European Union Bill

My Lords, as your Lordships will be aware, I tabled Amendments 7, 8, 15 and 16, which are in this group. I quite understand that the issues are different in the various amendments under consideration, but I believe that it was right to put them together and that their general thrust is in the same direction. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Williamson, for the way in which he introduced the amendments, and the noble Lord, Lord Hurd of Westwell, who made his points so clearly and fully. The Labour Front Bench—and, I believe, almost all those on the Labour Benches, although I have not interviewed them all personally—supports the principles behind the amendments. I make one thing abundantly clear. We are not, in principle, against referendums. Some of your Lordships have expressed that view; that is not the view held as a matter of policy by the Labour Party. We believe that referendums have a place in most democratic countries—not necessarily in all. That was made clear from Second Reading, when we said that we would expect to have a referendum, for example, on adopting a new currency, on leaving the European Union, or abolishing the monarchy or either House of Parliament. We believe that referendums are appropriate for issues of real constitutional importance. I do not want anyone subsequently to misinterpret my remarks on that point. In that respect, we are at one—at least, I thought we were—with the Government, who said that they, too, believed in issues of constitutional importance being the subject of referendums. The Constitution Committee stated something very similar. That is what makes the Government’s position so implausible. The Constitution Committee said in paragraph 38 of its report published on 18 March: "““In our judgement, the resort to referendums contemplated in the European Union Bill is not confined to the category of fundamental constitutional issues on which a UK-wide referendum may be judged to be appropriate. Furthermore, many of the Bill’s provisions are inconsistent””—" inconsistent— "““with the Government’s statement that referendums are most appropriately used in relation to fundamental constitutional issues””." That is a difficult charge, and I hope that the Minister will address it when he answers this debate. The Constitution Committee, on which, I remind him, his party, the Conservative Party, the Cross-Benchers and my party sit, came to the collective view that the Bill's provisions are inconsistent with the Government’s stated policy on the issue. For our part, we think that the reason for it is to hold the coalition together. It is to keep the Eurosceptics happy, while keeping the Liberal Democrats more or less so. The noble Baroness, Lady Williams, said that far more elegantly a moment ago, but I hope that her party will look very closely at what she said, because it showed an admirable clarity of approach on her part. The question therefore arises: why should the British public be called on to support a political aim by voting, for example, on the number and system of appointing EU Commissioners, or the appointment of judges and advocates-general to the European Court of Justice, or even some decisions about the EU's competence on foreign policy, as set out in Schedule 1? The truth is that the British public will not turn out for such referendums. We all know that. We shall have a hard enough time getting a respectable turnout on 5 May on changing the voting system in this country—something which is of real constitutional importance. Much of what is covered in this Bill as subject to referendums is Parliament’s responsibility to deal with, and that is why we are here. A threshold turnout for a decision that is mandatory is just plain common sense. If the turnout threshold is not attained, it seems to me to be also just plain common sense that a referendum should be advisory only in its impact. The Deputy Prime Minister, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, when speaking on the Barnsley by-election brushed off the result—in which his party gained 4 per cent of the vote—by saying that a turnout of 36.5 per cent was ““abysmally low””, implying that it was a fundamentally flawed turnout because of the level that it attained. Does the Minister agree with the leader of his party that a 36.5 per cent turnout is abysmally low? If he does, at what point over 36.5 per cent does a turnout in a referendum become a true reflection of the electorate’s feelings?