European Union (Referendum) Bill

Lord Triesman Excerpts

Friday 24th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Triesman (Lab)]

My Lords, this is a vital issue and I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong, and others for introducing the amendment. So that there is no doubt about it, let me start by saying that I fully support the amendment. I think it would produce a question that is far fairer. As the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, described it, it would produce a level playing field. That is extremely important, given the significance of the decision that we are being asked to take.

I received a letter from a sixth-former complaining about the speech that I made at Second Reading. She said that there was no point in us rehearsing the different arguments for and against the European Union, as that was something that would come out in a referendum, and that the real issue, as some noble Lords have characterised it on Second Reading and today, is about democracy itself, the chance for the people to have their say. The noble Lord, Lord Armstrong, made the point at the very beginning that his amendment would have no impact on that democratic intention.

The fact that we need to address, if I may say so, is what we really mean by “democracy”. It is not just a word, it is a process which we intend to serve—a better and higher purpose than any autocracy could achieve. It is about how we do things to get a result; it is a process that should lead to a decision. That requires clarity on the issue to be decided. The issue should be capable of being decided beyond doubt and beyond ambiguity, and this decision is a very profound one, so we had better make sure that when the country is invited to take the decision, it can get it right.

I do not believe that there is ever a Bill that is so unimpeachable that it cannot or should not be changed. The noble Lord, Lord Wigley, made the same point a few moments ago. It is not an appeal to democracy to say that we should not try to change the Bill; indeed, I think that that would be a rather disrespectful silence, as far as the people of the United Kingdom are concerned. The role of this House, as several noble Lords have said, is not to embrace expediency in these circumstances but to ensure that we have got the ethics right in providing the people of this country with the decision. It is true that we are not elected, but that does not in these circumstances mean that we are not relevant. I invite the House to embrace its relevance.

In May 2015, any party can say in its manifesto and put it to the people that there will be a referendum in 2017, should it wish. The mechanism to get that legislation through can unquestionably be achieved between May 2015 and 2017, quite aside from the possibility that noble Lords have canvassed of the Government, or at least a part of the Government, making time in the House of Commons to reconsider any amendment that comes from this House. It is very important that there should be a reconsideration, because it is conceivable—just out of prudence, I do not rule out the possibility—that somebody may conclude that it is important to have the referendum well before 2017. A bad set of results this May, with UKIP apparently doing better, may very well persuade a Prime Minister who has regarded this as a moving target all the time, to move the target again, if he believes that it is politically the right thing to do. I understand that these political pressures come on people.

It would be quite wrong for this House not to challenge the Bill. It would be quite wrong because it is not a party point; it is a point about the interests of the people of the United Kingdom being served fully and properly. The eminence of those who have tabled the amendment shows just how significant and broadly spread the support is. It is sometimes a courtesy to refer to colleagues in this House as being very eminent, conjuring that up as a turn of phrase, but if we look at the genuine experience of those who have tabled the amendment and the significance of the roles that they have played in this country, we can see just how important it is to take their views with the greatest seriousness. It is the basis of the Electoral Commission’s view. It is the basis on which the Select Committee on the Constitution has given advice. I know that I have only been here about 10 years, but I cannot recall circumstances in which all the advice of that kind has simply been ignored.

The fact that the Electoral Commission made two suggestions is not a reflection of its inability to decide, but an observation that either would be far better than the proposal in front of us. It invites us to do what we are supposed to do in political life: to take a decision. The one thing that is not in the Electoral Commission’s mind is to fall back on the worst of all the possible solutions, rather than to choose one of the better ones, as the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong, to the great help of this House, has done. Indeed, the Electoral Commission is not entirely disregarded in the Bill. When it is useful to refer to it, in Clause 3(1), lines 6 to 7, and Clause 3(3), lines 14 to 15, those supporting the Bill find it very convenient to rely on the Electoral Commission. Let us rely on it properly for all the advice it gives, if we may.

I will mention Scotland briefly—but not, curiously, in the context of the referendum to be held on a far more sensible question than the one that Alex Salmond originally proposed. I will briefly mention the referendum which led to devolution in Scotland. It was a very big process. There was a constitutional conference, a major campaign and a fair question. It took a long time and it was done very thoroughly. We should reflect for a moment on the reason that was so. I recall the words repeated time and again during that process, because I believe that they are central to a decision as large as the one that this House is being invited to take. What was aimed for was that the people of Scotland should come to what was called a determination of their settled will. They were going to make a change where it was critical that they had fully explored and understood the whole of it and had settled on another solution for the politics of Scotland which would not be challenged or pulled apart in a matter of weeks, after people had decided that it might not have been the right thing to do.

