International Human Rights Day
Natascha Engel Excerpts(8 years, 6 months ago)
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Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Natascha Engel)
Order. I am going to impose a time limit of eight minutes, and we will see how we get on.
Middle East
Natascha Engel Excerpts(8 years, 6 months ago)
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Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Further to the point of order that was raised earlier in the debate about the Prime Minister making a statement to the media without coming to the House, it appears from social media that the media have already been informed that we will be having a debate and vote on the issue of Syria in the House on Wednesday, immediately after Prime Minister’s Question Time. I wonder whether any Minister has had the courtesy to approach you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and explain that he or she would like to make an announcement to the House before briefing the press about when votes would take place.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Natascha Engel)
I have not received any confirmation or otherwise from a Minister, but I have been in the Chair for the whole of this time. I think that the usual procedure would be for a Minister, or the Leader of the House, to make a supplementary business statement. We must wait to see whether that happens, but so far nothing has been confirmed or otherwise.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Natascha Engel)
Order. Before I call the next speaker, let me say that quite a large number of Members who have withdrawn their names from the Speaker’s list, so I will raise the time limit to 10 minutes per Back-Bench contribution and we will see how we get on. I may have to drop the time again, but at the moment, I will leave it at 10 minutes.
European Union Referendum Bill
Natascha Engel Excerpts(8 years, 12 months ago)
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The Second Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Natascha Engel)
I must notify the Committee that amendment 51 is wrongly marked on the amendment paper as applying to line 16, whereas it should apply to line 17, and should therefore be listed after amendment 18. Therefore we begin with amendment 18 to clause 2.
Stephen Gethins (North East Fife) (SNP)
I beg to move amendment 18, in page 1, line 17, leave out from “electors” to the end of line 12 on page 2 and insert—
“at a local government election in any electoral area in Great Britain, or
(b) the persons who, on the date of the referendum, would be entitled to vote as electors at a local government election in any electoral area in Northern Ireland.”
This amendment extends the franchise in the referendum to EU nationals resident in the United Kingdom.
The Second Deputy Chairman
With this it will be convenient to take the following:
Amendment 51, in page 1, line 17, leave out “parliamentary” and insert “local government”.
The amendment would allow citizens of all countries of the European Union living in the UK and Gibraltar to vote in the referendum.
Amendment 1, in page 1, line 17, at end insert
“and persons who would be so entitled except for the fact that they will be aged 16 or 17 on the date on which the referendum is to be held”.
The amendment would entitle British citizens, qualifying Commonwealth citizens and citizens of the Republic of Ireland aged 16 and 17 to vote in the referendum.
Amendment 12, in page 2, line 9, after “Commonwealth citizens”, insert
“or citizens of the Republic of Ireland”
Amendment 2, in page 2, line 12, at end insert
“and persons who would be so entitled except for the fact that they will be aged 16 or 17 on the date on which the referendum is to be held”.
The amendment would entitle Commonwealth citizens aged 16 and 17 who would be entitled to vote in Gibraltar for elections to the European Parliament to vote in the referendum.
Amendment 19, in page 2, line 16, at end add—
‘(3) A person is entitled to vote in the referendum if, on the date on which the poll at the referendum is held, the person is aged 16 or over and registered in—
(a) the register of local government electors, or
(b) the register of young voters maintained under section (Register of young voters) for any such area.”
This amendment follows the Scottish independence referendum model for the franchise, which includes 16 and 17 year olds and EU nationals.
Amendment 52, in page 2, line 16, at end add—
‘(3) Notwithstanding the provisions of the Representation of the People Act 1983, as amended, or of any other statute, a British citizen resident overseas in a country within the European Union will be eligible:
(a) to register to vote and
(b) to vote in the referendum.
The amendment would entitle British citizens living in any country in the European Union to vote in the referendum irrespective of the time they have been resident overseas.
Clause 2 stand part.
New clause 2—
“Register of young voters
‘(1) For the purposes of this Act, each registration officer must prepare and maintain, for the officer‘s area, a register to be known as the register of young voters.
(2) The register must contain—
(a) the names of the persons appearing to the registration officer to be entitled to be registered in the register, and
(b) in relation to each person registered in it, the person’s—
(i) date of birth,
(ii) (except where otherwise provided by an applied enactment) qualifying address, and
(iii) voter number.
(3) Subsection (2) is subject to section 9B of the 1983 Representation of the People Act (anonymous registration).
(4) A person‘s qualifying address is the address in respect of which the person is entitled to be registered in the register.
(5) A person‘s voter number is such number (with or without any letters) as is for the time being allocated by the registration officer to the person for the purposes of the register.
