European Union Referendum Bill

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Monday 23rd November 2015 Lords Chamber

That is a procedural fact. Whether one party or the other in the national debate wants to draw attention to it—

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

Of course, my noble friend is quite right that these measures could be repealed, but they could also be extended and improved on by a British Government. If we are looking for good conditions for people at work, I would say that a huge advance in recent years was that wonderful national minimum wage introduced not by the EU but by the last Labour Government. Ultimately, the terms and conditions of people at work about whom he and I care most passionately are better protected by a Labour Government in Britain than by any decision in Brussels.

[Lord Lea of Crondall]

I have the highest respect for my noble friend but I am afraid that on this one he is wrong. In international trade, employers will claim we are at a competitive disadvantage if we do not do things together. This is what Europe is about. That is what Delors pointed out in Bournemouth in 1988.

If we were to say to an employer in Holland, Italy or Spain, “You can lead the race to the bottom”, all the employers, one by one, would scream that they had to go in that direction. I will be calling for a European identity card the way I am going, but if we had a floor for all European workers in all these areas, the comparison with the minimum wage—although we do not have a European minimum wage—would be valid in that all workers and employers would be protected. If noble Lords will allow me to conceptualise, we will have a European ring-fence—let us not start getting into the argument about competition with China or Japan; it is a good argument but quite different from the one we are considering at the moment. This is for the parties in the referendum debate to discuss, and they are valid points to discuss.

Another factor that will determine how Brexit would work would be, no doubt, the majority in the country and the state of agitation on how best to progress matters on the Back Benches of the Conservative Party—and indeed, the Labour Party, the Liberal Democrats and everybody else in the House of Commons. To get to the nub of the point for this debate, and maybe to add some value to what I am about to say, we have a difficulty which would have been avoided if we had followed what we called in an earlier debate the OBR-type of authorship because all these amendments look to HMG to produce these studies. How will Ministers avoid the charge of cherry picking, as and when they deal with what are, with good will all round—and there will not be an oversupply of that—difficult analytical distinctions between things that we know and things that are going to be debated?

In conclusion, I will try to answer my own question.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 24C to which I have put my name. I would like to thank the Minister for listening, as the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, said and for reflecting the views put forward at all stages of the Bill’s passage through this House.

Listening to the noble Lord, Lord Owen, I am slightly at a loss because last week we discussed the franchise at some length and voted on it and today we are thinking about reports and paragraph (a) of subsection (1) of the proposed new clause, to which the noble Lord referred, relates to Government Amendment 24B, not to an amendment which is being proposed by Back-Benchers or others.

I want to speak to parts of Amendment 24C. Most of the concerns that I raised at Second Reading about the need for reports have been answered by government Amendment 24B in terms of outlining what alternatives to membership might mean. It is important that we have objective information. I hear from both sides of the House—from the noble Lords, Lord Hamilton and Lord Pearson of Rannoch—that Amendment 24C is somehow trying to put forward things that pro-Europeans want to hear about. However, if the information that is being asked for is objective and membership of the European Union is bad for the economy, a report will make that clear. There is nothing in Amendment 24C that says that the report should outline the “benefits of” or the “disbenefits of”; it merely refers to the “effects of”, so it would be helpful if noble Lords took the wording of the amendment at face value. Some of us who are still very new to your Lordships’ House have put our names to amendments because we believe that they will improve the quality of debate and the information that is available to citizens.

I turn to paragraphs (b) (c) and (d) of Amendment 24C on the rights of EU citizens in the UK and UK nationals resident in other member states. If the vote is to withdraw, there will clearly be implications for those citizens, which was one of the reasons we discussed at some length whether those people should be enfranchised. Will the Minister confirm that issues about the rights of citizens resident here and in the other EU states will be taken into consideration by the Government under Amendment 24B and, in particular, will she focus on the relationship with Ireland? In Committee, my noble friend Lord Wallace and I raised this issue in an amendment, which was withdrawn. Clearly in addition to discussions with the devolved Administration of Northern Ireland, it is important for the Her Majesty’s Government to think about the implications for the relationship of the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland in the case of withdrawal. It is not simply a matter for the devolved Administration; it is a matter for two sovereign countries. The other devolved Administrations would not be affected in quite the same way.

[Lord Grocott]

I do not think there is any disagreement about the need to provide precise factual information so that people can make the judgment that they will have make when the referendum is called. That is clearly a benefit. The difficulty that arises—it is pretty obvious to me and I hope I can convince any doubters that it ought to be to all of us—is in determining what is factual, unarguable, objective information and what is a matter of judgment.

Looking at the amendments, I can certainly give an example of what is factual and what is not. For example, government Amendment 24B—leaving aside just for a moment the doubts of the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, about which countries might be included—is close to a factual requirement,

“examples of countries that do not have membership of the European Union but do have other arrangements with the European Union (describing, in the case of each country given as an example, those arrangements).”

Admittedly, the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, made me waver a bit when I heard his comments. There is deep uncertainty as to precisely which countries would be covered by this—perhaps the Minister will answer that point in her reply—but if you gave that to 10 top civil servants and said, “Right, you have to draw up these facts, these details, on this precise point”, they would roughly be in the same territory. They would spell out what deal Norway had got, what deal Switzerland had got and so on.