The noble Lord, Lord Phillips, made the point about encouraging a larger number of people to vote, and I share that view, but even more important—I hope that he will not feel that I am making a contrast here, because I am not trying to—was the fact that the people of Scotland would know precisely what they had decided and whether they wanted to live with it. That was what was most important. This is a fundamental constitutional change and also needs certainty.

A number of comments have been made about the confusing nature of the words, the fact that they are tilted and the fact that they are ambiguous. I will not repeat those arguments; that would be tedious for the House and inappropriate. I know this: often, people ask me whether I think that something is the case. I may think it, but it does not always give rise to a purposive decision to change it. We go through all sorts of ambiguities in the cognitive process before we conclude that something has to be changed in a particular way. This question really will not do in arriving at a settled view. I ask those on the Conservative Benches to think again and to accept the amendment. It is always painful to change a position in politics, but it may none the less be right to change position on this occasion.

Finally, of course, the House of Commons will get its way. The Conservative Party, which is dominant in the House of Commons in this respect, can most certainly make the time for everybody to think again.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

When the noble Lord says that the House of Commons can act accordingly, can he give us an assurance that if the Bill is amended and goes to the House of Commons, the Labour Party in the House of Commons will be pressing for more time to consider the Bill?

[Lord Triesman]

My Lords, any time that I have control over the affairs of the House of Commons would probably be regarded—

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Triesman]

My Lords, I am not sidestepping the question. The number of times that noble Lords on all sides of the House have said that the affairs of the House of Commons are determined by the House of Commons, and that we are not the right people to try to do it, is a statement about the proper constitutional relationship that we have with them. That is not a trivial point; I would not presume to do that with the elected House.

I wanted to say that the pressures to act precipitately and move repeatedly, as I think Mr Cameron has, are not the right way. We will have to live with this Bill and it had better be the right Bill. I believe that this change will give it at least a chance of being the right Bill.

[The Senior Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government & Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Warsi) (Con)]

My Lords, the House has now been sitting for more than two hours and I will therefore try to deal with the amendments in this group with some general summing-up statements. A number of issues were raised today about the question in the Bill, and whether it is one which the public will understand and which will allow the people to have a say—an opportunity to decide and to reconnect with politics, as my noble friend Lord Phillips said.

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[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

My Lords, I, too, express my support for the noble Lord, Lord Wigley. The Bill as drafted has not taken account of the Scottish referendum in any way whatever. That is why there are other amendments in my name in relation to eligibility to vote for 16 and 17 year-olds and in relation to the count, and a number of other matters.

I take the opportunity to say now to the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, because I did not want to interrupt his fine reply to the previous amendment, that at the same stage in the consideration of the Equality (Titles) Bill, proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, nearly 90 amendments were tabled, and in exactly the same stage of the passage of the Bill proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Steel, to further reform the House of Lords, 160 amendments were tabled. Therefore, 80 amendments is not an excessive number, and it ill behoves him and others to criticise Members of the House of Lords for tabling amendments that seek to improve a very bad Bill, as the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, has done and I have done.

[Lord Triesman]

My Lords, this is a helpful amendment, and I have only one very brief comment to make. We have had a number of proposals coming through this and the other House over a period of time that have changed our unwritten constitution in quite significant ways. It is very difficult to know how they all mesh together, because they are almost never spoken of in terms of taking a helicopter view of the whole set of proposals. That probably leads towards the laws of unintended consequences on occasions because we do not have a holistic view. It would be incredibly hard before the Scottish referendum, allowing for one of the possible outcomes of that referendum, to make any intelligent decisions in this area. I do not think that we would be thanked by the people of Scotland, as it might very well be that they would feel that it took an element of their choice away from them, in the full sense of a choice about their future in Europe, in relation to the currency, and so on. It is a very sensible proposal, and I hope that the House will give it proper consideration.

