European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Robathan Excerpts

Committee: 7th sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Wednesday 14th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

My Lords, I support this amendment. My eldest grandson is about to leave university. He is incandescent with anger that he is about to be deprived of the right to look for a job anywhere across Europe when he leaves university. He is typical of a large number of young people coming out of university, colleges of further education and school who want the opportunity to travel, and, as my noble friend Lord Clancarty has suggested, the opportunity to do something outside their own country, to move away. However, that is something they are in real danger of losing with this change that we are about to have. The Government must really listen to these young people.

[Lord Robathan (Con)]

My Lords, I regret to say that I shall introduce a bit of controversy into the proceedings at 22.38 in the evening. It is insulting to suggest that those of us who believe that our future will be better outside the European Union—at 66, I’m all right, Jack; I think about the young, not myself—wish to curtail the rights of young people. I say to the noble Earl that I am European and I feel European; I just do not wish to be part of the European Union.

Let us look at this issue in detail rather than at what the noble Earl has said. We all agree that everybody should have opportunities to go to Europe and elsewhere. I have a niece studying in Canada, which is not, as far as I am aware, a part of the European Union. I have another niece studying in Australia, which is not, as far as I am aware, a part of the European Union. I understand that the Erasmus programme covers a great many countries that are not in the European Union, so it has absolutely nothing to do with the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill. The noble Earl is only a year younger than me; I have just looked that up. Surely he remembers that people were able to study in Europe before we were in the European Union. They did, and people from Europe came and studied with me at university. There was no bar. The only bar that the noble Earl talks about is the situation he mentioned of somebody in Paris stopping somebody else from going to work in Paris. It is not up to us; it is up to them.

[Lord Adonis]

Why does the noble Lord think, then, that young people are so overwhelmingly in favour of staying in the European Union?

[Lord Robathan]

Because they are by nature conservative, of course, and that is what it was: no change, like the noble Lord.

How can we not diminish, as the amendment says, the rights of young people to study in Europe? We want them to go and study. It is up to our friends, neighbours and allies in Europe to let them come, as we will let their people come to our country—not least, it has to be said, because foreign students pay a lot of fees to our universities. I am not going to detain the House for the half hour that I probably have in me, but I think that this amendment makes those of us who do not agree with it feel pretty insulted by the suggestion that we wish to curtail the rights of our children and grandchildren.

[Lord Liddle]

The referendum was won on the basis of controlling immigration by using posters that had 5 million Turks about to enter Britain. People who support Brexit have the gall to say that we are all in favour of people coming to Britain. That is the basis on which the referendum was won. Brexit is withdrawing the fundamental rights of EU citizenship, rights which are in the treaties. We have these rights because we are a member of the European Union. It is the treaties that give young people the right to work, study and travel without let or hindrance anywhere within the European Union. People on the Benches opposite are responsible for taking those rights away.

--- Later in debate ---

This group speaks to and for those under 45.

[Lord Robathan]

Does the noble Baroness think that the same people who formed this group were the same angry people who painted obscenities in Whitehall—about something they wished to do to Clegg—in 2010, against the Liberal Democrats?

[Baroness Humphreys]

I do not think so, because this new group has just been formed in the last couple of months or perhaps a little longer.

This group bypasses traditional media outlets because they know that these are increasingly irrelevant to young people, who only access the news items that interest them via social media. Their media posting today uses cartoons to combine a serious message with humour and it is aimed at the Labour leader this time. Entitled “Dear Jeremy Corbyn”, it reminds him that “the young people have supported you, they need you to support them”. This non-politically aligned group has realised that the co-operation of all people who hold the same opinions as they do is essential.

As ever, matters to do with the European Union come down to the personal and emotional. For the last 25 years, I and my compatriots have been proud to call ourselves Welsh, British and European. Our EU citizenship has given us the right to travel unhindered throughout Europe and has seen us accepted in every European country we visited. In Europe, we are citizens of everywhere, and we resent the fact that this right is being taken away from us and that future generations will not have the benefits of EU citizenship that we have enjoyed.

