European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Baroness Wheatcroft Excerpts

Monday 19th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack]

A bad deal would be a deal where the trading relations with the other 27 nations of Europe are appreciably worse than they are at the moment. A bad deal would be one where we are not able to reach the agreements the Prime Minister has herself said she wants to reach on such things as Erasmus and Europol. We could go on and on, but we will know what is a bad deal. I hope it will be a good deal, but if it is a bad one, it will be completely wrong to say, “Take it or leave it”. There should be another go, which is why we had that amendment last week.

[Baroness Wheatcroft (Con)]

My Lords, my name was on the original amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Newby, and I now speak to its reincarnation. We have heard a lot about the sovereignty of Parliament, which we are of course proud of, but Parliament did pass the European Union Act 2011, which provided for a referendum on any treaty change. I do not know how individuals voted on that Act, but I suspect some of us in the Chamber who are now professing our belief in the sovereignty of Parliament and our antipathy to referenda voted in favour of that provision. It may well be that the 2011 Act and its provision for a referendum on any change in the EU’s treaty relationship with the UK is still applicable, and a legal action is going on now to try and establish that, but in the belief that the law can sometimes take a long time, I think it is important that we should move ahead on these amendments.

The people, as we have heard, are in favour of a vote on the deal. The latest opinion polling from Open Britain found that 65% of people believe that they, and not just politicians, should have the final say on the deal, and I agree with them. I voted in favour of such a move during the Article 50 process, so at least I have the virtue of being consistent. At that stage I expressed my dislike of referenda. I retain that dislike, but if one gets into a mess with a referendum, it may well be, as others have suggested, that the only way out is with another one.

We are in a mess. Parliament is in the most extraordinary position of pushing ahead with legislation which the majority of parliamentarians believe will be bad for the country, and I find it really difficult being part of that process. We are told that we must do it because we are implementing the will of the people, but this is simply not the case. As others have said, whatever the people voted for, they did not vote to get poorer. The Government are doing what the people instructed them to do: they are exploring how we might exit from the EU. But when we have an answer to that, it is the people who should decide on whether it is exactly what they want and where they want to go to.

Many times in this process it has been apparent that the outcome will be worse rather than better. Even the “Tiggerish” chancellor, when he came out with his projections of the economy, making the best of it, did not refer to the fact that all of those forecasts are lower than they were before the referendum. Things are not getting better. They may be looking slightly less worse, but they do not look good.

It should be the people who decide. We have heard about the young—my noble friend Lord Dobbs says they do not all vote as one and may well change their minds. This is true, but an overwhelming majority of them do not want to become little Englanders. They like the benefits that they get from Europe.

[Lord Dobbs]

I am grateful to my noble friend for giving way. Is it just possible that many of those people who voted for Brexit do not wish to become little Englanders, and that many of those younger people actually see a global world as their market, not the old, traditional European world, dominated by Brussels, that our generation was brought up on?

[Baroness Wheatcroft]

I am grateful to my noble friend. Of course they may well see that global world, but I think they are still waiting to hear the value of the trade deals that will be accomplished with those countries. So far, no figures appear to be forthcoming, and until they see those I think they are right to be somewhat sceptical. Of course they are global in outlook, but they are also European and they enjoy the peace, prosperity and cultural benefits that have come from being part of the EU over that time. If my noble friend has time, I would refer him to a very interesting organisation called Our Future, Our Choice, which is campaigning like mad for the young people in this country, along with everyone else, to have a vote on the deal and determine their future. If we deprive them of that, they will not forgive us. I for one do not want to be responsible—

[Lord Dobbs]

I am sorry to interrupt my noble friend again. She will know that I feel very passionately about young voters and the younger generation. The implication of what she is saying, and it has been said many times before, is that old people—us—voted selfishly and did not care about the younger voters. That is a pretty awful accusation that has been made time and again. I ask her to forgive me if she was not actually saying that, but there was an implication that elderly voters do not care about the young. Perhaps, again, many people voted for Brexit precisely because they thought about future generations and where the country was heading.

[Baroness Wheatcroft]

I am grateful to my noble friend for reading into my remarks something that was not there. I know plenty of people who voted to remain and would continue to vote that way and who thought about their children and grandchildren, but all the evidence from the analysis of the polls shows that as people went up the age scale they tended to vote out. I do not draw any conclusions from that, and it would be completely wrong for my noble friend to draw those sorts of conclusions from my remarks. However, I think we should enable people of all ages to have a say on the deal and look at what is on offer. If what they see is not attractive to them, they should have the opportunity to say no to it.

So I support the amendments. At the moment they are just probing amendments but I think we should table them on Report. Still, I would like to hear from the Minister whether he believes that if 65% of the population feel that they should have a vote on the terms, we should take any notice of that.

[Lord Higgins (Con)]

My Lords, I am tempted to reply to the vast mass of points that have been made during this debate. However, I shall deal with a more fundamental point: clearly, we need a debate and votes in both Houses on the principle of referendums. The reality is that this referendum has brought out very clearly the way in which referendums can undermine our system of democracy. This is a vital issue and we ought to take the opportunity as soon as possible to have a general debate on the principle.

The problem is that we are told that referendums are democratic. They are not democratic in the sense that we in this country understand it. In this country we believe in representative parliamentary democracy where Members of Parliament are elected to act as representatives, not delegates. The referendum undermines their ability to act as representatives, taking all the arguments into account. We should therefore look very carefully at the situation at the moment in Holland, where they are proposing to legislate to prohibit any further referendums, and indeed to prohibit having a referendum on whether they can legislate to prohibit referendums. [Laughter.]

This is not a laughing matter. Our system is in danger of being undermined. Indeed, it is being undermined on this occasion, when we are told that it is an instruction from the people. It is not; the Bill that we passed in this House was clearly for an advisory referendum, but it was subsequently hijacked, particularly the morning after the result by the Prime Minister, who sought to make it a mandatory referendum and, to a large extent, a hard referendum. We therefore need to stand back after this debate and really consider the whole issue because we are in a very dangerous situation concerning the real democracy that we in this country believe in.

I received a letter after I made a similar speech, from a member of the public who said, “But you don’t realise that it was Churchill who was defending democracy”. I wrote back and said, “The democracy Churchill was defending was not in fact the system of referendums—that was enthusiastically adopted by Hitler”. I have not had a reply to that letter, which perhaps shows that democracy works.