[Lord Dobbs]

My Lords, dates are very difficult, are they not? We have this particular amendment, which talks about October 2014, and other amendments that suggest 2020. We have talked about the Scottish referendum, yet at other times in debates on the Bill we have heard that we cannot have this or that date because of what is going on in Germany, Brussels, and so forth. Dates are difficult, and I acknowledge that. There is no ideal date; it is a bit like trying to find the right time to suggest that your wife should start a diet. There is never going to be a right time for that, which is why—

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[Lord Triesman]

My Lords, I start by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, my noble friend Lord Grenfell, and the noble Lords, Lord Roper and Lord Bowness, for tabling this amendment. As things stand today, I think that the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, and others know that I believe the amendment is absolutely right.

During the earlier debate, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, made what I thought to be a very significant speech. He said that, in determining the date, the reality of politics was that it ought to be shaped by the circumstances that obtain at the time. I did not agree with his conclusion, as he will be aware, but the case that he put was very strong and I suspect that it will be understood much more widely than perhaps some in the House have suggested.

Your Lordships’ House has said that the general public will not understand it if we do not move with electrifying speed to a conclusion. I think that people understand that there is a significant job to be done, that it has to be done, that corners will not be cut—they will not thank us for cutting corners—and that it will not happen overnight. If we are really serious about the relationships that we have in Europe in relation to our economy and so on, there will be serious work to be done. That can be said very reasonably to people. My experience is that, although some people will feel that it is irritating to have to wait, broadly speaking the people of the United Kingdom understand the seriousness of the issue and will provide the time for proper work to be done. I think that we should start from that point.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, said that this issue will be shaped by real circumstances. We know some of the circumstances quite well but we know almost nothing of others. I should like to set out the balance of the two, but because a number of other noble Lords have done so and it does not need a lot of repetition, I shall do so quickly. These two sets of circumstances need some analysis. Over time, and perhaps at subsequent stages of the Bill, working out what those balances are may very well lead us to further conclusions about the timing, but I started by saying that this is a good and sensible resolution and I repeat that.

What do we know? First, as a number of noble Lords have said, we will hold the presidency in 2017. That is precisely when we would want the United Kingdom to lead European Union debates, and I think that we will be in a very difficult position in trying to do that. There will be any number of significant debates at that time: debates about the completion of the market provisions in services; debates about the EU budget; and debates about what I hope will emerge as the agreements on trade with North America and with the MINT countries—Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey. All those will be in play.

There will be a significant series of debates. Anybody who has been a Minister and has had to handle the relationship with Europe during a presidency will know that those are occasions when you want the deepest and most genuine support from your colleagues in carrying things forward. I do not want to plead any special link because there are many around this Chamber with much more experience but they will also know that you have not only to talk to others but to talk for others, and they must trust you. That was the case in the discussions that Europe had on some of the worst internal wars in Africa, on the aid programme, on the difficulties with Iran and on the stimulus to new trade agreements with South America, which ended up with President Lula’s state visit and a significant change in the trading relationships with a number of South American countries. In all those areas, the European nations need to feel that the nation holding the presidency is with them, not conflicted with them, and that it is eager to deliver some of the fundamental outcomes.

Secondly—I shall not repeat this point at any length—there will be major elections in the core European nations of Germany and France. There are probably elections in other countries as well but those in Germany and France will be very significant. It is unlikely that either will focus on the issues that we are raising with the attention that we would want—the French most certainly will not. The objective circumstances in France and the character of the French economy at this time will tell you what that election is going to be about and how it is going to be fought. I am not saying anything that reveals an unusual political point: we know what the French election will be fought over and what it will be like, and it will not be about its negotiations with us.

We are about half way through the process of reforming the Central Bank: gathering core sums to sustain it and making arrangements on sovereign debt, which still remains a significant problem. These are monumental tasks and their outcomes may well provide circumstances in which our own Referendum Act 2011 will require us to take decisions about those outcomes. That possibility may not be avoided. We cannot run all these processes at the same time.

We are not in the euro and have no wish to join it, but the Chancellor has been right to say that we do not and should not take a split second of comfort from any continuing fragility in the currency used by many of our major trading partners—and, indeed, on the island of Ireland, by one which has a common land border with us and with which we have significant trade.

