European Union Bill

Henry Smith Excerpts

Monday 11th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

I am encouraged by my hon. Friend’s remarks to be increasingly confident that we can reach the group of amendments on which he is anxious to speak in good time. I remind him, however, that four hours have been set aside for our deliberations on these three groups of amendments, and I think it is right that we should do justice to the consideration that the House of Lords gave to the Bill by addressing each of the amendments it approved.

On Lords amendment 1, all I want to say further is that the phrase “or otherwise supporting” is included to remove any doubt—just as the previous Government used that phrase to remove any doubt when drafting the European Union (Amendment) Act 2008—and to ensure that a proposal could not be adopted in such a way without the appropriate authority required under the provisions of the Bill.

Lords amendments 2 and 4 make it clear beyond doubt that, under the terms of the Bill, a referendum would not be required in the United Kingdom if a treaty change did not apply to the UK but only to Gibraltar, and this would not transfer competence or power from the United Kingdom. I say straight away that it is hard to work out a scenario in which a treaty amendment that constituted a transfer of competence or power would apply only to Gibraltar and not to the UK. It is possible in theory, and this point was raised in the other place, and we have sought to assuage that concern by proposing these two technical amendments.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

Notwithstanding the recent comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash) on the need for brevity, let me say that while I agree that this is a technical tidying up of the clause as it left this place, I am concerned that a future Foreign and Commonwealth Office—not the current one—that wished to stitch up the good and loyal people of Gibraltar should not have that opportunity through the back door of the European Union.

[Mr Lidington]

I can certainly assure my hon. Friend that the current Government are absolutely committed to Gibraltar remaining British for as long as the people of Gibraltar want that to continue. We have made that clear publicly since the day we took office, and I have repeated it in public both in this country and on a visit to Gibraltar a few months ago.

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[Mr Lidington]

We sought in this Bill to define a constitutional change of the sort that my hon. Friend describes in terms of a transfer of competencies or powers from the United Kingdom to the European Union. That seems to us to be a significant constitutional change and the definition is one that we have incorporated into the Bill. Now, if he will forgive me, never mind how delightful I find his interventions, I think I ought to make some progress in addressing the Lords amendments directly.

Let me deal first with Lords amendments 3 and 5, which one might term the threshold amendments. They would provide for a turnout threshold of 40% for any referendum under the Bill. If that threshold were not met, regardless of the result the final decision over whether to ratify a treaty change would pass from the people back to Parliament. That runs contrary to the spirit and intention of the Bill and would leave the British people in real doubt about the effect of their vote.

I know that the intention of colleagues in the House of Lords was to safeguard the sovereignty of Parliament, but I do not agree with them that the Bill would challenge the status of Parliament. In fact, Parliament will have a much stronger role than ever before.

[Henry Smith]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for being so courteous in giving way. Does he agree that, ironically, elections to the European Parliament often have a turnout of 40% or less, as do many local authority elections? Would it not be absurd to consider those as merely advisory?

[Mr Lidington]

My hon. Friend is right. We get into very dangerous territory as elected representatives when we start to say that only votes or elections in which the turnout was above a given percentage are valid. What is at issue is our intention to provide for the British electorate to have the final say on whether or not the Government of the day can agree to transfer competencies or powers from the United Kingdom to the European Union. The outcome of a referendum should, in our view, be determined by the will of those who vote and not by how many turn up to vote.

As the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) said earlier this year when we debated a turnout threshold for the referendum on the alternative vote:

“If we agree to anything that passes for any sort of threshold, people in this country will have an incentive to say, ‘If you don’t know, don’t vote’”.—[Official Report, 15 February 2011; Vol. 523, c. 907.]

A turnout threshold seems to me to be a recipe for apathy. It would undermine one of the fundamental aims of the Bill, which is to reconnect the British people and better inform them of the decisions taken in their name at European Union level.

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[Mr Lidington]

I think that the British people would be alarmed at the thought that they were being offered new rights and responsibilities for a term of only five years, and would then have to wait and see whether they would be graciously renewed by a new Parliament.

In a survey conducted two years ago, more than four out of every five British people wanted a referendum on any future treaty change. Everything that we do in the House is reversible—no single Parliament can bind its successor—so there is no reason to single the Bill out for a sunset clause, which would mean that it merely loaned power to the people of this country on the future direction of the EU for a limited time. After that, the decision on whether or not to lend them the power for another five years would be in the hands of the Government of the day. The British people would rightly look on such a proposition with disdain.

[Henry Smith]

My right hon. Friend is entirely right. If the amendment were allowed to stand, would it not render the proposed legislation completely empty? As he eloquently said, it goes against the constitutional principle that no Parliament can bind its successor.

