European Union (Referendum) Bill

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Friday 31st January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Armstrong of Ilminster (CB)]

My Lords, I shall be brief. The core purposes of this Bill are that there should be an “in or out” referendum. It is not about what the result of that referendum should be; it is about whether there should be a referendum and that it should be before the end of 2017. This amendment has no bearing on those purposes. It leaves them unaffected. It requires the Government in certain circumstances to do something which any self-respecting Government would or should do in those circumstances. I suggest to the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, that he and his colleagues in the House of Commons have the best chance of this Bill passing if he decides to accept this amendment.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, I will not detain the House for long. I think that there is pretty strong support all around the House for this amendment. It certainly has the support of the Opposition, who will vote for the proposition in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, if he chooses to test the opinion of the House. What is needed in any “in or out” choice is an authoritative assessment of Britain’s intended relationship with the European Union should the people decide to withdraw from it. That does not have to be just a wish list of hoping that we can have our cake and eat it outside the Union. It has to be a hard, realistic assessment.

I am a great lover of history. I like reading books about Britain’s post-war relationship with the European Union. The Macmillan Diaries is one of the books I have read. Harold Macmillan tried to establish a free trade relationship with the Common Market when the treaty of Rome was signed. He explored that and failed because, even in 1958, he was not able to achieve what was necessary for the national interest, and he decided we had no alternative but to join the Common Market. So we have to be realistic and this assessment has to be realistic.

Many Members on our side of the House have pointed out that the proposed referendum is not a popularity poll, it is a fundamental choice. It is not a choice you take once every five or 10 years. You cannot say that it would be a choice made for ever but you can certainly say that it would be made for generations. It is important that this choice is taken not on the basis of wish lists or hypothetical speculations—as I think the noble Lord, Lord Davies, said—but on the basis of what is a realistic alternative. The truth is that those who want to take us out of the European Union rarely state what they think the alternative is for Britain, which is why this amendment is crucial. There is a huge range of possibilities. At one end of the spectrum, there is membership of the European Economic Area, probably as a consequence of rejoining EFTA; but at the other end, we would have to rely on our WTO status in terms of our trading relationship with the European Union.

[Lord Lamont of Lerwick]

Does the noble Lord recall that when he worked in Downing Street and the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, was a Minister at the Foreign Office, the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, endlessly put down Questions asking for an assessment of the pros and cons—the benefits and the costs, because there are costs—of our membership? The noble Lord and the Government endlessly rejected that, year after year. Even a Bill was put down, but it was talked out. Does he think that he owes the noble Lord some sort of apology?

[Lord Liddle]

I am afraid that I do not, no. What I do know about the Labour Government is that when they were considering whether to join the euro, they carried out a thorough assessment. In the case of this proposed referendum, we need to have a thorough assessment of what the alternatives would be.

Many people assume that we can continue to enjoy the benefits of free trade with our European partners by being in the EEA. That, of course, is the economic option with the least pain. But as my noble friend Lord Kinnock said when he talked about sovereignty, although being in the EEA might involve a minimum of economic pain, it would certainly involve a huge loss of British sovereignty. Whereas now we have a say on every EU regulation that applies to us, in future, as members of the EEA, we would simply have to accept every regulation decided in Brussels, and we would have to make a budgetary contribution as well. Being in the EEA would mean a massive loss of sovereignty for Britain. We may no longer be in the European Union but, in my view, we would also no longer be Great Britain, a sovereign nation able to exercise some say over its future.

As for the alternative at the other end of the spectrum, relying on our WTO membership and trying to negotiate free trade agreements, noble Lords have already pointed out some of the problems. We would immediately be withdrawing ourselves from free trade agreements that the EU has with other countries, and the whole future of agriculture would be put into grave uncertainty. The car industry is perhaps the best example of what noble Lords on the other side have to address. The car industry is probably the most outstanding example of the manufacturing renaissance that we have seen in Britain.