There is no way around the known fact that more and more businesses thinking of investing in the United Kingdom are asking due diligence questions about it. That pressure is building up in business. People have told me about the inward flows of capital denying it, but I am not talking about capital inflows to take over large volumes of super prime property in the centre of London or some of its trophy assets—that is not the point. There is of course a big inflow because London is so attractive for those reasons, but we are talking about people who are investing in or starting up operational businesses, which is what we will need if we are to sustain the economy, see it grow and see more people in employment, and that looks like it has been moving in a helpful direction.

Those are the things we know but there are a number of things we cannot and do not know. We do not know at what stage the repair of the United Kingdom economy and its banks and their balance sheets will be in 2017 and it will alarm people with a wide variety of political perspectives to understand where we will be at that point. Many people will feel that it is a lottery, and they are probably right objectively.

We will not know at that stage how negotiations have gone. As noble Lords have said, the process started late and there is no clarity at the moment on our objectives. Of course, the objectives could be listed: I tried to list some of them at Second Reading because they include a number of serious matters, and many people, including my noble friend Lord Kinnock, have made that point. It has been said in the debate, and it is true, that the four-part process towards a treaty means that everyone must agree, and everyone else must agree everything. We do not know how the process will play out on these significant matters.

Any agreements are unlikely to have been ratified elsewhere, another point that has been made. A promise of change is not the same as having made a change, and if there is a treaty—and it is almost inevitable that the negotiations, if they are successful, will end up in a treaty—it will provide for referenda in a number of other countries such as France, Ireland and elsewhere. A multilateral outcome with 27 starting positions will have to be brought to one on all substantive questions, and that proposition cannot be entertained on the timescale suggested.

We will not know the outcome of the election in France; Germany has a coalition Government and there may or may not be a continuing coalition or a different coalition. We will be asked, therefore, before we know the outcomes—as the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, hinted—what we should do. I do not think that the people of the United Kingdom will readily consent to being asked for a conditional decision which, if everything goes pear-shaped, they will be asked to reverse.

Even if a treaty is negotiated in time, it is not clear that there will be no movement forwards and backwards on competences because, after all, it is a negotiation. People will be asking us for things in the same way that we will be asking them for things. In those circumstances, we come back to the fundamental point about the 2011 Act. The Labour Party supported that Act. On a point of clarity for the House: we supported it, we continue to support it and, should those provisions be needed, which I think is very likely, we would continue to do so.

On balance, if you had to pick the optimal bad date, you would pick 2017. If you looked at two decades and tried really hard, you would pick 2017. It is not a date that commends itself on any grounds. For a negotiator for the United Kingdom, it is the equivalent of what is known in football, where I have spent a little of my life, as a hospital pass. Everyone knows you are not going to get the ball, you have lost the initiative, and you will probably get your leg broken. It really is not in any circumstances an approach that makes sense. As my noble friend Lord Kinnock said, it is a weapon in the negotiation, but we have to ask this: who is the weapon pointed at and where will the munitions strike? The answer is: probably us.

At Second Reading the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, asked, “If not now, when?” It is a fair question, as I thought on the day. But in the interests of the United Kingdom, whatever the outcome—in or out of the European Union—one answer is clear. Whatever the date is, it really ought not to be 2017. It is a “leave the EU” date. That, I am afraid, is all it is.

I want to tidy up very briefly on one or two amendments in the group. I do not think that Amendments 13 and 14 are possible because they are simply testing provisions, but I want to comment on Amendment 17. I do not think that it can be a Secretary of State. If this is a decision that has to be taken for the whole of the United Kingdom, it must be taken by the Prime Minister as the Minister with supreme authority for the whole country. But what if there is another coalition? By 31 December 2016—it is important to reflect on that date—it may be that the Prime Minister is the leader of the largest party in the House of Commons, but is not the leader of a Government that altogether are prepared to consent to the date. That is another really large unknown which cannot be resolved in this House today. I do not know who will win that election. Of course it has to be possible that we will not, but I do not concede that point today. It may well be that no one wins it outright and that there is another coalition. I could then assume—I am sure I am quite wrong in doing so—that a Conservative Government would find themselves saying the same things that the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, has been saying today: that they cannot get their way because the party with which they are in coalition, for some reason or other although it seems perfectly intelligible to me, will not co-operate.