By complete contrast, I have to disagree with the Liberal Front Bench strongly over the idea that Amendment 24C, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, involves a kind of clear, objective and unarguable description about the consequences of withdrawal. The game is given away in the language of the very first line of the amendment:

“The report shall cover the possible consequences of withdrawal”.

The term “possible consequences” contains within itself the possibility of different considerations that need to be brought into account in the event of withdrawal. The language of the amendment itself admits the possibility of debate, discussion and uncertainty. I am not a lawyer, but if that ever passed on to the statute book and 10 civil servants were asked to give a precise answer on those points, they would come up with 10 different solutions.

I will complete that point by including one particularly contentious example. I mentioned this in Committee but make absolutely no apology for mentioning it again. Amendment 24C says:

“The report shall cover the possible consequences of withdrawal from the European Union, including information on the effects of withdrawal upon … (g) the provision of financial support for agriculture in each region of the United Kingdom”.

Does that or does that not include a consideration of what support agriculture would get in the event of withdrawal from the common agricultural policy? In my book, of course that would be a possible consequence of leaving the European Union: there would be subventions from the British Treasury to British agriculture. The levels of that would be unknown, but it is a fair bet in my book that they would at least be equal to the colossal sums that we contribute to the common agricultural policy under the present arrangements. Whether I am right or wrong does not really matter: all I am saying is that the language of the amendment itself means that that is inevitably the kind of debate that would take place. Clearly, you cannot talk about the possible consequences of withdrawal from the CAP without giving some consideration to what sort of support would come from a country that was outside the EU. In trying to pretend that that is a kind of objective consideration, the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, must allow himself a little smile.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

I am not smiling very much. As I explained in Committee, that was not the intention of the people moving these sorts of amendments. We wish to have a factual, objective statement of the consequences of withdrawal. I noticed with some pleasure that when the Minister opened the debate this afternoon, she included a recognition that there would need to be, in the paper provided under Amendment 24B, some consideration of that matter. I never suggested—and I twice replied to the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, on this point in Committee—that we should go into the speculative area of what the Government might do to replace the common agricultural policy, which would have been withdrawn from British farmers. I am sorry, but the noble Lord is simply barking up the wrong tree. There is therefore no difference between us and no difference with the Minister. This is important information. It was not intended to enter the speculative realm of what would replace it.

[Lord Grocott]

In that case, the noble Lord really should have put down a different amendment. In my book, possible consequences means possible consequences. Possible consequences of withdrawal from one organisation will include what will happen to the beneficiaries, if that is the right word, of the common agricultural policy in the event of withdrawal. If there is no possibility of uncertainty, remove “possible” from the amendment. The noble Lord has to defend his amendment as written. In any conversation interpreting the meaning of the amendment as written, there would be any number of possible—I use the word myself again—ways in which the consequences of withdrawal could be written.

I think that the noble Lord will be frank enough, as am I, to admit that he does not come from a completely neutral position. If he thought that his amendment would result in a large number of statements and heavy tracts one or two inches thick pointing out what disastrous consequences there would be for Britain if it remained within the European Union, I am quite sure that he would not have put the amendment down. He has put the amendment down precisely because it is consistent with his perfectly sincerely held view—and we know that almost irrespective of what the Prime Minister brings back he will be voting to stay. I just find it unacceptable in terms of the language.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

I am sorry, but I really must reply to this point about possible consequences. If I had put “consequences” without “possible” that would have entered the speculative realm because it would have needed to bring in what was done to replace the common agricultural policy. By putting “possible consequences” it merely stays in the factual realm—what will be removed from the British agricultural sector if we were to leave. It does not enter into the conjectural area of what would replace it. That was the reason for the wording.

[Lord Grocott]

I think actually it is much clearer from the noble Lord’s perspective if he says “consequences” and does not put “possible”. I think we are beginning to dance on pinheads now, but test it out in the pub. What are the possible consequences of you not paying for your pint? There are a whole range of possible consequences. Anyone who is asked might say: you might go to prison; it might result in a fight. Any number of consequences are possible from an objective fact. The objective fact, which is acknowledged, would be withdrawal from the common agricultural policy. I am simply putting to the noble Lord that with “possible consequences” the language itself implies that there could be lots of different interpretations. I put it no stronger than that.

[Lord Lamont of Lerwick]

My Lords, I would like to speak, as the noble Lord, Lord Owen, did, rather generally about the whole series of amendment that have been put down. I have been rather struck by the plethora of different reports demanded. My memory went back to the repeated demands that the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, used to make of successive Administrations that they should have a publication stating the advantages of being in the European Union. Year after year, Administration after Administration—I do not know whether the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, was one of the people answering the PQs that the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, put down—the reply always came back, no, they would not publish any evaluation of our membership. It was never clear whether this was because they thought it was self-evident or, as I also suspect, because there is an element of greyness. The truth is never precise. I think what is wrong in so many of the assessments that have been asked for is that, actually, one cannot always give a precise factual answer.

For example, take the case of membership of the EEA, the European Economic Area, to which Norway belongs. Some people would say you have to accept all the regulations just the way they are imposed—it is government by fax. Actually when you look into it in real detail, it is not like that at all. It is a very complicated procedure and it is not quite true to say that a country such as Norway has to accept the laws it is given, let alone just by fax. First, there is a very elaborate machinery before laws are formulated. Secondly, when laws are formulated, the EEA countries have a right to reject legislation—they have a veto—something that we inside the European Union do not. The noble Baroness shakes her head. I am very willing to give way to her if she disagrees with me.