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, if I may take over from where the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, left off, of course even the access we have to Australia is hugely facilitated by the fact that it is a former colony which has the same language and so many practices which are familiar to Brits, and is therefore a comparatively easy and familiar place to travel. It does not at all make the argument that somehow divorcing ourselves from the continent will enlarge opportunities for young people. However, I am a natural optimist—indeed, one could hardly be otherwise in the hours we are all investing in seeking to improve the Bill. Some good things are coming out of the Brexit process; actually, the whole thing might stop as a result of them.

The noble Baroness is completely right that one thing that is happening is the massive engagement by young people in politics and the political process. That did not take place before. We had all bought into the idea that the young were not voting or taking an interest in the future, and that politics was decided by the elderly. We had the triple lock on pensions at the same time as we were trebling tuition fees. Those two policies, more than anything else, symbolise the political centre of gravity in the last 10 years—students were expected to pay more and more of the burden of university education while the retired got a better and better deal. That is all changing now. The young are voting and are engaged as never before. They voted in the last general election in numbers which we have not seen for a generation. It is very clear to me that if we move, as I think is increasingly likely, towards a referendum on the Prime Minister’s Brexit deal, then either in that referendum or whenever a general election comes we will see very high levels of engagement by the young. I think it is now very likely that that will include votes for 16 and 17 year-olds—there is probably a majority in the House of Commons for that now. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Robathan, who is a natural conservative, will be fiercely opposed to that.

[Lord Robathan]

The noble Lord has tempted me. As it happens, I am. So is my 18 year-old daughter. She has just turned 18 and says it would have been absurd to give her a vote at 16 or 17 when she did not know anything about things.

[Lord Adonis]

If knowing anything about issues was a criteria for voting, we would need the noble Lord sitting in the judgment of Solomon over every member of the electorate to decide whether they qualified for the franchise. Being a conservative, he would probably approve of that, but we tend to have more objective criteria.

What we need in this country is to get young people more systematically engaged. A number of members of the noble Lord’s party in the House of Commons, including two former Secretaries of State for Education, are now in favour of votes for 16 and 17 year-olds, and there appears to be a majority in the House of Commons. I very much hope—and this could be the ultimate irony of Brexit—that the first time that 16 and 17 year-olds get to vote in a poll in this country is in a Brexit referendum held early next year, where they make the decisive difference in the decision this country will take to stay in the European Union. If so, the noble Earl’s great ambitions may be realised to an even greater and more positive extent than he may realise.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I should welcome the long-term political suicide of the party opposite in its failure to embrace the wishes and ambitions of young people, but the tragedy is that those young people will be most affected by its approach to Europe and to Brexit. This approach seems to be driven by some wistful look back at this country’s imperial past. It is interesting that the noble Lord referred to Australia and Canada, because that seems to be the basis of the party opposite’s approach to negotiations—we will pass up the market that is on our doorstep for the sake of some ludicrous imperialistic notion. How many times do we hear members of the party opposite refer to Australia, New Zealand and Canada in the media when push comes to shove as to where they are going to get these mystical trade agreements?

[Lord Robathan]

Much as I like all three countries that the noble Lord just referred to, the facts are that I have a niece studying in Australia and another in Canada. Sadly, I have none studying in France or Germany at the moment.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, I rejoice in the success of the noble Lord’s family, though I do not think it takes away the point.

[Lord Robathan]

It takes away the noble Lord’s point.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

I do not think so. The point I am making is that the party opposite’s visceral hatred of the EU and its obsession with past glories is taking us down a path which will have a hugely negative impact on many young people.

The noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, moved this amendment to see whether the Minister has been able to reflect on our earlier debate. Perhaps I may take him back to the debate about the Erasmus programme on 26 February. The Minister may well recollect that he made some encouraging noises about the value that the Government place on that programme. He then went on to say that,

“no decisions have yet been made about post-2020 programme participation as the scope of that programme has not been agreed”.—[Official Report, 26/2/18; col. 478.]

If only the Minister would go a little further and say that it is the Government’s intention that this country will participate in the post-2020 Erasmus programme, that would give some grounds for optimism among young people who need to make a decision very soon about applying for the programme because it will take them past 2020. He would do them a great favour were he to do so.