[Viscount Eccles]

I would be grateful if the noble Lord would agree that I personally do not have a case to answer because I want to stay in. And I think that it is extremely damaging for him continuously to tell us that he expects the people to vote no.

[Lord Liddle]

I have the greatest respect for the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles. I am not worried about the result of an election if there is a fair vote which is based on fair information. However, I am really worried about a referendum that is based on an artificial timetable which is led by the Prime Minister. I have great respect for the Prime Minister’s Bloomberg speech—as I said to the House, I agreed with 80% of it. To be frank, however, my honest fear, and I speak as an individual, is that when you look at what happened in the other place yesterday, when the Government collapsed in the face of rebellion from their own Back-Benchers—

[Noble Lords]

No!

[Lord Liddle]

Conservative Back-Benchers, I hasten to add, not Liberal Democrat ones. The Prime Minister's response to that was pathetic, even when what was at stake was a question of us sticking to the law. What kind of confidence can we have that an EU referendum would be fought on a fair basis unless these kinds of guarantee are written into the Bill?

I come back to the case of our car industry outside the EU. Unless we can negotiate a special deal with our partners there will be a 10% tariff on cars that are made in Britain. That will have a devastating impact on jobs in the British car industry. We cannot take these decisions lightly. We have to think about what we would be able to negotiate.

We should also have a realistic assessment of what we will be able to negotiate. Many people think that we would have the whip hand in any such negotiations were we outside the EU. I think that it was my noble friend Lord Davies who said that, in fact, that is not the case. We have to face the fact—and people are hard-headed about economic matters—that our exports to the single market account for between 40% and 50% of our total exports, however we calculate it. The rest of the single market’s exports to us account for about 8% of its exports, so if we are just looking at this in terms of the balance of power in that negotiation, it is not an attractive one from the prospect of jobs and growth in Britain.

In conclusion, if the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, is not prepared to accept this amendment, is he certain what his alternative to EU membership would entail? How would he go about making sure that the referendum was fought on a fair basis? If we cannot have this fair assessment then, frankly, the Bill is as I described it at Second Reading: an invitation to buy a pig in a poke.

[Lord Trefgarne]

My Lords, before the noble Lord finally sits down, will he explain to me why, when legislation was taken through Parliament for a referendum regarding the European Union in 1975, no such provisions as the ones he is now calling for were included?

[Lord Liddle]

If I recollect correctly—I took an active part in that campaign—there was an assessment of the reasons for British membership, which was sent to every household.

[Baroness Warsi]

My Lords, there is a government view on membership of the European Union, which is that the UK’s interest is to be a member of a reformed European Union. There are also agreed government views on how to run a referendum, following the alternative vote and Scottish independence polls. However, there is no collective position on holding a membership referendum and hence no government view on its implications. Noble Lords can be assured that, by the time of the referendum, the official yes and no campaigns will have made their cases in some detail. Therefore, the British people will be in no doubt about the choice that they are making.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Giddens]

My noble friend Lord Williams raises a significant set of issues. There plainly could be big discrepancies in patterns of voting across the United Kingdom and these will be consequential for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. It would be interesting to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, how the Government would deal with a situation where the English basically settled the vote in such a decisive way that you could argue that the voices of other parts of the country were eclipsed. It will be interesting to hear what the noble Lord has to say on that issue.

[Lord Liddle]

My Lords, I will be very brief on this point, but my noble friend Lord Williams has raised an issue of fundamental importance with this amendment. It covers the role of the devolved Administrations, their views on EU membership and how those views are communicated to their electorate, and the risks that this whole venture poses to the union we care about most, the union of the United Kingdom. I care a lot about the European Union but I care even more about the union of the United Kingdom.

[Lord Dobbs]

Can the noble Lord clarify whether, when he says that this venture poses risks, he is talking about the Bill or a referendum as a whole?

