European Union Referendum Bill

Debate between Tom Tugendhat and Peter Grant

Thursday 18th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Tom Tugendhat]

The hon. and learned Lady has greater knowledge of that subject than I do, but I do not know whether her knowledge is greater or less than that of my hon. Friend the Member for South Leicestershire. I will leave it to them to debate that.

[Peter Grant]

The hon. Gentleman has listed a lot of things that we can choose to do to set our position in society. Does he agree that a significant number of people—citizens of these nations—have chosen to surrender the right to vote in order to take a seat, often at the request of Her Majesty’s Government, in the other place? How can he justify giving them the chance to undo what should have been a permanent decision by giving them the right to vote, but not giving the right to vote to people who have lived here for 25 or 30 years?

[Tom Tugendhat]

The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point. I will leave it to greater minds than mine to decide whether noble Lords have made such a decision or whether they have simply chosen to access a different seat and therefore surrendered on one, but not every, electoral term. They do not rescind their right to vote universally; they merely rescind their right to vote in general elections, because they already hold a seat in Parliament.

Citizenship is not something to be added or taken away arbitrarily, and that is what we are talking about when it comes to the enfranchisement for the referendum. It is not simply a tactical choice; it is the act of citizenship. In constituency cases, I have been sad to hear time and again people think that they have rights that they do not. Concepts of “common law this” or “common law that” do not exist, and in this case there is no such thing as common law citizenship. If people wish to have citizenship, the laws of citizenship, immigration and naturalisation cover it. If people wish to have citizenship in Her Majesty’s great United Kingdom, they have a choice to ask for it. There are laws that allow them to do so and rules that set out at what stage they can or cannot apply.

As people move through the process of residency in our great kingdom, there are various moments at which they may or may not choose to take that citizenship, and there are consequences that go with that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Peter Grant]

Does that mean that those of us on the SNP Benches who never have and never will choose to be British will not be allowed to vote in the referendum?

[Tom Tugendhat]

The hon. Gentleman makes an entertaining point. The fact hat he was born here and has residency here is what gives him citizenship.

As well as the question of citizenship in the constitutional sense, there is also the issue of the referendum’s legitimacy. It would be wrong if we were suddenly to change the deal to benefit those who have a specific interest in doing so. I refer specifically to the hundreds and thousands of migrant workers who affect various states of the debate. We all know that there were some people who tried to get into this House whose principal argument was based on immigration. If we force ourselves to enfranchise those whom many people would not regard as British, the terms of the debate would be changed halfway through. I argue very strongly that that would be unwise and that it would call into question the legitimacy of the referendum itself. We could find ourselves with hundreds of thousands of European Union citizens who have not made the choice to become British citizens.