European Union (Referendum) Bill

Steve McCabe Excerpts

Friday 8th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Martin Horwood]

Heaven forfend that I should question the selection of amendments once again, having been appropriately chastised at the beginning of the debate.

I apologise to the hon. Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes) if I suggested that he was being frivolous. I am sure that that is not true. I am sure that he was well-meaning in tabling the amendments. What I was highlighting was that those of us who are on the pro-European side of the debate and who want to move on from arcane discussions about the minutiae of referendums to the real issue, which is whether Britain should be in or out, do ourselves no favours if we run the risk of being seen as putting forward anything that might be interpreted as frivolous. If I may put it in those guarded terms, I hope that he will respect my slight warning that we are getting close to dangerous territory.

The one amendment that I will single out is amendment 44, which raises the issue of the voting age. We debated that matter in Committee, but it was not fully resolved. I want to put on the record the long-standing Liberal Democrat commitment to extend democratic voting rights to those of 16 or above. It is important to young people and to the future of our democracy that people who are younger than 18 are given the vote and are engaged in political debate, if possible while still at school. Yesterday, I was at Balcarras school, which is an outstanding comprehensive school in Cheltenham. I had a long, gruelling debate with the sixth-formers, who were really engaged in the issues. It must be a frustration to such well-informed observers of the political scene that they cannot vote. We should take every available opportunity to advance the arguments for votes at 16 and this is a good opportunity to do so.

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

Is the hon. Gentleman as perplexed as I am that the Government can justify reducing the voting age for a referendum in Scotland on the basis that the young people there will be determining the long-term future of their country in deciding whether it should be in or out of the UK, but will deny them that privilege in a referendum that will determine the long-term future of the entire UK in deciding whether we should be in or out of Europe? Where is the logic and consistency in that?

[Martin Horwood]

The hon. Gentleman is drawing me into commenting on the Scottish referendum, which is rather dangerous territory, so I will leave it at saying that I think that votes should be extended to 16-year-olds.

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[Mike Gapes]

I agree, which was why I tabled a series of amendments relating to the overseas territories. We must also consider Crown dependencies such as Guernsey and Jersey.

[Steve McCabe]

I am curious about what would happen if the people of Gibraltar voted to remain part of the EU, but the rest of the UK voted to opt out. If Gibraltar then found itself in conflict with Spain, where would we appeal for international support for Gibraltar? What would be the EU’s position?

[Mike Gapes]

My guess is that if we had left the EU, the rest of the EU would not necessarily regard us as a country to which it owed any favours, to put it mildly. Presumably we could appeal to the United Nations, but given the problems we have had in the so-called Special Committee on Decolonisation in the UN over the years, and the way in which countries such as Argentina have behaved with regard to other British overseas territories, we would be in a difficult position. The people of Gibraltar would be in a very difficult position, because if they wished to stay in the European Union, they would presumably have to find some way of getting Spain to sponsor their membership of the EU. Britain would have deserted and betrayed them.

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[Mike Gapes]

My hon. Friend has concluded. As an aside, perhaps the solution for the Government would be to appoint the hon. Member for Stockton South (James Wharton) as a PPS for today so that such difficulties could be avoided. Perhaps that could be conveyed rapidly to the powers that be.

[Steve McCabe]

I want to return one last time to the point that my hon. Friend raised about Gibraltar and the situation involving Spain. He said that if the people of Gibraltar wanted to be in the EU but the rest of Britain did not, we might have to appeal to Spain, with whom we would also have some difficulties. He suggested that we would be driven into the arms of Spain. Has he had an opportunity to talk about that to the hon. Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell), who moved new clause 1, because he has clearly not foreseen that as one of the consequences of his proposal?

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[Steve McCabe]

May I take my hon. Friend back to the point he made about the Members of the other place having the right to vote? That raises the concern that several of us have had from the outset about the wisdom of addressing such a constitutionally far-reaching measure in a private Member’s Bill. In particular, has he sought any advice on the implications of the Bill’s consideration in the other place? Will Members there have to declare an interest or say how they intend to vote in such a referendum? Will they have to disbar themselves from taking part in the debate? As far as I can see, this is new constitutional territory.

[Mike Gapes]

It is difficult enough for me to contemplate the implications of rulings from the Chair in this Chamber without tying myself in knots over how the Lord Speaker would deal with such issues should they be raised with her in the other place. It would be best to put that issue on the agenda for the other place if it comes to consider this Bill. It will have to deal with that issue at that point. I do not have a view on or any detailed knowledge of how it would be dealt with at that time.

I want to be clear about the important differences between the amendments I have tabled. Amendment 43 would allow people with the right of abode in the United Kingdom to vote in this referendum, because it would affect them. Would they be expelled from the European Union? Would they no longer have the right to travel freely to the 27 other member states?