(6) A person is entitled to be registered in the register of young voters for any area if, on the relevant date, the person—
(a) is not registered in the register of local government electors for the area,
(b) meets the requirements (apart from any requirement as to age) for registration in the register of local government electors for the area, and
(c) has attained the age of 16, or will attain that age on or before the date on which the poll at an independence referendum is to be held.
(7) In the case of a person who has not yet attained the age of 16—
(a) the person‘s entry in the register must state the date on which the person will attain the age of 16, and
(b) until that date, the person is not, by virtue of the entry, to be taken to be a voter for the purposes of any independence referendum other than one the date of the poll at which is on or after that date.
(8) Where a person to whom subsection (7) applies has an anonymous entry in the register, the references in that subsection to the person’s entry in the register are to be read as references to the person‘s entry in the record of anonymous entries.
(9) In this section, “the relevant date” mean the date on which an application for registration in the register of young voters is made (or the date on which such an application is treated as made by virtue of section 10A(2) of the 1983 Act).”
This amendment extends the franchise in the referendum to 16 and 17 year olds.
Amendment 13, in clause 8, page 4, line 15, at end insert—
““Commonwealth citizens” does not include citizens of any country which has terminated its membership of the Commonwealth or which has been wholly or partly suspended from the Councils of the Commonwealth by the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group.”
Stephen Gethins
I shall speak to amendments 18 and 19 and new clause 2.
It is apt that we are debating our future relationship with the European Union on this, the 200th anniversary of the battle of Waterloo. Even though we in the Scottish National party voted against the referendum, we want to see a good relationship with Europe going forward, not one that is damaged by the Prime Minister or the Conservatives. If we are to have a referendum—obviously, we voted against it—we want to see it meet the gold standard that was met by the Scottish independence referendum.
Even though it is the anniversary of the battle of Waterloo, French nationals and other nationals should be able to vote in that referendum. We have mentioned before the example of Christian Allard, a very fine Member of the Scottish Parliament, who is a French national who has made a significant contribution to Scottish public life—a more significant contribution than many have made. My hon. Friend the Member for Ochil and South Perthshire (Ms Ahmed-Sheikh) will build on that and my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East (Tommy Sheppard) will discuss it further. On the subject of EU nationals, I refer hon. Members to the excellent intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for Glenrothes (Peter Grant) on Tuesday.
I shall focus on 16 and 17-year-olds. I am glad our Labour colleagues have tabled an amendment and are backing a long-standing SNP policy on giving votes to 16 and 17-year-olds.
European Union Referendum Bill
Natascha Engel Excerpts(9 years ago)
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Madam Deputy Speaker (Natascha Engel)
Order. Given the number of Members who want to take part in this debate, we have to drop the time limit to six minutes. I call Mr Paul Scully.
Tommy Sheppard (Edinburgh East) (SNP)
I ask the hon. Gentleman to reflect that the appetite for this referendum is not the same in all parts of these islands. At the recent general election there were parties who advocated a referendum and parties who advocated not having a referendum. Over 80% of the people in Scotland voted for parties that did not want a referendum, and according to most of the opinion polls the great majority of Scottish people are content to be Europeans and with their relationship with the EU. I presume the hon. Gentleman does not support the amendment, so what is going to happen—
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. The hon. Gentleman’s contribution is an intervention, not a speech. When the Chair is standing, you sit down. That is a very long intervention and we are very tight for time. Thank you. I call Peter Bone.
Mr Bone
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.
I take on board the hon. Gentleman’s intervention and he makes a fair point, but I do not think SNP Members are here in numbers because they oppose the EU referendum Bill. I think they might be here for other reasons. Also, as a democrat, I am sure the hon. Gentleman was pretty pleased about the referendum that happened in Scotland, although he might not have liked the way the Scottish people voted.
If I had stood up here three years ago and suggested this House was about to vote for an EU referendum Bill, I would have been laughed at. Every party was against it. The coalition Government were against it, the Labour party was against it; it was just never going to happen. That proves that this House and MPs can change things. The people were ahead of Parliament. They wanted their say on whether we should be in or out of the European Union. We have seen how Parliament slowly changed its position and how the excellent Minister for Europe, my right hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Mr Lidington), has been on the same journey—I am sure I shall be cheering his speech tonight, as I was booing it three years ago. People say that this House and MPs do not matter and that everything is done by Government and by people sitting on sofas in No. 10, but that is simply not true. Another party, the UK Independence party, might have been born out of this, but I do not think that that is what changed things—it was Members of this House.