[Mr Lidington]

My hon. Friend is quite right. In a previous Parliament, when we voted for constitutional legislation as far-reaching as the devolution of power to the Scottish Parliament and the Assemblies in Wales and Northern Ireland, we did not vote for the inclusion of sunset clauses. Parliament took the view that if that legislation, in due course, proved not to be workable, or if there were a profound change in the public mood or a new Government were elected with a mandate from the people to effect changes and reverse that devolution, that was a matter for the future Parliament at that time. The idea that we should impose a sunset clause in this case simply because it is something new seems to be completely inconsistent with the way in which Parliament and successive Governments have approached previous constitutional reforms.

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[Mr Jenkin]

But that applies to a great deal of legislation. I do not understand the distinction that the hon. Gentleman is attempting to make. Actually, what the Bill will do is restrict the ability of Governments to give away power and to reach decisions in the EU and present them to Parliament as faits accomplis without reference to the people. That seems to me a thoroughly good and democratic thing.

The hon. Gentleman has given the game away this evening about the future direction of the Labour party’s policy. What he has told the House tonight is that he is quite happy for aspects of the Bill to go through, but he is not happy for its provisions to apply to a future Labour Government. He does not want a future Labour Government to have their hands tied by the necessity of referendums before they give away more powers. He wants to go back to the system to which my hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom) referred—of signing up to treaties, promising referendums on them and then ratting on those promises. That was the record of the Labour Government.

I regard all these Lords amendments as completely unacceptable. Whatever shortcomings the Bill has—I am afraid there are many, because it is limited in scope—the amendments are designed to pull the guts out of this democratising measure. The vote threshold proposed in Lords amendment 3 is not a recognisable one but a perverse one. It does not suggest that unless the number of votes reaches a certain level, a decision cannot be taken. It suggests that if the votes do not reach a certain level, the Government and Parliament can carry on as they like. I thought the whole point of a threshold was to test whether there was a measure of consent for a particular constitutional change. The threshold in the amendment is not about testing whether there is a measure of consent but is more about testing whether there is a measure of resistance, or whether there is apathy.

Unfortunately, the people who have largely guided European policy in this country for the past 20, 30 or 40 years have got away with what they have done largely by relying on people’s apathy and ignorance. The proposed threshold is designed to create an incentive for a Government who wish to transfer more powers to the EU to maintain high levels of apathy and ignorance. I am reminded of my late noble Friend Lord Whitelaw, who during the 1975 referendum accused the right hon. Anthony Wedgwood Benn of going around the country stirring up apathy. The amendment is a charter for going around the country and doing just that. It is completely unjustified and should be given very short shrift.

Lords amendments 6 to 13, to clause 6, are simply designed to rip the guts out of the Bill. My right hon. Friend the Minister for Europe very properly went through some of the things that Governments in future would be able to do without a referendum if the amendments were not disagreed to. Under the amendments, Governments could, without a referendum, give up the veto over foreign policy and over almost anything else under article 48(7). The amendments would allow the UK to join the public prosecutor and to extend the role of the public prosecutor to any serious crime with a cross-border dimension. We should think about what that means for the criminal justice system of this country. The amendments would allow Governments, without a referendum, to give up the veto over labour laws, taxes and planning, and the multi-annual financial framework and spending of the EU. The Opposition should shed no crocodile tears over how much the EU is spending if they are prepared to give up that veto without proper consent.

The amendments would remove the veto from all the enhanced co-operation procedures, which would enable what is effectively majority voting to come into effect in a whole lot of areas. Clearly, that is an anti-democratic provision. If there is one thing that ardent advocates of the EU should have learned, it is that that structure lacks popular consent. It legislates without popular consent. If there is one thing that true Europeans should want it is that we reconnect the decisions on how powers are exercised with popular democratic consent. The Bill goes some way towards doing that.

The sunrise provision is simply the last gasp of a past generation who are trying to neuter what is today called Euroscepticism. The support of the hon. Member for Caerphilly for Lords amendment 15 gives the lie to the idea that the new Labour party, under its new leader, is flirting with Euroscepticism. It is not. It has no intention of following through. It might pretend to be, and to sound, sceptical, and it might even start talking of an in-out referendum, inviting one or two of my more radical hon. Friends to fall into the trap of thinking that that is the way out, when it probably is not. However, the fact is that we need a Government who are prepared to negotiate vigorously, and to do so with the extra leverage and strengthened hand that the requirement for a referendum gives them.

[Henry Smith]

Does my hon. Friend agree that what we see from Opposition Members is not so much a rebirth of Euroscepticism as referendum cynicism?

[Mr Jenkin]

I agree with my hon. Friend. I rather like the hon. Member for Caerphilly, who is an engaging and assiduous parliamentarian, but I do not know whether he has given vent to his real feelings on these matters. Unfortunately, if one is speaking from the Front Bench, one’s real feelings rarely matter. One just has to do the bidding of one’s superiors. I just wish to end by—