European Union Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Monday 13th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Liddle]

My Lords, the Opposition cannot support the amendment. The reasons why many have spoken against it are very true. I agree with what the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, had to say. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, that in our political culture a precise repeat referendum would be extremely unlikely. However, we should not tie our hands. As the noble Lord, Lord Deben, said, you vote under a particular set of circumstances but circumstances can change at remarkable speed. We do not need these kinds of constraints on our politics.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, this is the second time that we have examined an amendment of this nature. It did not find much sympathy around the Chamber in Committee and it has not found much more now. The amendment stipulates a lesser period of three years rather than the original five but the principle remains the same.

In Committee I set out some of the Government’s objections to an amendment of this nature and I will recapitulate some of those now. First, were the British electorate to vote no in a referendum, it is clear that the Government would have to consider their future action carefully. It would be difficult to view the result as anything other than a firm rejection of a proposal for treaty change. If the Government wanted to hold another referendum for whatever reason, under the terms of this legislation, as my noble friend Lady Brinton said, they would first need to secure parliamentary approval to do so by Act. Primary legislation would be necessary to enable the referendum, so Parliament would have to consider that request very carefully and itself be persuaded to agree, which is not necessarily a given.

Secondly, the amendment reduces flexibility, a quality that has attracted a lot of support from all Benches. We do not know what will happen in the future, and as the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, has suggested, sometimes we do know what will happen in the short term future. As noble Lords have argued on a number of occasions, and in this case following the rejection of a proposal by the British people in a referendum, circumstances could change. There are “events, dear boy” and unexpected crises whether they be security crises, financial collapse, economic recession or even crises of energy supply or surges in immigration. All might conceivably transform the situation. So there could be previously unanticipated grounds for the Government and Parliament to believe that the treaty change on the table was in the national interest of this country. As a consequence, if both the Government and Parliament were to decide that there were good reasons for putting a question to the British people in a further referendum, Parliament should be able to do so without having to disapply an inflexible provision.

I have to say to the noble Lord that I would be surprised if any Government in the future would wish to hold a referendum in the hope that the people would be somehow persuaded to change their minds merely by the Government cajoling them rather than in response to a substantial change in circumstances. I agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, said in Committee. He pointed out that the people of Denmark, Ireland, France and the Netherlands,

“were perfectly capable of settling the first propositions put in front of them and they were perfectly capable of assessing the changes”.—[Official Report, 23/5/11; col. 1621.]

Those changes were any changes that had taken place or had been made to the treaty before them between the holding of the first and second referendums. People are clear in their own mind and will not easily be browbeaten into giving a different answer just because the Government—any Government—would like one. As the Minister for Europe made clear in the other place, it is a recipe not only for the public to say no again, just as firmly if not even more so, but also an invitation to be voted out of government at the next election for treating the public with contempt. But I reiterate that there might be circumstances where a repeat referendum may be in order before the three years suggested by the noble Lord had elapsed.

We were running through a most wonderful boom at the end of 2007. The recession hit us rapidly and sharply thereafter, with the financial collapse of a number of banks. We face a potential crisis in energy supply. At the moment there is a range of possibilities where crises might erupt that would affect us and our European partners. Therefore I see no reason for reducing flexibility, as this amendment would, and I urge the noble Lord to withdraw it.