In all of this, the reality is that the wrong date has been picked. I do not play the lottery, but when I watch people playing it they look in despair at the numbers they chose which do not turn out to be the winning numbers. That is how we will look at 2017.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

My Lords, before the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, gets up to speak, perhaps I may say one thing. I will be brief. The noble Baroness knows that I have the highest possible regard for her, but she is playing a very sticky wicket today. I do not want to make her life more difficult, but I say for future amendments that it is extremely difficult for there to be a Government position on this Bill. If there is a Conservative position, the Conservative Benches are behind the government Front Bench—unless, as in the Leveson debate, we might have two views on every group of amendments. That is what coalition is all about. If there are not two views, I think it is more appropriate for the views of the Conservatives to be given from the Conservative Back Benches. However, that has nothing to do with the noble Baroness.

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[Lord Triesman]

My Lords, when we debated earlier the level of confidence that people would have in the outcome of any referendum, I took the liberty of reminding the Committee of the kind of terminology that was used during the original Scottish referendum and, indeed, the whole process that led up to it. The idea of the settled will of any people must depend on it being a will that is expressed by an appreciable proportion of those people. There must be any number of us who have been involved in decisions where a very small number of people have taken them, often in gatherings called at inconvenient times and in inconvenient places, and have not felt even at that micro level that it was a reasonable way of proceeding. For those reasons, a threshold amendment has a great deal of merit. The biggest advantage is that in the following years people will draw the conclusion that it was an expression of views which commanded a significant number of people to take part and a significant proportion to vote in favour. It is a matter of confidence.

I suspect that noble Lords would not want to come back to the issue of the European Union again and again were it to be the case that the people of the United Kingdom decided that they wished to continue membership. Nothing is for ever, but we would want to feel that the matter had been settled for at least the period that it had been settled for in the past. No one could involve themselves in serious business plans or make plans about where they were going to live and draw their pensions in the character of the broader community in which they were going to do so. I therefore ask the House in a spirit that I hope will not be regarded as wrecking anything, but which is about securing the future in a more stable and happy frame of mind, to try to ensure that everyone who looks at the results says that a significant proportion of the population took part and a significant proportion of those who took part made the decision. That is where our confidence lies.

[Baroness Warsi]

My Lords, I speak as a government Minister and, as always, as a member of the Conservative Party. Perhaps I may express the Government’s view in relation to referendums. Their view is that referendum results should be determined by a simple majority, and we do not believe that thresholds apply. This is the approach taken in the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011 and follows the recommendation of the House of Lords Select Committee on the Constitution in its 2010 report, Referendums in the United Kingdom.

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[Lord Kilclooney (CB)]

My Lords, I can certainly answer that. I have been listening with interest, and Northern Ireland had not been mentioned until just now. I was wondering why our Scottish and Welsh colleagues were ignoring Northern Ireland in this context. However, I can confirm that the foreign language most spoken on a daily basis in Northern Ireland is Mandarin.

[Lord Triesman]

My Lords, my grasp of Mandarin is as extensive as my grasp of Welsh—I am very sorry to have to admit it. There are some languages I can do, but neither of those. The parity of value expressed by doing it in different languages seems an unanswerable objective. I suggest that the translations, which most of us can only accept on the face of it because we do not speak the languages, are provided by an authorised body, such as the Electoral Commission. In that way, the exactness of what is said is as reliable as it can be for everybody who does not speak the language because it has the assent of a completely outside body rather than one of us trying to translate. I could probably have a go at one or two translations—not of these languages—only to give rise to considerable confusion about my conjugation of German or French.

[Lord Dobbs]

My Lords, I thank noble Lords for that brief but culturally colourful debate. I wonder what my Welsh great-great-great-grandfather, who was a coal higgler, would have felt about what we are saying here today. Actually, he would have been astonished, because in those days his language would not have been given any consideration. I wish to confirm that it is absolutely not the intention in this Bill to treat Wales in anything like an inferior or secondary fashion. As my noble friend Lord Skelmersdale pointed out, Clause 1(5) makes provisions for a question in Welsh, and other provisions very clearly state that the job of making sure that the ballot paper is fair and valid is down to the Electoral Commission.

On that basis, and given the time that we are here, I entirely endorse the spirit of this amendment, but I do not think that it is necessary. I really think that the Bill already has enough provision to satisfy the main requirements, which are, of course, about Welsh, rather than Doric or the other languages that the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, has been talking about recently. As it relates to Wales, the Bill has enough in it to satisfy all those legitimate demands. On that basis, I ask him, particularly because of the late hour, to accept my apologies for a short summation and to withdraw his amendment.