European Union Referendum Bill

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Dobbs

Monday 2nd November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dobbs]

I will be delighted to, and I thank the noble Lord for his intervention. I talked to the Electoral Commission just a little while ago, before the vote last week on individual electoral registration. It emphasised that if we were, for instance, to offer 16 and 17 year-olds the vote, which is a position, as he knows, that I have put forward, it would have exceeding difficulty—the noble Lord shakes his head. I am not quite sure what I have said that he could possibly disagree with, as I have not yet come to a conclusion. Maybe he has already made up his mind. The commission said that it would have exceeding difficulty in making those arrangements for 16 and 17 year-olds who are in this country before the autumn of next year. How much more difficult would it be for people when we do not know who they are or where they are? I ask this Committee to consider the practical difficulties of what we are asking for and not to end up passing bits of legislation that make the referendum a mess.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I think that the noble Lord, Lord Green, was implying that we would expect expats living elsewhere in the European Union to vote in one direction rather than another. Certainly during my most recent visits to southern France, southern Spain, Portugal, Italy and Cyprus, it became clear that the two British newspapers that are most readily available are the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph. The Guardian is the most difficult one to obtain, so I am not sure that one should assume that people will naturally vote one way or another.

[Lord Dobbs]

Again, I am grateful for the intervention, but I hope now to be able to sit down. I do not think that the noble Lord was listening because I do not believe that I made the slightest indication as to whether expat voters would vote one way or the other. That is not our concern, and the decision should not be based on whether they are likely to vote in one direction or the other. It is a matter of rights and of practicality.

European Union Referendum Bill

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Dobbs

Tuesday 13th October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dobbs]

Forgive me for interrupting, but I would also remind the noble Lord that the United States, in order to achieve a single currency, actually required a civil war to do it, which is scarcely a model that one wishes to follow.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I should remind the noble Lord that, when I have given talks in Washington and elsewhere on European integration, I have often said—sometimes years ago—that, if we ever achieved a United States of Europe, I had no doubt that the policy process would work almost as well as the policy process in Washington. I hope that the noble Lord understands the point.

We have teased out of this debate what issues we have to deal with in Committee and on Report. We are now agreed that there is to be a referendum; the question is now settled; and the date is beyond Parliament’s control, except when the negotiations have been agreed and the Government come back to us. Therefore, we are left with a number of manageable issues.

On the question of purdah, clearly, if we have a long campaign, the Government have to go on negotiating with their partners in the European Union, and Ministers will have to say some things. In that area we will need to explore what the correct outcome is.

On the franchise, on which a great deal has been said, it is quite clear that the current British franchise is a mess. It is a historical, imperial legacy which means that someone who was born in Rwanda or Mozambique and moved to London last year can vote on whether we stay in the European Union. When we are in London, we stay in Wandsworth, where you hear French spoken extensively in the streets, which has been the case for 20 to 30 years. However, French people who have been working and living in London for 20 or 30 years, paying taxes here, contributing in every sense to our economy, cannot vote. There are a whole set of issues there which we need to explore in detail. This is not an ordinary vote. As has been said during this debate and elsewhere, this is a vote about the future of this country, and therefore we need to look at the franchise for this exceptional vote in exceptional ways.

The noble Lord, Lord Norton, and other noble Lords raised the question of threshold, which clearly we will have to explore a little, although it is a very difficult issue. Whatever happens at the end of it, if we have a narrow majority, either with a low or a high turnout, it will not settle the issue. However, we all know that referendums do not settle the issue. Six months after the 1975 referendum, the Labour Party was still arguing against staying in the European Union, and look at what happened in Scotland, where the referendum did not settle the future of that country.

The issue of the provision of information is extremely important and very difficult, and again we need to spend some time on it. We have to ask for a White Paper; certainly we need to look at the implications of leaving and, if possible, the prospect of staying. However, I bear hard scars from the problems of having to try to create dispassionate evidence on Britain’s relations with Europe. I spent two years in government negotiating 32 reports on the balance of competences between Britain and the European Union. Some 2,500 pieces of evidence came in; the Conservatives put that in the coalition agreement because they were convinced that this would provide the evidential basis for knowing what sort of powers we would want to repatriate from Brussels back to Britain. The overwhelming evidence submitted to the balance of competences review—from business, universities, financial and legal services—was that they think the current balance of competences is pretty good, thank you. The evidence submitted by easyJet began: easyJet would not exist if it were not for the single market in the European Union.

How did the press and No. 10 react to this? They did their best to bury the balance of competences reports in full. They were usually published at the beginning of the Christmas or the July Recess, just to make sure that the press were looking somewhere else instead. That is part of the problem in trying to get dispassionate evidence into our debate: myths float by us, undisturbed by reality.

I saw in a Church of England blog, which the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London referred to yesterday, that a lay member of the synod of Canterbury said that one of the reasons why the BBC is so biased in favour of Europe is because it receives so much significant funding from the European Union. I look at that with amazement. That is clearly going round in some circles as part of this wonderful phantasmagoria of the EU as a monster, reaching across the Channel to seduce honest Englishmen, strangle our free institutions and reduce us to serfdom under German—and perhaps also French—domination. Therefore, we will struggle between evidence and myth as we go on through this debate.

I will remark on one of the myths, which I have heard several times in this debate: “We thought we were joining a Common Market, and no one ever told us that this was a political project”. Indeed, the Prime Minister himself, in his speech to the Conservative Party conference last week, said:

“When we joined the European Union we were told that it was about going into a common market, rather than the goal that some had for ‘ever closer union’”.

Last night, therefore, again I dug out Sir Alec Douglas -Home’s speech on 21 October 1971, on the first day of the Commons debate on the issue of principle of joining the European Economic Community. He said that,

“when Germany, France, Italy and the rest sit down to talk about their problems of security, and their attitude to world problems … it is vital that we should be in their councils. During the last year I have … been in the councils of the Ten, because they have anticipated the larger Community. Matters are talked about there which concern the defence of Europe and the defence of Britain. Matters are talked about—for example, the Middle East—which have the greatest implications for our country. It is essential that we should be in the councils when these questions are discussed, and that a decision should not be taken without us”.—[Official Report, Commons, 21/10/71; col. 922.]

I say that for all those who think that we would be better off as a sort of Switzerland with nuclear weapons, which I think is what—