I remember that, under your chairmanship, Madam Deputy Speaker, the Backbench Business Committee—the first time that Back Benchers could schedule business in this House—put on a debate about whether we should have a referendum. The Government tried to manipulate things and brought the debate forward from the Thursday for which it was originally scheduled to the Monday. MPs went home on Friday night and talked to their constituents, local members and party chairmen—they thought about the issue—and when we came back on the Monday, we had the debate and I had the great pleasure of winding it up. Yes, the vote was lost, but 80-odd Conservative MPs opposed the three-line Whip.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Natascha Engel)
Order. Before I call the next speaker, could I make a plea to Members to keep speeches as short as possible and interventions to an absolute minimum? We are really squeezed for time and I would like to get as many speakers in as possible. With that in mind, I call Mark Hendrick.
Oral Answers to Questions
Natascha Engel Excerpts(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr Hague
That does seem to be the desire of the majority of the Ukrainian people, so all hon. Members will of course hope that Ukraine is able to go in that direction. My hon. Friend is quite right to say that the first priority at the moment is to stress the need to allow peaceful protest. We have done that in the statements we issued at the weekend and in what I have said today. The incident at the weekend provoked domestic outrage and international condemnation, quite rightly, but we will keep the door open, as he and others have asked.
Natascha Engel (North East Derbyshire) (Lab)
5. What discussions he has had with his US counterpart during negotiations on the transatlantic trade and investment partnership on the US blockade of the Republic of Cuba and its effect on European companies doing business in that country.
The Minister for Europe (Mr David Lidington)
My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary has discussed the transatlantic trade and investment partnership with Secretary Kerry. Both are keen supporters of this free trade agreement, which is worth up to £10 billion to the UK economy. They did not cover Cuba in those discussions.
Natascha Engel
Will the Minister use all his influence to persuade the United States to lift the blockade, which is bad for Cubans, bad for trade and bad for British business?
Mr Lidington
We make it clear to the United States that we disagree with its approach to Cuba. We think that the blockade is counter-productive and that the way to strengthen the chances of both economic and political reform in Cuba is through engagement, including on trade.
Europe
Natascha Engel Excerpts(11 years, 4 months ago)
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Mr Hague
I will give way again a little later.
We have already achieved a considerable amount. We have ended Britain’s obligation to bail out eurozone members—an obligation entered into by the Labour party. We are keeping Britain out of the fiscal compact and working to reform the common fisheries policy, and we will achieve more. Like every other member state, we are working with partners to pursue our national and shared interests.
The national debate that we will have over the next few years must rely on an understanding of what the EU does well and what it does not do well; where it helps and where it hinders. The balance of competences review, which I announced in July, will give us a better informed and more objective analysis of these matters.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash) pointed out, the changes in the eurozone are raising questions across the EU about national sovereignty and democratic legitimacy. In our view, balancing the need for flexibility, competitiveness and a stronger role for national Parliaments will be central to the future success of the EU.
The European Parliament has an important role that is set out in the treaties and many MEPs do excellent work. However, over the past 20 years, member states have granted the European Parliament a dramatic increase in its powers through successive treaties, in the hope that it would address the growing sense of distance and disengagement among European voters. That manifestly has not worked. The question of democratic disconnection and accountability has not gone away. That suggests that we need a different answer. That answer will include a bigger and more significant role for national Parliaments, which are and will remain the true source of democratic legitimacy in the European Union. By according a greater role to national Parliaments, we will give practical effect and real force to the principle of subsidiarity.
Natascha Engel
These are all very general and nice principles that we cannot disagree with—we all want more fairness and diversity. What we want to debate today is the meat. We want to know what is the Conservative party’s vision for Europe, on which there will be an in/out referendum? That is what we want to debate.
Mr Hague
I am delighted to hear that Opposition Members support all these policies and principles, because many of them were not brought about while they were in office. I commend the hon. Lady for being dramatically clearer than her Front Benchers in her support for what the Prime Minister has set out. I will return to them in a moment.
European Council
Natascha Engel Excerpts(12 years, 4 months ago)
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Natascha Engel (North East Derbyshire) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the matter of the European Council.
I would like to take this opportunity briefly to mention to this self-selecting group of Members in the Chamber who are taking an interest in EU Council debates that the Backbench Business Committee now has such debates within its remit. In future, therefore, when Members want to have such a debate before the EU Council meets, they should come to the Backbench Business Committee. I will leave it at that.
Mr Speaker
I apologise: I ought to have explained that the time limit on Back-Bench speeches is eight minutes.
