European Union (Information, etc.) Bill [HL]

My Lords, as the Minister is well aware, there are always those equivocations that come inevitably from the way in which a Bill is drafted. I cast no aspersions on the expert advice that I received from the Public Bill Office and so on. That is why it is so much more helpful—if there is a reasonable response at least and perhaps more than that on Second Reading—for us to get a Bill into Committee and discuss those issues in more detail. I return to the point I was making before. There is a definite, unequivocal emphasis here that this is what people would decide to do if they wished to, as managers of town halls, central government public buildings, and so on. That definitely applies to the demonstration of the flag and to all the other matters in the Bill. It would be absolutely ludicrous for anyone to seek to bring compulsion to an area such as this. There is no financial provision in the Bill, and there is no need to have a financial outlet or penalties if people do not subscribe to its provisions. This is just a matter of increasing—at the margin to start with and then on a broader basis—the corpus of legitimate, neutral and public objective information on the European Union and our membership of it in public places where people access information. We understand that, undoubtedly on most occasions, this information will be provided free to the managers of the buildings—the people organising the displays in the foyers of town halls, public libraries and other public buildings. We know from Google and the way that the internet and websites have developed—for example, Bloomberg with its stock exchange and quotations—that all the information is provided free if people wish to look at it by pressing a series of buttons. No complexity is involved. I also emphasise that providing masses of irrelevant and unnecessary information as a service would be crazy. The idea is to provide basic information on the background of our membership of the European Union. I do not wish to take up too much time because a very important debate on assistance for the disabled follows this one. Therefore, I shall try to be brief in my remarks without being discourteous to colleagues, who made important and worthwhile points. I was very impressed by, and grateful to, the noble Lord, Lord Cobbold, for emphasising what town-twinning achieves in terms of personal, individual and group relationships. It has been extraordinary to witness that in the development of the twinning between Harrow and Douai. It happens to such an extent that official entities can recede from the scene and leave it to private initiative. My noble friend Lord Chidgey mentioned how well it works in his area. I thank my noble friend Lord Watson for making some very important points. He mentioned how extraordinary it is that the European flag is seen on UK government and public buildings abroad but rarely here, although on some occasions the display increases somewhat. In many cases, it is almost as though people are ashamed to mention that they are members, and people are mystified about that in this country. Of course, there are bound to be lots of party battles about the EU in the UK. They may be more pronounced than in some other member states, which is distressing for those who want to move on to the next stage of the agenda. We have been a member for 33 years but some people still couch the debate in terms of existential commencement rather than moving on to other subjects. We should bear in mind that the British public overwhelmingly seem to accept our membership of the EU. The noble Lord, Lord Pearson, rightly asked what kind of information would be involved. I repeat that I believe that you would find brief and succinct information on the website cited by the Minister. It is simply a case of increasing the information’s physical availability, spread and presence in more obvious public buildings, centres and libraries.