My Lords, this has been another lengthy debate and I do not wish to prolong it. First, I will just respond to a point that the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, made earlier. I assure him that I have never sought and never been given, so far as I am aware, any advice from a government official for this debate other than factual advice or advice about the Government’s agreed position. I believe that all the proprieties have been maintained, as they ought to be.
It is unthinkable that people would not be fully supplied with responsible information before any referendum campaign. There may of course be plenty of irresponsible information too, but that is the stuff of politics. It is nobody’s intention to ask people to vote on such a fundamental issue when they are not fully briefed and fully aware of what the issues are. No one can expect people to come to a rational and reasoned decision—as we would want them to—without the appropriate information.
However, it is very difficult to see what this amendment would add that is so very different from the amendment that the House carried last week in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Roper, which called for,
“an evidence based assessment of the impact of the United Kingdom ceasing to be a member of the European Union”.
I argued against that amendment, simply on the grounds that people would get all that information anyway and that it was not necessary to include those provisions in the Bill. The House decided otherwise and passed that amendment calling for an evidence-based assessment of the impact of the United Kingdom ceasing to be a member of the European Union. I am genuinely puzzled therefore as to the need for this amendment.
Again, the wording is important here. It asks about our “intended” future relationship with the EU. As it seems likely that, under most circumstances, all the major parties will be campaigning for us to stay in the EU, the question is: the outlines of this future relationship as intended by whom? How can this task be completed? By consulting UKIP? The only sensible way to seek a response to the question of how one intends to get divorced—which I think was the phraseology of the noble Lord, Lord Turnbull—is to ask those who actually want to get divorced in the first place. Any plan B drawn up by those who do not believe in it, will not be arguing for it and have no intention of pursuing it would not be worth the paper that it was printed on.
The noble Lord, Lord Liddle, suggested, in defence of this amendment, that we should do what the Labour Government did for the euro by making their intended position clear. If that is the example he expects us to follow, I am not in favour of it. It was the most bizarre approach that any Government have taken to such an important issue and points to the difficulty of an intended position on something of this sort. The suggestion that underpins this amendment is really rather woolly. It is ambiguous and therefore I think that it is flawed. That is why I oppose it, which is perhaps why a very similar amendment was defeated on Report in the other place by a majority of 265 to eight. The noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, has come up with an interesting constitutional principle that a clear vote in the other House does not reflect the view of that House, but we will pass on from that.
This is not a Bill for those with closed minds, and there are closed minds on both sides of this issue. This is a Bill designed to give those with common sense an opportunity to come to an informed position as to what they intend for their futures. If the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, will forgive me, I do not intend to follow him up the Swiss mountains or sail along the Norwegian fjords. The Prime Minister does not want that; I do not want that; this is another argument that seems to
be constructed in order to knock it down that I can see very few people putting. I shall certainly not be following the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, in the magnificent tour that he gave us around every part of the world. The argument that we need to specify even more than we have done under the previous amendment and that we need to load the people with more information, not as a result of democracy or of our campaigning skills and our passionate beliefs in where we stand but on the face of a Bill because the Government require it, implies a huge lack of faith in the ability of the different sides in a referendum campaign to put their case. I do not share that lack of faith. I cannot see what this amendment would do that the amendment that we passed last week—