European Union (Referendum) Bill

Lord Kinnock Excerpts

Friday 31st January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dobbs]

Of course I could but quite clearly I am not going to. It would deprive us of hearing the noble Lord, Lord Kinnock.

[Lord Kinnock (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord. Although I endorse entirely the appeal made by my noble friend Lord Giddens and indeed others, I suggest to the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, that he could accept this amendment, and he could do it with the approval of the Prime Minister. My authority for claiming that comes from no less a source than the Bloomberg speech, which I am now quoting so frequently that I am beginning to think of it as the Bloomberg bible.

In that speech, the Prime Minister was very clear—indeed, commendably clear—that:

“If we left the European Union, it would be a one-way ticket, not a return”.

That is a very sobering thought and a very grave proposition. To his further credit, the Prime Minister was balanced in his treatment of the issues in much of that speech. He said, quite correctly, that:

“Britain could make her own way in the world, outside the EU”.

He then, in a very balanced way, went on to say:

“But the question we will have to ask ourselves is this: is that the very best future for our country?”.

He said that of course we,

“would be free to take our own decisions … But we don’t leave NATO because it is in our national interest to stay and benefit from its collective defence guarantee”.

The only question that I would pose to the Prime Minister and to the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, on this aspect is: how free would we be to take our own decisions?

In a further balancing item, the Prime Minister responded to such a rhetorical question by saying:

“If we leave the EU, we cannot of course leave Europe. It will remain for many years our biggest market, and forever our geographical neighbourhood. We are tied by a complex web of legal commitments”.

He continued:

“Even if we pulled out completely”—

and I do not see that there is any other option other than a complete pull-out, given what the Prime Minister said about it being a one-way ticket—

“decisions made in the EU would continue to have a profound effect on our country. But we would have lost all our remaining vetoes and our voice in those decisions”.

If the Prime Minister was willing to say that a year ago in the Bloomberg speech and to spell out the implications of our departure, what conceivable resistance could there be to accepting an amendment that would make it mandatory to provide an assessment of the United Kingdom’s intended relationship with the European Union in the event of withdrawal? In fact, on this occasion I am being as uncharacteristically helpful as I possibly can be to Mr Cameron. Maybe one day he will reciprocate that.

Of course, the question remains: how free would we be to make our own decisions? This House will know that if the search is for sovereignty, then the definition of sovereignty as the power to make effective decisions must be predominant in our minds. Outside the European Union in the world of the 21st century and beyond, we have to wonder how a medium-sized economy with a population of around 60 million, abutting the world’s biggest single market, would fare if we had to conduct our own relationships individually—dare I say unilaterally?—with emerging and emerged global powers. How would we fare in terms of resolving the crisis of the environment or in terms of combating international crime, were it not for the fact that inside the European Union we can exert substantial influence on the direction of affairs and on the nature of international relationships in an increasingly complex and interdependent world?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Bowness (Con)]

My Lords, I put my name to this amendment; I do not want to add very much to what has already been said, but I support it because I want this referendum which—I must say to my noble friends for the avoidance of doubt—I accept is a commitment of my party and is going to happen. I want this referendum to be fair, and to include European Union citizens living here would add to the fairness. They will be affected by whatever the outcome is of a referendum. They have taken residence in this country and made their lives under the provisions of the treaties into which we, as a nation, freely entered and to which have agreed to be a party. The same can be said of the rights and interests of British citizens living in other European Union countries, to which we may come later.

However, in the interest of fairness, one might make the comparison between those citizens living in other European Union countries—and European Union citizens living in this country—with the position of Commonwealth citizens, who are not British citizens but who will have the right to vote, even if their countries have been suspended or expelled from membership of the Commonwealth. According to a reply which I received to a Written Question, we have no idea how many Commonwealth citizens who are not British citizens are on the electoral roll. However, there have been estimates—I have no idea how reliable they are; I believe that they may have been based on the 2011 census—that the number of people, whether or not on the electoral roll, which is not known, could amount to 900,000 in the country as a whole. That is not insignificant.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, prepared a report for the previous Government on citizenship in which he made the observation, not pursued by the previous Government—or, indeed, this Government—that the right to vote and citizenship are closely linked. I do not think that it is good enough to embark on this referendum asking a question of this importance without having given some thought to the composition of the franchise. I hope that my noble friend Lord Dobbs can tell me that some thought was given to it. I suspect that the easiest, quickest option, which did not involve too much thought, was employed to put the provision in the Bill. This and other amendments need to be carefully considered in the interest of fairness before the Bill passes into law and we have a referendum.

[Lord Kinnock]

This is another amendment which, I am certain, is moved with a helpful motivation, and one that I hope, on reflection, the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, will feel able to accept. The acceptance of an amendment of this kind would not in any sense compromise the Bill, because substantial changes have been made. This is a change of lesser dimension, but, for the reasons that we have just heard from the noble Lord, Lord Bowness, it has particular focus.

The referendum that the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, wants is distinct from the referendum that I want—I want a referendum if there is a significant treaty change under the terms of the 2011 Act. If that is what we were facing, I would be making exactly the same proposal, if the electorate were confined in the way that they are in the Bill. The argument relating to the electorate applies in any case to any referendum, particularly any referendum relating to the European Union and our future or lack of future in it—or the nature of our future in it.

I put it to the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, that in a referendum he will want the maximum number of entitled electors to be able to vote. It is crucial to the whole country; I will not tire the House by repeating what I said previously. The Prime Minister precisely and accurately said that this was an issue of massive dimension and that no return ticket was available. I put it to the noble Lord that the only way to ensure the maximum size of an electorate above the age of 18 is to ensure that all persons entitled to vote in a local authority election could vote in the referendum. The number of persons who have that entitlement is larger than that of those who have the parliamentary entitlement, for the obvious reason that people who are citizens of other European Union countries—and, indeed, other countries—are, rightly, entitled to vote in their local authority elections but, equally rightly, are not entitled to vote for their Member of Parliament.