European Union Bill

My Lords, I have considerable sympathy with this amendment. In the course of the last three months we have heard from all sides of the House the collective failure of politicians to articulate a vision of why Britain needs to co-operate with members in her region to advance her interests. Putting an obligation on Ministers to spell out positively a vision for the EU seems eminently sensible, given the context of the Bill. This is, as the noble Lord, Lord Risby, said, that once the Government have passed an Act, they would presumably like to win an amendment. It seems odd to resist an amendment such as this when we are clear that the Government would have passed an Act proposing the policy solutions that there would be and, as the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, said, would wish to maintain their credibility by seeking actively to campaign in a referendum. I cannot see why there is such resistance to this amendment. I remind noble Lords of some of the things that have been said about the media. Even if the Government of the day were determined to win a referendum, it is entirely conceivable that a sceptical media would choose to ask questions about why the Government were spending money. We have known from the several months of debate over referendums in this House in relation to other matters that large amounts of money have been set at the door of the practicalities of holding a referendum. It would be entirely possible for our media, which did not wish us to promote that measure that was meant to be discussed in the referendum, to say that this was a huge waste of money. The fact that a requirement for promoting that measure would be enshrined in the Bill would allow the Government to say that they were carrying out what statute and legislation required them to. We have had arguments for months on the lack education and the lack of information about the European Union. This would be an opportunity for the Government of the day to move beyond those technical measures to use that process to educate the public about their vision. I turn to the final point in the amendment that I do not think the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, in moving it, quite brought out to the extent that I would wish to do. It states, "““in participating in a campaign for any referendum held in pursuance of Sections 2, 3 or 6 or in taking other steps required by this Act.””" The discussion we have had so far pertains only to the holding of referendums. There are other measures in this Bill that do not call for the holding of referendums. Sometimes they call simply for an Act of Parliament, or for a Statement to be made to Parliament. In doing these things, an obligation would be put on the Ministers of the day to have regard for the desirability of promoting the United Kingdom’s membership of the EU. This amendment says to us as politicians that we have to step up to the mark and that if we believe that the legislation that we are passing is good legislation, we have to go out and explain why we think that it is good legislation. While I would love to say that I wholeheartedly support the amendment, I will only go so far as to say that I can see a lot of merit in it and I look forward to hearing from the Minister why he does not think that it is extremely useful and long overdue.