[Lord Liddle]

I am talking about an “in or out” referendum, which this Bill is designed to generate in quick time. It is quite possible that the different parts of the UK will vote in different ways. As I said at Second Reading, the risk is that independence is defeated in the Scottish referendum this autumn, but that an EU referendum in which Scotland voted to stay in and England, by a majority, took the United Kingdom out would just reignite the whole argument about Scottish nationalism once again. The Government have to think very seriously about this problem. I quite accept that it is not easily dealt with through amendments to this Bill, but it is a very serious issue for the future of the UK.

[Lord Dobbs]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lords, Lord Williams and Lord Wigley, for the way they introduced this very important issue—there is no denying its importance. The noble Lord, Lord Wigley, himself readily acknowledged that the amendments go beyond the scope of this very simple and very narrow Bill, and the technical answer to them is that the UK’s relationship with the EU is not a devolved matter. However, that of course is not a sufficient answer to the points that they made.

Amendment 55 is a probing amendment, which has been put in a dignified and detailed matter, and I want to try to deal with it in that spirit. I have specific concerns about the amendments. The logical consequence of this group of amendments would be to raise at least the possibility that some parts of our United Kingdom might be denied the opportunity to vote. It would render a national referendum pointless because of the involvement of devolved parliaments, which I am sure is not the intention of the noble Lords who tabled these amendments at all. Noble Lords have waved the flags of the various constituent parts of our United Kingdom with pride, and I congratulate them on that. They have raised useful points which we should all be sensitive to, such as the possibility of Northern Ireland and the Republic being on opposite sides of the fence. It is a very serious, complicated issue. However, along with all the other issues that have been raised, that is fundamentally a political challenge. They are not ones that we should try to anticipate by an analysis, no matter how acute and insightful, of various hypothetical situations at this time.

The issue was raised of the possibility—indeed the necessity—of trying to pre-empt the outcome of the Scottish referendum, in case Scotland voted for independence. In the event of that very sad decision of Scotland to leave the United Kingdom, all sorts of new arrangements would need to be made, and the arrangements required for this Bill would be part of a much more complex bundle.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Triesman]

I promise that I shall be even closer to the noble Lord later.

[Lord Liddle]

My Lords, this debate has raised another set of issues that need to be properly and thoroughly addressed before we put arrangements in place for any kind of referendum on our future in the European Union. On this side of the House, Members would be very sympathetic to the principle that my noble friend Lord Kinnock set out that we should have the broadest possible vote on this fundamental issue. I know the sort of arguments that some people might make against this. One is that that it would set a precedent for voting in general elections and local elections, but I do not think that it would. An EU referendum is fundamentally different; it is certainly not a vote for a councillor, an MP or a Government. It is a vote not for eternity, perhaps, but for generations ahead. The Prime Minister’s phrase about “no return ticket” comes to mind. It is a different type of vote from any other that we are likely to have in this country in the near future, and therefore needs to be considered differently.

There is a second, more low-level political point. Even now, with the debate that we have had, I am sure that we run the risk of seeing some headline in the Daily Mail that says, “Peers demand the vote for foreigners in British EU referendum”. I can well imagine that being the headline—and I see that the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, thoroughly agrees with that proposition and thinks that such a headline would be right.

The question of EU citizens living in this country and of British citizens living in the EU has to be treated in the same breath. It is basically an issue about the people who have shaped their lives around the fact that we are members of the European Union. This referendum proposes to put at serious risk the rights to live, work, study, retire, marry, partner and do whatever else you want, which are enormous enhancers of human freedom. Let the UKIP people say how they would deal with these rights. As a simple matter of the rights of these citizens—both EU citizens here and UK citizens in the rest of the EU—this matter deserves the greatest consideration.

[Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton]

My Lords, I can see the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, nodding at points on the issue of the views that may be expressed in the Daily Mail. I hope that your Lordships will forgive me if I remind the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, that during the passage of the legislation to establish the Scottish Parliament he supported his much lamented friend John MacKay when he argued that the waiter from Brussels living in Scotland would have a vote but his daughter who worked in Brussels and was Scottish would not. I know that the noble Lord will make certain that the views he expresses on this Bill will be in line with his firmly held principles on that occasion.