European Union: United Kingdom Membership

Lord Flight Excerpts

Monday 23rd May 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

The noble Lord is right and he speaks from practical and detailed experience.

[Lord Flight (Con)]

My Lords, has the Minister seen the Brexit film, which stars a number of Members of this House? If not, I suggest that she might find it interesting to watch.

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

I find lots of things interesting, my Lords.

European Union Referendum Bill

Lord Flight Excerpts

Tuesday 1st December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Flight (Con)]

My Lords, how will these measures deal with contributions from overseas? This might not be a big issue, but obviously there is the thought that there may be significant contributions from the EU itself.

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, I am particularly grateful for the intervention of the noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, because it encapsulated the issue. The noble Lord, Lord Jay, is content that we have gone as far as a government amendment, or indeed any amendment, can go—I think that is the point—within the statutory system. The Electoral Commission in its briefing, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, referred, is saying that, beyond legislation, there is the whole issue of people behaving properly. Clearly, we want to ensure that those people who are receiving donations carry out their best efforts to ensure that they come from a source from which they should receive them. But also there are those issues that I mentioned in opening, such as the fact that some people who are receiving donations will not know at that stage that later on they will want to register to be a permitted participant. Therefore, we have to be cautious not to overload them with regulation, because they cannot guess what they are going to do as the sums of money rise and how they will feel as their activity increases. The noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, encapsulated that position very well.

My noble friend Lord Flight asked about overseas moneys. I referred during my presentation of the amendment to how that might be affected. I made it very clear in earlier stages of this Bill how money from overseas may be part and parcel of permitted donations. I do not think that it would be appropriate for me at Third Reading to go through the detail of that again, but perhaps it would be right for me to respond to my noble friend by making it clear that we have always set out that permitted participants cannot accept donations of more than £500 from the EU institutions, as these are not eligible donors under PPERA. With companies based in Europe, as long as a campaigner does not spend any other money campaigning during the referendum period, it would be possible for campaigners to receive up to £10,000 from a foreign company and use it to campaign. That is a necessary function of proportionate controls on low-spending campaigners. I went into this in some detail in Committee, so I shall not try to do so now. It is important that we have transparency in all these matters, and that is exactly what we have tried to put at the heart of this group of amendments.

European Union Referendum Bill

Lord Flight Excerpts

Wednesday 4th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

That is an extraordinary question to ask me. I am the living embodiment of the fact that one can change one’s mind. I believe that Mr Corbyn has, in the light of events, learned wisdom which he did not possess 10 or 20 years ago. I assure the noble Lord that that wisdom consists in supporting—I repeat, supporting—our membership of the European Union. That is the official position of the Labour Party and will, of course, remain so.

[Lord Flight (Con)]

The noble Lord must be aware that a large number of members of the Labour Party—among those who are left—happen to have views about EU membership which are not that supportive. Although the Labour politicians at Westminster may or may not have strong views, they control the spend and the members of the Labour Party are not going to be very happy if the party spends all their money campaigning in a direction which they may not support.

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

I do not think that the noble Lord is a great expert on the views of the Labour Party. I would be delighted to take him to some party meetings in Lincolnshire where he would find enormous support for our membership of the European Union from people in all walks of life. The fact remains that the Labour Party supports our Members of Parliament in the other place who, by an overwhelming majority, have voted, and will continue to vote for our policy of believing that it is fundamentally in this country’s interests to remain part of the European Union.

I must move on to speak to Amendment 58. If there is a discordant element in my sudden change of subject, I say, in anticipation of someone rising to complain, that I am not responsible for the grouping of amendments.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Tebbit]

I am terribly sorry, but I am afraid that the noble Lord misunderstands it. When the Prime Minister negotiates he speaks for the Government as a whole, but his evaluation of whether the negotiation is sufficiently good for us to remain in the European Union is another matter.

There will be views and views within the Cabinet—we are pretty sure about that. It is highly likely, is it not? We would have to have a leaflet that said, “The position of the majority of the Cabinet”—or the majority of Ministers, perhaps. I do not know whether it would include PPSs and all sorts of other people. Perhaps we could add in the spads, I do not know. However, it would have to say that there are others who take a different view. It is total nonsense. It is the product of a mindset that wants to set the thing up to be biased in one direction time and time again. Lord knows that the Bill as drafted is bad enough, but it would be a darned sight worse if we were to accept the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Davies.

[Lord Flight]

My Lords, I campaigned in the 1975 referendum to stay in the Common Market. To criticise the precedent, I well remember that we thought we had been rather clever because we had the establishment onside and we had 2:1 of the brochures sent to people. The whole objective was to marginalise the campaign of those who were not in favour of staying in. It was, in essence, a scheme to rig the whole vote.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

I very much agree with my noble friend Lord Flight. Just because Harold Wilson rigged the 1975 referendum so that my noble friend Lord Forsyth and I—and indeed my noble friend Lord Flight—were conned into supporting staying in the EU, is that a reason for rigging this one? That is the question we have to ask.

The House will have noticed Amendment 40 in my name. Even my closest friends advise me that this amendment is rubbish. All I say to my noble friend the Minister is that I will not press my amendment. She will not have to spend any time telling the House that my amendment is rubbish because I agree with that anyway.