European Union Bill

My Lords, this debate has ranged a little wider than the amendment. We have had accusations of the European elite forcing the holding of second referendums. I wondered whether we were going to be told by the noble Lord, Lord Willoughby de Broke, that the European gendarmerie would be used to force second referendums. I recall him previously raising the question of what the European gendarmerie was for. We talked about EU bullying as if somehow Brussels is different and imposes itself on national governments. I simply remind noble Lords that the European Union is an association of states and that Brussels operates on behalf of those member states. It is the member states which agree on proposals of the sort likely to be put to referendums. On Ireland, I would simply say that the situation may or may not have been to some extent associated with Irish membership of the euro. The situation in Iceland was an even greater financial bubble and can in no sense be blamed on Iceland’s membership of the euro since Iceland is neither a member of the euro nor of the European Union. We need to get away from that. On the question of financing the Irish referendums, I am not aware of how the second referendum was financed beyond the fact that I have three very good friends in Dublin who took out substantial loans on their houses to guarantee the basic funding for a second referendum. When my wife and I had dinner with them some months after the referendum, they were still very heavily in debt. That suggests to me that there were no sugar daddies, let alone external forces, providing funding. Clearly the amendment has been tabled with memories in mind of the Danish and Irish experiences. Noble Lords have been reminded that in both cases there were renegotiations, and that the packages that were put back to the electorate represented concessions and opt-outs offered by other member Governments to those Governments who returned to ask their electorates to accept a modified package. It is not appropriate to accept this requirement in statute for two broad reasons. Should the British electorate vote no in a referendum, the Government clearly will have to reflect on what action to take. If they were to decide to hold a referendum on the same issue—I am sure that there would be arguments over whether it was the same, a similar or a modified issue—they would first have to secure Parliament’s agreement to the new piece of primary legislation required to establish and hold the referendum. That would allow ample opportunity for debate on whether the principle and the timing were right to hold a further referendum on the same subject. I remind noble Lords that Governments will not call referendums in Britain unless they wish to argue that it is in Britain's national interest to accept the case that they are making. If the Government were defeated in a referendum, it would be tantamount to a defeat of the Government: they would have been defeated on their view of the British national interest. Therefore, the Government and Parliament as a whole would need to be persuaded that a further treaty change would be necessary. It would be unusual for the Government then to consider asking the public the same question in short order, having failed to convince them of the benefits of the treaty change the first time round. However, there is another point. Given our lack of perfect foresight of future circumstances, there might be a situation where the Government and Parliament might judge that a treaty change previously rejected by the British people was even more necessary and desirable, perhaps because of intervening external or internal events. Flexibility is something that many noble Lords have argued for in Committee: we cannot entirely foretell the future. If both Government and Parliament were then to decide that circumstances had changed enough to warrant asking the people again, Parliament should be able to do this without having to wait for the end of the five-year moratorium. I am happy to repeat that this Government would think it highly unusual and politically costly to suggest rerunning a referendum on the same subject without very good reason. However, for the reasons that I have given, I am not convinced that a fixed-term cooling-off period is the answer. Having people judge such a move at the ballot box surely would be a more effective deterrent. Therefore, I urge noble Lords to withdraw the amendment.