As I have already said, amendment 45 concerns those who are entitled to vote as electors in a European Parliament election, such as all the residents of the UK who are citizens of Austria, Latvia, Estonia, Italy, Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, the Czech Republic or Slovakia—I will not list all the other 27 member states, but there are a lot of them. Some of those people gain the full benefit of our education system and contribute to our society in many ways, just as British people living in other European countries benefit from their systems. We have seen recent reports that say that more British people are on welfare benefits in other EU countries than people from other EU countries living in the UK on benefits. If we were to leave the European Union, what would happen to those British people’s right to reside in those other European countries and benefit from the facilities, social security systems and other amenities of those countries? These are issues of great importance, but British people living in other countries would not be allowed to vote in the referendum, and nor would European Union citizens living in this country. That would be wrong, because the decision would have profound, long-term implications for them. That is why we need proper parliamentary scrutiny of it, which we are beginning here today. I hope that we will be able to continue it over the coming weeks and months.

Amendment 46 relates to the local government franchise, which is the basis for the Scottish referendum. In my opinion, there are no strong arguments against that. I have already covered amendment 47, which addresses the issue of those British citizens resident in any of the member states of the European Union.

Amendment 48 refers to the rights of prisoners to vote. Interesting statements have been made recently by the Government’s senior law officers, but the position is confused on whether some—if not all—prisoners will be given the right to vote. The Bill is silent on that issue, but if the Government’s position changes in the next few months—despite the clear vote of this House against giving votes to prisoners—we would need to discuss it in some detail. There would be implications if the European Court maintains its judgment that some prisoners should be given the right to vote, not just for parliamentary elections but for the franchise for any referendum on leaving the European Union. That is why I have tabled the amendment.

Amendment 8 would clarify the basis on which people would be able to vote. At present, overseas voters can register under the 15-year rule using the address of the local authority area in which they had lived previously. The amendment would allow people to register to vote at a British embassy or high commission. It is deplorable that only 20,000 people living elsewhere in the European Union have the entitlement to vote under the 15-year rule. Some 1.4 million British people live in other European Union countries and we should be trying to find ways to encourage them to register. To reduce the bureaucratic hurdles, the easiest way to do that would be to allow people in Spain, say, to contact the British embassy in Madrid; people in Portugal to go to Lisbon; people in France to go to Paris; and so on. Similarly, if we were to change the franchise to allow British citizens living anywhere in the world to take part in the referendum, we should allow them to go to the British high commissions in Delhi or other countries of the Commonwealth.

I have touched on amendment 44 and I know that other hon. Members will wish to speak on it. My hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) mentioned the age at which people can vote in the Scottish separatist referendum, and the UK referendum should be held on the same basis. Young people have a great interest in the future of the European Union. I would hope, therefore, that they would be able to take part.

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[Mr Bain]

I rise to support amendment 69. I would also like to comment on other amendments, including those tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes).

Some important points have been raised about the franchise. The first I would take up is the one about EU nationals. I have a regular correspondence with a Danish constituent in the Hogganfield part of my constituency who is married to a UK national, and has the right to vote in a Scottish Parliament election, a local government election in Scotland and European elections in this country. He will have the right to vote in the Scottish referendum, but under the Bill as drafted by the hon. Member for Stockton South (James Wharton) he will not have the right to vote in this referendum.

That throws up an interesting anomaly. We know that one of the implications of the Scottish referendum is that Scotland would no longer be an EU member state. Therefore, my constituent is being allowed the opportunity to vote once on whether to stay in the EU, but in the event of Scotland’s voting to stay in the UK he would be denied the opportunity to vote a second time on whether to stay part of the EU as a citizen of the UK. Such anomalies show the mess that the hon. Gentleman and the Government are getting themselves into with the Bill as currently drafted.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South mentioned prisoners’ right to vote. Of course none of us in the House wants prisoners who have been convicted of serious offences or given long sentences to be given the right to vote, but an important point in relation to the franchise of prisoners in referendums came up in the discussion about the Scottish referendum. It is regrettable that we have not been joined by the Attorney-General because we would have benefited from his good counsel on that point. There is case law from the European Court of Human Rights in 2008. That says that article 3 of protocol 1, which deals with the right to vote and participate in democratic votes, says that that right is qualified, is limited to the choice of the legislature and does not apply to the election of a Head of State or indeed to referendums.

[Steve McCabe]

I wonder whether my hon. Friend thinks it is also regrettable that we have not been joined this morning by the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Mark Simmonds), who has responsibility for British overseas territories. He could have dealt with some of the issues that my hon. Friend has raised. Much as I love to hear the Minister for Europe’s comments, he seemed slightly reluctant to engage with those issues in his contribution.

[Mr Bain]

My hon. Friend is clairvoyant in picking up that ambience from the Minister for Europe. I hope that we will hear more from hon. Members who are willing to comment on these issues later in the debate.