European Union Bill

I am sure that, if the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, put down what he described as a ““Thatcher amendment”” on Report, he would find a lot of support for it. We will have another opportunity for looking at that. Returning to the intriguing speech of the noble Lord, Lord Hurd, and the almost exciting start when he described what John Major had asked him to do, I thought that we were going to get revelations about when John Major questioned the parental legitimacy of some of his Cabinet over Maastricht. I am sure that that would have been equally interesting. We should go back to the eloquent speech made by the noble Lord, Lord Deben, in the debate on Amendment 1. He questioned, as have a number of noble Lords in this debate, the whole purpose and legitimacy of referenda in our parliamentary democracy. I thought that he put that well and I share a lot of his concerns, particularly in the context of the two Scottish referenda, which the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, mentioned. He said that, in 1979, we did not get the required 40 per cent. We had to get 40 per cent of the electorate in favour as well as a majority of those who voted, on the basis of an amendment by George Cunningham that had been agreed by the House of Commons. Then, in the referendum in 1997, we got a substantial vote in favour of Scottish devolution. We may have had a better campaign in 1997 and people in Scotland had perhaps moved on in their thinking, but one of the main reasons for that change is that people do not always vote in referenda on the question on the paper before them. They vote for a whole range of extraneous reasons. As I am sure everyone remembers, in 1979 the Labour Government were not at their most popular whereas, when we put the question forward in 1997, that immediately followed the great revolutionary result that saw Mr Blair become Prime Minister. It was a very popular Labour Government. People were perhaps influenced by all these other extraneous things. That is the case in referenda in general, which is one of the reasons why I share the suspicions about them. They should be use rarely and sparingly in our constitution, if at all. I have gone along with that. I was much in favour of our membership of the European Union in the 1975 referendum. That was the first referendum and it was on a major issue. The noble Baroness, Lady Williams, and I campaigned strongly on the same side and, back then, for the same party. We had a huge campaign and it was a major issue—the crucial issue of our continued membership of the European Union—not just some trivial little matter included in this Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, referred earlier to the fact that this House agreed to reject a 40 per cent threshold in the AV referendum. I was against that AV referendum, as I am against the referenda here, but I voted in favour of a 40 per cent rule as mitigation or a palliative, as someone referred to it. The AV referendum was pushed through by the inbuilt majority opposite. Now that it is happening, the fact that we will not be having the later stages of this Bill until after the result of that referendum gives us an interesting opportunity. If I am right and we get an embarrassingly low turnout in the AV referendum and it is passed by a very small majority, there will be a lot of questioning by Conservative MPs and Peers. Say that there is a 20 per cent turnout, with 12 per cent in favour and 8 per cent against. We are supposed to change our whole constitution on the basis of a poor turnout and a trivial majority. That might give us pause for thought when we come to the further stages of this Bill about the wisdom of some of the things that are being proposed in relation to referenda. It might make even the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, think that we ought to put in some kind of safeguard or qualification for referenda that are dealing with other matters. I feel that this series of debates—the Second Reading debate and the debates on these two major groups of amendments—are Alice in Wonderland debates. They do not seem at all real to me. Almost no one on the Liberal Democrat or Tory Benches, apart from the Minister, has got up and supported this Bill—not with any great enthusiasm, anyway. It is astonishing that the Bill is being pushed through this House. I asked in an earlier debate who the author of the proposals in the Bill was. What is the genesis of it? The Deputy Prime Minister is proud that he was the father, or the godfather, of the AV referendum, but no one seems to take either the credit or the blame for this. We do not know how it happened. If my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer was here, no doubt he could tell us. I have not read Mr Laws’s book yet, so I do not know whether there is a revelation about this Bill in that. However, I hope that someone can tell us why we are in this situation of having a Bill that no one seems to want and pushing it through both Houses with debate after debate on some astonishingly complicated and dangerous provisions. It makes me worry. We have a new Minister now. I share the concerns about our having asked questions of the previous Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Howell, now that we know that he was not in the best of health. I am sorry if I have contributed in any way to harassing him. It certainly was not intended. But this Minister is a young, vigorous and robust Minister in the fullness of health and fit as a fiddle, so perhaps he can tell us the basis for pushing this through. Perhaps he can give us an argument for it. Perhaps he can try to convince us. We are ready to be convinced if the arguments are there. Perhaps, even, he can convince some people on his own side. That would at least be a step forward.