National Referendum on the European Union
Natascha Engel Excerpts(12 years, 7 months ago)
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Natascha Engel (North East Derbyshire) (Lab)
That is a fabulous speech to follow, so I thank you for calling me, Madam Deputy Speaker. I wish, not as succinctly, to say that this debate is about one thing only: our democratic deficit. It is not a debate about what is good or bad about the EU. We are debating whether we think that people should have a say on EU membership. In the 36 years since people first voted on our continued membership of the then European Economic Community, they have not been given a say, yet the EEC of 1975—an economic and trading bloc—is not the EU of today, which is a political union underpinned by a part-common currency in crisis.
Natascha Engel
I will make a little progress and then I will be happy to give way.
The architects of the European Union have created something of such size and complexity that they themselves have admitted that it has become too big to fail. At the same time, for most normal people the EU becomes ever more remote and unaccountable. It is a political project that people feel has gone too far, too fast, with many things that affect their daily lives being determined by Brussels and not Westminster. That makes this a matter of sovereignty.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead (John Cryer) has said, we have referendums very rarely in this country and only on matters that concern how we govern ourselves. As elected politicians who govern, we have a vested interest in this matter, and because we have a vested interest it is a matter that we should not decide just for ourselves. Over the weekend and in the earlier statement the Government argued that now is not the right time to hold a referendum because of the crisis in the eurozone, but it is precisely that crisis that has demonstrated to us how bound up in Europe we have become politically and economically and how little influence we have over the decisions that are taken.
The truth is that the “not the right time” argument has nothing to do with markets and everything to do with what people might say. The Government are worried that people might say no, and, as every experienced politician knows, you do not ask the question unless you are sure that you will get the answer you want. No is not the answer that the Government want.
Last summer, the Government introduced e-petitions to engage and better connect with people and to give them a chance to have their say. The Government promised that any e-petition that gained more than 100,000 signatures would be taken very seriously by the House. We have welcomed the debates on the riots and on Hillsborough, but when it comes to something that is inconvenient and that the Government do not want to have debated, suddenly now is not the right time. If we pick and choose, we are telling people that politicians will decide what people are and, more importantly, what they are not allowed to have a say on. That is not democracy.
Yesterday, we celebrated free and democratic elections in Tunisia. Next week we celebrate Parliament week and this year’s theme is stories of democracy. What a terrible shame it would be if today we took one of the most anti-democratic decisions of our generation and denied people a say on something as fundamental as who governs them.
North Africa and the Middle East
Natascha Engel Excerpts(13 years, 2 months ago)
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Mr Hague
My hon. Friend makes an important point, and every time we make that point we are doing what he is calling for, which is stressing to the people involved that they may well have to answer in future to the ICC. The prosecutor of the Court has begun the necessary investigations, so material can now be gathered and sent to it. The best way to communicate that is through the media, which is why my right hon. and hon. Friends and I, and our colleagues in other countries, have stressed very strongly in the international media, including al-Jazeera and other channels, that this is what is now set in train and that people must remember when they contemplate any crime or atrocity in Libya that the reach of international justice can be very long.
Natascha Engel (North East Derbyshire) (Lab)
What, to the Foreign Secretary, does operational success in Libya actually look like? Further to that, what then will be his exit strategy?
Mr Hague
It means the implementation of the UN resolution. I cannot stress this strongly enough—that we operate within international law and under the mandate of UN resolution 1973. So success requires a real ceasefire, not the fake ceasefires announced by the Gaddafi regime in recent days, and a real ceasefire means disengaging from areas of conflict, ceasing attacks on civilians, an end to violence and harassing and menacing civilians, and the full establishment, which we have now achieved, of a no-fly zone over Libya. Those are the requirements of the resolution, and that is the mission that we are embarked on. It is too early to say what will happen when that point has been achieved, because we are still working hard to achieve the protection of civilians and the bringing about of a ceasefire, but that is as far as our military mission in Libya goes.
Oral Answers to Questions
Natascha Engel Excerpts(13 years, 11 months ago)
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The Minister for Europe (Mr David Lidington)
My hon. Friend is right to identify that need. We are considering a number of options for scrutiny involving different national Parliaments. We will bring in our proposals for debate by the House as soon as we are able to do so.
Natascha Engel (North East Derbyshire) (Lab)
I have a specific question about a former constituent of mine, Matthew Cryer, who, aged only 18, was unlawfully killed on the island of Zante in Greece. What are the consular services doing to ensure that bereaved families in the UK get the justice in Greece that they deserve?
Mr Lidington
I would be happy to discuss that case further with the hon. Lady, if she would find that helpful. What I hope the working group of the UK and Greek Ministries of Justice and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office will achieve is to make it much easier to transfer evidence from one jurisdiction to another, so that fair and swift trials become the norm.