European Union Referendum Bill — House of Lords, 2015-11-23
Topic: International Affairs
David Hugh Alexander Hannay (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 24C. In doing so, I pay tribute to the Minister for the way in which she has listened to the points raised, with some force and detail, in Committee. With the two amendments that she has produced today—Amendment 24A, in response to an amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, which I also felt was absolutely justified, so I am delighted that she has picked up his amendment and turned it into a government one, and Amendment 24B, which deals with matters that I and others raised—I think that she has made a major effort to meet the point that we made in Committee, and which I continue to make, which is that there will be a need for the electorate to receive factual, objective information from the Government about these extremely complex matters, additional to any information that will come to them, no doubt in tsunamis of rhetoric, from the two campaigns. The campaigns will be advocates but the electorate has to make a judgment, and it will be of essential value to them to have objective factual material provided by the Government. That is why we were extremely dissatisfied with the absence of any provision for this in the original Bill that was drafted by the Government and which came to us with the imprimatur of the other place because we felt that it was a completely inadequate basis on which to move forward to what is after all, as the Prime Minister said, one of the most significant and important decisions that this country has had to take for many decades. So that is a very good step forward I shall explain why we felt that the Government should be prepared to go further and be a bit more specific than they are in Amendment 24B, or at least than they were before the Minister gave some rather helpful clarifications this afternoon. I shall take two examples—two sub-headings—that illustrate the amendments that I and others have proposed. I start with Gibraltar because the Minister has mentioned it. What the effects of withdrawal would be is of importance to more people than just the people of Gibraltar. Our own wider electorate needs to know that Gibraltar became part of the EU only because it was a dependent territory for whose foreign affairs the United Kingdom was responsible. That was the sole basis on which it became a member, and therefore if the UK left, it would leave. That has quite important implications for the vexed issue of the land border with Spain, for example, which would cease to be an internal border of the EU and would become an external one. These are facts, not matters of opinion; they do not seek to draw the Government on to what would come after an Article 50 negotiation or anything like that. They are just so that the electorate knows that, the moment they cast their votes, certain consequences could follow from it Secondly, I take the law and order issue. The European arrest warrant was debated at enormous length in both Houses at the time of the Protocol 36 negotiations two years ago. It became apparent during that debate that the European arrest warrant is extraordinarily important for this country in terms of recovering indicted criminals from abroad and returning EU citizens who are accused of often very heinous crimes from here to the country where they have been indicted. These are hugely important for our law and order and our battle against international crime In those debates, it also became apparent how important the European arrest warrant is for the Good Friday agreement and what goes on in Northern Ireland because it has depoliticised the extradition arrangements between Ireland and Northern Ireland. In the past, they have been highly politicised and have led to a number of very unsatisfactory discussions between the two Governments, often not leading to the return of criminals who have committed terrible offences. Therefore it is important for the electorate to know that the European arrest warrant would disappear in this country if we left. I am not talking about what we might try to put in its place, the fantasies about negotiating 27 extradition agreements with the other member states or anything like that. I do not want to go there. That is not where the amendment was intended to go This afternoon, the Minister has given some important clarifications on a large number of the detailed specifics that I introduced. I and others will need to study them with great care. However, on the point about Gibraltar and the devolved Administrations, I entirely understand what she is saying—that it would not be right for the Government, off their own bat, to write in a report what the consequences were going to be for Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales or Gibraltar without consulting them and without having their view—but I hope that in her reply to this debate the Minister will go a little further. She said that the devolved Administrations and Gibraltar will be able to produce their own reports. That is fine. They would be reports to their parts of the electorate. I do not imagine—I do not speak in any disparaging way—that they will be widely read by the electorate of this country, yet the issues involve the electorate of the whole United Kingdom. Therefore, I hope that she will be able to say that after consultation with the Government of Gibraltar and the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland Administrations and assuming—I do not see why they should have any objection—that they are willing to do so, the Government will include the implications for the Administrations of Northern Ireland, Wales, Scotland and Gibraltar in the report to which Amendment 24B refers. This will allow the whole electorate to have a proper sight of all the implications. Frankly, those implications, particularly with regard to Northern Ireland and also to Scotland and Wales, could be very far-ranging. Therefore, I hope that when the Minister replies to this debate, she will able to cover that point. We are making progress now. I shall listen with great care to the Minister’s reply. Others who proposed this amendment may wish to take up other points on which they would like to have clarification. Meanwhile, I look forward with interest to the Minister’s reply.