European Union (Amendment) Bill

I support my noble friend’s remarks. I welcome the amendment, but it surprises me that the noble Lord, Lord Lea, is so negative about referendums. He seems to think—in common, perhaps, with the noble Lord, Lord Hannay—that the people do not really understand the issue and cannot be trusted to make their mind up. He said that the campaign would be xenophobic and one-sided. That is not true. Both sides have an equal chance to put their case under the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000. It is all set down in statute. It will be a perfectly open and reasonable debate, so I really cannot accept that it would be either one-sided or too complicated for people to understand. Nor can I accept the notion that the French were not voting on the issues before them. I, too, was in France during the referendum and it was interesting to see the various reasons. There were agreements among various parties, but that is the beauty of referendums; they bring people together on a single issue. There was no doubt that they voted against the constitution; they were not voting about the colour of Mr Chirac’s socks or anything else. The noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, was quite right: a few days later, the Dutch voted overwhelmingly against the constitution. I do not think that they could be criticised for voting on something that was not in the constitution. They definitely voted against the constitution. I do not think that it is right to say that we dare not trust the people of this country with the issues arising from the constitution or from this reform treaty, which, as has been pointed out, is the same as the constitution. I agree with my noble friend Lord Pearson that this is a very good first step but a first step only. If the people of this country are given the vote on a referendum—and the opinion polls tell us that they will certainly reject the treaty—we are still left with what we have got, which is where the EU is right now. We have a lot of experts here, and the noble Lord, Lord Kinnock, will tell me if I am wrong, but that means that we would have to fall back on the provisions set out in the Nice treaty. That is how the EU is operating at the moment. From the point of view of those of us who believe that we would be better off out of the EU, we would still have the acquis communautaire, we would still have the Commission as sole legislator, telling us what we can grow on our land and what we can fish out of our seas, and we would still be paying the EU £14 billion a year of our taxpayers’ money. That would be the position even if the treaty were put to a referendum. It would be wonderful to have such a referendum. It may be liberating and it may, as my noble friend said, wake people up if they have an open debate about our relationship with the European Union. But it may not. They may say, ““Is this right? Are we going down the right road here towards further integration? Is it what we really want?””. They have not been consulted on our relationship with the European Union for many years—the last time was the 1975 referendum. So it would be an open debate. I do not see why noble Lords are frightened of having open debate in the country about our relationship with the European Union; it must be healthier to do that. As far as it goes, I strongly support the amendment and I hope that, if it comes to a vote tonight, it will be carried.