European Union (Referendum) Bill

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Friday 8th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Bain]

The hon. Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell) will be accountable for his own statements, but given the consistent line of reasoning that he takes in his politics, I should have thought that he would want to be consistent by showing his approval of amendment 69 later.

Article 198 of the treaty on the functioning of the European Union sets out the relationship between many of the British overseas territories and the EU. That provision allows them to form association agreements and to opt into the provisions on the free movement of workers and the freedom of establishment within the EU. All of that would be affected if the result of the referendum were to take the United Kingdom out of the EU.

The British overseas territories are not part of the EU, but EU law applies to them indirectly. It is important in regulating the trade relationships that many of the territories have with the EU, for example. Many of the islands are relatively small, and they are highly dependent on what they can export. Import tariff levels are also a significant factor in their economies. The overseas territory agreements with the EU benefit the territories through non-reciprocal preferential trade boosts and through the most generous form of tariffs. The territories’ associate status could be severely affected by the votes of people in the United Kingdom, but at present the Bill provides no ability for them to consent to such an arrangement. They would not be given the franchise in the referendum. That is a real anomaly, and the hon. Member for Stockton South must address it.

Part 4 of the treaty on the functioning of the European Union applies to the British overseas territories. The territories have regular tripartite meetings with the EU, as well as partnership meetings. As I said in an intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South, under the current multi-annual financial framework, many of the territories receive money directly from the EU. They could suffer severe financial losses as a result of the referendum, yet the Bill in its current form does not allow them to consent to a change in their relationship with the European Union. The Falkland Islands receives €4 million a year as a direct result of its associate relationship with the EU. Anguilla receives €11.7 million a year and Montserrat receives €15.66 million a year. Does the hon. Member for Stockton South believe that the UK Government should indemnify those territories for the loss of that funding? Has he even raised the matter with the Minister?

These are crucial questions, and the hon. Gentleman and the Minister must satisfy the House that the people of those territories, who will be significantly affected by the Bill, will have an opportunity to be consulted and to have their say; otherwise, a gaping anomaly will remain at the heart of this deeply unsatisfactory Bill.

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

Amendment 44 deals with the question of giving 16 and 17-year-olds the vote. I am well qualified to speak about that, because I represent one of the youngest constituencies in the UK. About a third of my constituents are younger than 24 and just over a fifth are under the age of 16. As hon. Members can imagine, I have some interesting discussions with sixth formers in my constituency about this subject, which is debated hotly among local 16 and 17-year-olds.

Over the three years since this Government came to power, one issue that has galvanised young people about politics from a parliamentary perspective—many of them were active politically in a wider sense—is the withdrawal of the education maintenance allowance, and I was pleased that some Hackney sixth formers came here to speak to a Select Committee about the impact of that. About 80% of that cohort were in receipt of that benefit, so the loss of it made them feel suddenly connected to Parliament, yet disconnected because they did not have a vote.

I have met our local Youth Parliament representative a couple of times. He is very much in favour of this approach, but I have to say that support for votes at 16 is not unanimous among 16 and 17-year-olds—[Interruption.] I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) has strong feelings about this in the contrary direction. I think we need to have a reasoned debate about the issue. Scotland is moving in the direction of at least experimenting with this as an option.

When I talk to young people about the subject, some are nervous about it, some are downright opposed and some are very much in favour. Even those in favour sometimes admit difficulties because they feel that they do not know enough. They say, humblingly to me, “But, Miss, we are not informed enough to make decisions.” They have a laudable belief that being informed is a prerequisite to being a political representative or to voting. If every adult in this country had the same view, we would probably have an even smaller turnout at elections than we do now.

I believe that giving people the vote at 16 is the right way forward. It would ingrain voting habits early. It is a bit like learning to clean teeth from the age of two, because if people do something day in, day out, or year in, year out—or five years in, five years out for voting—they are encouraged to keep doing it, and that would be the case for voting. We all know that one reason why the Government have chosen not to touch some issues that would affect pensioners—they are not affected by the bedroom tax or cuts to council tax benefits—is the fact that people of pensionable age are more likely to vote than young people. I do not think that anyone in this place wilfully ignores young people, but we have to recognise that, beneath our national party strategists doing endless work through Mosaic and number-crunching, there is a ruthless look at how people vote. Bringing in votes for people at 16 or 17 could make a big difference to how young people are listened to up and down the country.

[Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend is making some powerful arguments, and she will know that I very much support the move to give the vote to 16 and 17-year-olds in such a referendum. She made an interesting point about whether there is consensus among 16 and 17-year-olds about having the vote. Does she agree that, as these are matters of debate about where the world is going and what decisions need to be made, it is worth looking back to when women were first allowed to vote? There was no consensus among women at that time about whether they should have the vote, but the argument was won, and it was viewed as being in the national interest. No one wants to turn back the clock now.

[Meg Hillier]

My hon. Friend’s good contribution included an interesting point about intergenerational accountability. It is our generation that is making decisions on behalf of the nation about the future—about climate change, whether to go to war and so forth—and our decisions will substantially affect the next generation. Is it right for that generation to be denied a vote?

[Mr Sheerman]

Is my hon. Friend aware that this country has been castigated for allowing young people—as young as 15 or 16—to join the armed forces? Does she not realise that it is the protection of children and childhood that so many of us value, and that that is why we do not want to bring the age of becoming an adult down to 16?

[Meg Hillier]

Yet 16-year-olds pay tax and can get married, and 17-year-olds can drive. Young people can join the Labour party at 15—[Interruption.] I am advised that they can join the Conservatives at 14, so perhaps we should have a discussion with the leader of our party about that. My own children make decisions and get support when they seek advice, and they are keen to be actively engaged, even when they are under the age of 16. I believe that we take more and more decisions in which young people should be involved.

[Mr Sheerman]

It is shrinking childhood.

[Meg Hillier]

I hear what my hon. Friend suggests, but we could equally look at it as aligning adulthood with the age of marriage and, indeed, military service. People can join the military at 16, but they will not be on the front line until they are 18.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Williamson]

Does my hon. Friend agree that if the voting age were reduced, it would act as a spur to the education system to ensure that there was better teaching in our schools about the importance of democracy and the civic duty to exercise the right to vote? Does she agree that our children need a political education to enable them to participate in our democracy?

[Meg Hillier]

Yes, I have made that very point. All of us in the Chamber have called the Secretary of State for Education to account, and no doubt even he would be keen to ensure that education about democracy was filtering down to our local schools through the national framework. We ask a lot of our schools, but it is important to develop that area of education, and it is right for us to provide an imperative to develop it. Frankly, if something is good enough for the Scots, it is good enough for Hackney’s 16 and 17-year-olds and those from London, England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Let me touch on some of the other amendments in the group. We have spent an awful lot of time discussing Gibraltar, so you will be glad to know, Madam Deputy Speaker, that I am not planning to discuss the 20,000 votes of the Gibraltarians, albeit not because that is unimportant. My hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes) has tabled significant amendments about British citizens and residents and their right to vote, and I feel strongly about this issue. When I was a Minister, I spent a lot of time dealing with not only issues affecting the UK, but European issues. During my three years as a Minister, I had quite a lot of contact with British citizens in Spain who were interested in and concerned about policies. I was the Minister responsible for identity cards, and those British citizens in Spain were among the greatest cheerleaders for those cards and wanted to be early adopters of the scheme. They have a strong interest in what is going on in their mother country and are keen to have a vote.

If we want to be fair in this referendum, we must unpick the Government's muddle. Why have they chosen the parliamentary boundaries rather than the local government boundaries, which will be used in the referendum in Scotland? There is a confusing message about who is a voter in this country.

My constituency is one of the most multicultural in the country, as well as one of the youngest, so Hackney is certainly up there at the top of what I like to think of as the chart of achievement. I have a large number of European and African constituents, as well as people with leave to remain and naturalised British citizens. Many of those people can vote in different elections, but there is often confusion about in which elections they can vote. Overall, the message from today’s debate is that we must be clearer about who has the right to vote.

Ultimately, in a European election, it is important that those from the wider European arena have the chance to vote. For instance, a French person living in Britain can vote for an MEP either where they live or where they are from—they have that choice. In this case, they would not have that choice. They would not be able to vote in this referendum, despite their links to Europe—this is obviously a European issue as well as a British issue—and to the UK.

I fully support amendment 45, which would enfranchise all those entitled to vote in European elections, including EU citizens. I feel very sore that I cannot vote in the Scottish referendum, as I am a British citizen with strong views about Scotland’s remaining part of the UK so that we stand united as a group of nations in Europe and the world. I do not get a say on that, and I think that that a similar anomaly will occur with this referendum.

