European Union (Referendum) Bill

Debate between Chris Williamson and Meg Hillier

Friday 8th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Chris Williamson]

Does my hon. Friend agree that if the voting age were reduced, it would act as a spur to the education system to ensure that there was better teaching in our schools about the importance of democracy and the civic duty to exercise the right to vote? Does she agree that our children need a political education to enable them to participate in our democracy?

[Meg Hillier]

Yes, I have made that very point. All of us in the Chamber have called the Secretary of State for Education to account, and no doubt even he would be keen to ensure that education about democracy was filtering down to our local schools through the national framework. We ask a lot of our schools, but it is important to develop that area of education, and it is right for us to provide an imperative to develop it. Frankly, if something is good enough for the Scots, it is good enough for Hackney’s 16 and 17-year-olds and those from London, England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Let me touch on some of the other amendments in the group. We have spent an awful lot of time discussing Gibraltar, so you will be glad to know, Madam Deputy Speaker, that I am not planning to discuss the 20,000 votes of the Gibraltarians, albeit not because that is unimportant. My hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes) has tabled significant amendments about British citizens and residents and their right to vote, and I feel strongly about this issue. When I was a Minister, I spent a lot of time dealing with not only issues affecting the UK, but European issues. During my three years as a Minister, I had quite a lot of contact with British citizens in Spain who were interested in and concerned about policies. I was the Minister responsible for identity cards, and those British citizens in Spain were among the greatest cheerleaders for those cards and wanted to be early adopters of the scheme. They have a strong interest in what is going on in their mother country and are keen to have a vote.

If we want to be fair in this referendum, we must unpick the Government's muddle. Why have they chosen the parliamentary boundaries rather than the local government boundaries, which will be used in the referendum in Scotland? There is a confusing message about who is a voter in this country.

My constituency is one of the most multicultural in the country, as well as one of the youngest, so Hackney is certainly up there at the top of what I like to think of as the chart of achievement. I have a large number of European and African constituents, as well as people with leave to remain and naturalised British citizens. Many of those people can vote in different elections, but there is often confusion about in which elections they can vote. Overall, the message from today’s debate is that we must be clearer about who has the right to vote.

Ultimately, in a European election, it is important that those from the wider European arena have the chance to vote. For instance, a French person living in Britain can vote for an MEP either where they live or where they are from—they have that choice. In this case, they would not have that choice. They would not be able to vote in this referendum, despite their links to Europe—this is obviously a European issue as well as a British issue—and to the UK.

I fully support amendment 45, which would enfranchise all those entitled to vote in European elections, including EU citizens. I feel very sore that I cannot vote in the Scottish referendum, as I am a British citizen with strong views about Scotland’s remaining part of the UK so that we stand united as a group of nations in Europe and the world. I do not get a say on that, and I think that that a similar anomaly will occur with this referendum.

On amendment 47, I feel that it is only fair that British citizens living in EU member states should get a say. As I said, I have had contact with those citizens abroad, and they feel that they are British even though they have chosen to live in another part of the EU. They have not gone to Timbuktu; they live in the political and economic union of which we are part. They are EU citizens, but feel that they are British EU citizens wherever they live. We are all EU citizens and we must see the issue in its EU context.

There are good reasons why many of those people would be important voters, and why 16 and 17-year-olds should be voting to support our membership of the EU. Although there is a need for some reform, as I saw at first hand during three years of negotiating on behalf of the British Government in the EU, there are huge benefits to our being part of Europe, especially with regard to justice and home affairs measures. We therefore need to ensure that all people who should have a vote get a vote.

I will not go into those benefits in enormous detail, Madam Deputy Speaker, because I fear your opprobrium if I go too far off the subject, but let us consider some of them. The much-discussed European arrest warrant, for all its faults, still provides major protection across Europe. I commend the Select Committee on Home Affairs for its report that considered all such issues, particularly the European arrest warrant. Without the warrant, we would need 27 separate treaties with EU member states to deal with the problem. It is important that we get the franchise right so that people can vote on such an important issue.

There is also a benefit from the European Union criminal records information system. People repeatedly worry when employing people from an EU member state that does not have our ability to check criminal records, which we do through our vetting and barring scheme, as they are not sure who they are getting. That information system is one way that the situation is being improved through European co-operation. If we cannot opt back into that system, it will be a real concern. I do not want to confuse the debate by going into the opt-ins and opt-outs on justice and home affairs, but those are big issues that affect and benefit Britain. Similarly, the Schengen information system—