European Union Bill

My Lords, it is tempting in Committee to refer to the several speeches that have been made before your own. I will try to refrain from that and speak to the amendment. Before I do, though, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Richard, and several of the other speakers who said that they had not heard anything from these Benches on Amendment 1 that it was only courtesy that made me hold back. There were several names to that amendment on the Marshalled List, one of them from within Liberal Democrat ranks, and I was holding back to hear from noble Lords whose names were on the Marshalled List. As I was about to get up to impart my pearls of wisdom to the Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Richard, got up and said that he had had enough and he wanted to hear from the Front Benches. It was only out of respect for the noble Lord’s diktat that I sat quietly and said nothing on Amendment 1. It was not that we had nothing to say; the unpredictability of that invigorating debate was what held me back. I will speak for myself. On this set of amendments, I think that I cannot beat the analysis and passion of my noble friend Lord Phillips of Sudbury, but I say to those noble Lords who suggest that the power of the Whips in the House of Lords is profound that anyone who knows the voting record of my noble friend will know that he, above all in our ranks, is one of the most independent-minded Members. None of the Whips could get him to do what they want if he does not want to do it. He is no compliant little representative of Lobby fodder. On the amendments themselves, I echo the words of my noble friend Lord Phillips about the timing. The idea that we would pass an Act of Parliament to determine what the wish of Parliament is and then, once we see the result of the referendum, go back again to Parliament seems to me slightly convoluted. It would mean that the Minister, who would already have gone through a rather tortuous and convoluted process leading to a public say on the issue, could then turn round and overrule the public, who might have voted no. That would be truly extraordinary. Given what the Government have said apropos the disconnect between the public and the European Union and the disconnect between the public and government, that would be only exacerbated if we completely ignored the result of a referendum. In that case, I would probably agree with noble Lords around the Chamber who have said that it would be better not to have referendums at all. Picking up the points made about referendums possibly undoing representative democracy in favour of plebiscitary democracy, I would say to noble Lords that in the debate on Amendment 1, which I listened to carefully, there was a tone—arcane though the issues were—that seemed to be saying, ““We know what is best””, as if the great British public out there is simply to be led by what we know to be best. Of course representative democracy is a valued and ancient tradition, but I suggest respectfully to noble Lords that, if the age of deference is not over, it is at least becoming much more of a challenge to retain that deference now that we have internet communications and various other means whereby the public feel that we do not sit in an exalted place vis-à-vis them.