On amendment 47, I feel that it is only fair that British citizens living in EU member states should get a say. As I said, I have had contact with those citizens abroad, and they feel that they are British even though they have chosen to live in another part of the EU. They have not gone to Timbuktu; they live in the political and economic union of which we are part. They are EU citizens, but feel that they are British EU citizens wherever they live. We are all EU citizens and we must see the issue in its EU context.

There are good reasons why many of those people would be important voters, and why 16 and 17-year-olds should be voting to support our membership of the EU. Although there is a need for some reform, as I saw at first hand during three years of negotiating on behalf of the British Government in the EU, there are huge benefits to our being part of Europe, especially with regard to justice and home affairs measures. We therefore need to ensure that all people who should have a vote get a vote.

I will not go into those benefits in enormous detail, Madam Deputy Speaker, because I fear your opprobrium if I go too far off the subject, but let us consider some of them. The much-discussed European arrest warrant, for all its faults, still provides major protection across Europe. I commend the Select Committee on Home Affairs for its report that considered all such issues, particularly the European arrest warrant. Without the warrant, we would need 27 separate treaties with EU member states to deal with the problem. It is important that we get the franchise right so that people can vote on such an important issue.

There is also a benefit from the European Union criminal records information system. People repeatedly worry when employing people from an EU member state that does not have our ability to check criminal records, which we do through our vetting and barring scheme, as they are not sure who they are getting. That information system is one way that the situation is being improved through European co-operation. If we cannot opt back into that system, it will be a real concern. I do not want to confuse the debate by going into the opt-ins and opt-outs on justice and home affairs, but those are big issues that affect and benefit Britain. Similarly, the Schengen information system—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. The hon. Lady is drifting considerably away from the subject. Occasionally saying, “That is why it is important to broaden the franchise,” is not keeping her comments in order. I would be grateful if she would refer specifically to the amendments, rather than the wider debate.

[Meg Hillier]

As I hinted, Madam Deputy Speaker, I suspected that I would be tempted to drift away. Thank you for reining me in, as my natural enthusiasm for this subject overtook me.

It is important that young people should have the chance to vote on these vital issues. British citizens living abroad should also have that chance to vote, because they will be affected by Britain’s opt-out, wherever they are living in the EU. EU citizens living in Britain also should have the chance to vote. I hope that I have made my points clear. Notwithstanding my concerns that a vote to remove Britain from the EU would be a great mistake, if we are to go down the route of having a referendum, we must ensure that it is fair and that the franchise is as wide as is reasonable to ensure that nobody feels excluded or cut out from this important decision.

[Mr Thomas]

It is a genuine pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier). We have had a really interesting debate, with a helpful opening contribution from the hon. Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell), who is not in his place at the moment, and similarly helpful contributions from my hon. Friends the Members for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman), for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty), for Ilford South (Mike Gapes) and for Glasgow North East (Mr Bain) and the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood). Indeed, the Minister’s contribution was enlightening on some things, although not on others. Of course, there was the short but rather special contribution from the hon. Member for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon), too.

I shall speak to amendment 63, in my name, and to amendments 80 to 82, in the names of the hon. Members for Stockton South (James Wharton) and for Romford. These amendments relate to the electoral arrangements for the people of Gibraltar in the proposed referendum. I welcome the fact that Government Members have belatedly taken steps to address this rather glaring hole in their proposals. An apology might have been in order on behalf of the Conservative party, as it was a rather astonishing omission for Government Members to forget the people of Gibraltar in the referendum equation. Indeed, as the Bill’s promoter and Conservative Members consulted so few people before the Bill popped out of Lynton Crosby’s office, I suppose that I should not be at all surprised that the people of Gibraltar were not consulted before the Bill saw the light of day.

Perhaps this is not the only such occasion that Government Members have allowed the people of Gibraltar to slip their minds, but at least, thanks to the contributions of my hon. Friends the Members for Wolverhampton North East (Emma Reynolds), for Ilford South and for Huddersfield and the hon. Member for Cheltenham, this issue was addressed in Committee. Sadly, despite being awakened in Committee to the concern about the omission of the Gibraltarians from the Bill’s franchise, the Minister for Europe and, indeed, the Bill’s promoter have been silent on this problem in the intervening weeks. So it is only now, thankfully, at this the eleventh hour, that it seems that Government Members have seen the light and are prepared to address this anomaly.