European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Dykes Excerpts

Committee: 5th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 7th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wigley (PC)]

My Lords, I have put my name to Amendment 52, which was spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, and I support his comments and those made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, and the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, a moment ago. I wish to place the amendment within its context, which is EU citizenship—the citizenship of people resident in the United Kingdom, and on the European mainland. These comments are particularly relevant in the context of the interventions of the noble Lords, Lord Forsyth and Lord Liddle, a moment ago.

I am a European; that is my identity. I am Welsh; that is my nationality and, as noted on my European passport, I am a citizen of the United Kingdom. I have rights and obligations under each of these three headings. Some of those rights are protected by international law, some by European law, some by UK law and some by Welsh law. Taking established rights away from a citizen is a very serious matter. Citizens are protected in generality against any negative impact upon them that may arise from taking some of these rights away from them.

There is clearly a wide range of such rights but I shall refer to only one. Page 32 of my passport states that if you need consular assistance when you are outside the EU in a country where there is no British embassy or consulate, you can get help from the embassy or consulate of another member state of the EU. That is a right that I have today but which I may lose as a result of the UK leaving the EU. In other words, Brexit may be taking away from me a right that I currently have by virtue of being a European citizen. This is one of many rights that we have as citizens living within the EU. For those rights to be meaningful, there clearly has to be a process of redress whereby a citizen can seek to protect his or her rights through the courts, and in this context Amendment 52 is highly relevant as it would allow citizens to pursue their rights in the European courts after exit day, where that is relevant.

[Lord Dykes (CB)]

The noble Lord is making an extremely good speech with which I agree, so I am sorry to break in. He referred to being a citizen of the UK. Under Maastricht, he is also a citizen of the EU. Is he aware that the ECJ is beginning to receive many messages from British citizens, both here and living in other EU countries, asking for the ECJ to consider giving protection to them even post-Brexit if necessary?

[Lord Wigley]

I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, for his helpful intervention. We are all European citizens; it is a European passport that we carry at the moment. Some of our rights are enshrined in the context of Europe, some in the context of the UK and some—in my case, as I mentioned a moment ago—in the context of Wales.

I am not going to speak at length to this amendment because there are several noble Lords who will speak with greater authority on the legal positions involved. However, I want to use the principles underpinning the rights of citizens in the EU to say a brief word about EU citizenship in a broader context: the rights afforded to us at present as citizens of the EU and the status of those rights once we leave. These matters are highly germane to the amendments before us—and they will not go away.