinning arrangements between towns in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in the European Union in accordance with the European Union’s town twinning support scheme. I know that the noble Lord feels deeply about these issues. Over the years, he has shown great commitment and determination in relation to the provision of information about the EU. However, I have to say to him that, despite him being the only man in this debate and notwithstanding his considerable charms, this lady is, I am afraid, not for yielding. The Government’s position is to oppose the Bill and I shall explain why.

The Government do not believe that it is necessary to legislate—that is, to create an obligation—to make information and statistics about the European Union available in public buildings or online. The decision on what to make available in public buildings is, I suggest, properly one for the relevant bodies which are responsible for the buildings. If they decide that it is appropriate and worth while to make certain information and statistics about the European Union available, that is their choice. It would not be appropriate for central government to dictate what information should be available in individual public buildings. Local authorities have a much better understanding of the services which they want to offer and which provide the best value for money in their local areas.

However, I make it clear to, and in doing so reassure, the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, and the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, that the Government believe that the European Union should be a transparent organisation, with access to information and statistics relating to it available to everyone. It is worth noting that information and statistics relating to the European Union, in addition to being available from traditional sources, are also easily and freely available online from a variety of sources, including the websites of the institutions of the European Union, which contain detailed information on the purpose, organisation and priorities of the EU. All EU legislation is contained in the Official Journal of the European Union, which is published online. In addition, there is information on the UK Government’s pages, including dedicated pages on the Lisbon treaty.

The noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, referred to the provision within the education system. By way of general comment, in my experience, many young people—who of course tend to be in the van of IT skills and digital adroitness—are extremely well informed about topical issues and current affairs. That was certainly the case in the independence referendum in Scotland. On her specific question, the national curriculum is not relevant to the Bill from the noble Lord, Lord Dykes. The Department for Education leads on the national curriculum and this Bill calls for the provision of information in public buildings.

[Baroness Ludford]

I am sorry to interrupt the Minister but, although that is technically correct, I still think it might be worth while for her to try to answer my question. If she is not able to answer it now, perhaps she will write to me to explain why the EU does not figure at all in the national curriculum, which is the responsibility of the Government. Unless I have made some mistake, the statutory guidance that I have looked through includes no mention of the EU whatever. Can the Minister enlighten me as to why that should be so? Is she willing to consult her colleagues in the Department for Education and write to me with an answer?

[Baroness Goldie]

I quite accept that what is in the national curriculum is indeed the responsibility of government, but it is not my responsibility in dealing with this issue as the Minister for Brexit. The noble Baroness is clearly exercised by this, and she might want to raise the issue directly with the Department for Education.

When it comes to the twinning proposal in the Bill, the Government feel unable to support it for three interconnected reasons. First, traditional town twinning is a locally led activity built on the enthusiasms, preferences and commitments of local communities; it is for a local area, therefore, to decide how it wishes to approach twinning, what arrangements would work for it and how it wishes to make use of any available funds for twinning. Secondly, this would be an unnecessary bureaucratic requirement for local authorities, potentially imposing new financial burdens where budgets today are already under pressure. This would especially be the case if an area is not interested in twinning, in which case the requirement in the Bill would provide no gain for the local communities which councils are serving. Thirdly—and let me clarify this for the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter—this requirement is unnecessary as the current scheme eligibility criteria state that, if the UK ceases to be a member of the European Union, it will be required to leave the twinning scheme. The Bill specifies the EU’s town twinning support scheme, which is open to applications from:

“Towns/municipalities or their twinning committees or other non-profit organisations representing local authorities … A project must involve municipalities from at least 2 eligible countries of which at least one is an EU Member State”.