Is the EU Referendum Bill dead?

The EU referendum Bill - pushed forward by Tory backbenchers aiming to legislate now for an EU referendum to be held in next Parliament (post-2015) - passed through the Commons with flying colours but is now stuck in the House of Lords.

Labour and Lib Dem Peers in the Lords have just managed to pass two amendments. These amendments are now sent back to the Commons which will have to decide whether to accept or reject them.

Big question now is whether this Bill will run out of the time, and therefore die an early death. This happens if the 2013-2014 Parliament session runs out before the Bill is passed (in the UK system, all proposals are chopped by the end of a parliamentary session). This ends at the end of April.

The short answer is that's we don't know yet, but it'll go down to the wire.

Parliament could attempt a round of Parliamentary Ping Pong, or "Wiff Waff" as Boris Johnson called it, as the amendments are returned to the Commons to be debated - probably on Friday the 28 February. If their Lordships amendments are reversed by MPs they will be ponged back just in time for the end of the session - at the end of April.

But does the Commons actually need to pong them back or could they simply accept it all in order to speed the Bill on its way? Well, the first amendment is about the actual referendum question:

"Do you think that the UK should be a member of the EU?"

Which the Peers want to change to:

"Should the UK remain a member of the EU or leave the EU?"

Well, opinions are divided as to whether the question will make any difference on the outcome - something we looked at here. But the Electoral Commission felt that some Britons were blissfully unaware the UK was in the EU at all, hence their suggested change. The second amendment, to Commission an impact assessment on the consequences of an EU exit, seems harmless enough but will not really settle anything as any impact assesment will become the subject of the dispute. In any event legislation is not required. So perhaps the Commons could accept this one aswell?

Or would it be better to reject the amendments and use the Parliament Act in the next session as we looked at here?

Regardless, this is a setback to the Conservatives, who will take comfort from the political advantage to be made from telling the public that - in their view - Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband do not trust them.

We're all EU reformers now?

Thumbs up to EU Reform but is he for real?

Lord Mandelson on the BBC's Today programme earler stated that:

I think that reform and change in Europe is what is wanted by the British public and I think that is needed in Europe...

 He went on to argue that:

The Government should this year go quietly patiently but persistently setting out its reform agenda in the rest of Europe winning those arguments and gaining allies.

Quite... But you would be right to be cynical, given his history, as to why he is saying this now on the day the EU Referendum Bill is being debated in the Lords (Lord M was once in favour but is now against). On the referendum, he was a bit slippery, to say the least. 

But still, this is surely a sign of the changing mood. Even Lord Mandelson is wary of being seen as backing the status quo and sees the need to champion EU 'reform'. We're very much looking forward to hear what, exactly, he means by "reform"...

House of Lords isn't getting with the programme

Almost entirely unnoticed by the UK media (with the exception of the Guardian), the House of Lords is doing its best to rip the heart out of the Government's EU Bill and accompanying "referendum lock". The Government last night suffered its third and fourth defeats on the Bill in a week, with peers voting by 242 to 209, to modify the Bill's "sovereignty clause" and by 209 to 203 to introduce a "sunset clause", which would see the entire Bill lapse at the end of this Parliament.

We have always felt the sovereignty clause the less important aspect of the Bill compared with the referendum lock but the latter, designed to give Parliament and voters a say over any significant future transfers of power to Brussels, has now been attacked and severely mauled by peers.

On Monday, peers voted to restrict the issues on which referendums should be held to only three: joining the euro, the creation of a "single, integrated military force", and changes to border control. This would leave the public without a say over several important issues such as whether a future UK Government could sign up to the creation of a new European Public Prosecutor or give up arguably the UK's most important veto of all: it's right to veto the multi-annual EU budget.

And, in the words of Foreign Office Minister Lord Howell, these amendments completely "undermine the direct and frank and honest commitment that we wish to make to the British people...I really would suggest that the public can be trusted to determine what is in their own interest."

As we've noted before, there is a certain irony in the fact that it is an unelected body, the House of Lords, which is displaying such great suspicion and hostility to giving people a greater say over their country’s relationship with the EU - and peers have given us some unintentionally hilarious quotes during the often bizarre debates on the Bill (we'll give you a few samples shortly). But the fact that it is being allowed to do so completely under the political radar is probably even more worrying.

A bizarre evening in the House of Lords

In case you missed it (and chances are that you did), last night's debate in the Lords on the Government's proposed EU Bill and 'referendum lock' was a bizarre affair, with many of the peers literally being all over the place. For a while there, it reminded us of some of the debates we've come across in the European Parliament - in many cases, what was said didn't actually correspond to anything taking place in the real world, nor any shade of public opinion.

We have looked at the 'referendum lock', which we're broadly in support of, on several occasions and argued that it would have been a much better 'lock' if it had incorporated the transfer of crime, justice and immigration laws - the Coalition has said it will continue to make its decisions to 'opt in' to these new laws on a case-by-case basis (and it continues to do so in roughly two-thirds of the cases it has the opportunity), rather than via a formal mechanism that could give MPs and the electorate some control over these transfers of power.

But back to the debate. A sign that something is broadly hitting the right note is when it is attacked from both sides. The Bill has been attacked for both preventing any future EU integration and as a sell-out by those who feel it won't stop the transfer of powers to Brussels (many of these people's real problem with the 'referendum lock' is that it doesn't roll back the existing transfers of power, which it was never designed to do) . Now, surely, both cannot be right.

Former Tory Minister and Conservative peer Lord Deben was seemingly having a particularly bad day, suggesting that the Government was pandering to "head-bangers". He added that he was "ashamed" of the Government's plans to hold referendums on whether to approve new EU treaties or major changes to existing ones and promised to vote against the legislation "again and again and again" unless changes were made.

The irony of an unelected peer being "ashamed" to consult the British people on major transfers of power to the EU (including the unelected Commission and unelected ECJ) - seems to have been lost on the noble Lord Deben. This is the full quote:

I do not believe in referenda in any circumstances. They are wholly unsuitable in a parliamentary democracy; they are a foreign invention used by people for ulterior motives; and they have never been part of the sort of society in which we live. I am ashamed that my Government have brought this forward.

Er, out of touch? The argument that the Bill would lead to referenda being held on every minutiae of EU policy seems to have gained credence amongst the peers discussing it yesterday. The only problem is, this argument is absolute nonsense, which anyone who has followed just a bit of EU politics over recent years would realise.

The Bill only covers transfers of competence under a new treaty or through changing the existing treaties - some of the major the "passerelle" clauses will also trigger a referendum. But there are a lot of stuff that won't trigger a public vote, because of what the EU already can do within its existing legal framework.

To get an idea of the kind of action that the EU can take without touching the Treaties, take the creation of the eurozone's €60bn temporary bailout fund, the EFSM. The hugely controversial decision to reinterpret EU law, through a qualified majority vote, and ignore the existing "no bail-out" clauses in the Treaties did not require a treaty change and therefore wouldn't have been caught by the lock. Or take the creation of three new EU financial supervisors, with binding powers over national authorities - again, that decision was taken by a qualified majority vote. A Treaty change wasn't even on the cards.

Rather than trading in hyperbole, Peers should focus on the meat of the Bill and seek to improve it, so that some trust can be restored in politics. Realising that European and British politics have moved on since the 70s/80s/90s (take your pick) would be a good place to start.

Incidentally, if ever you thought that the Lords were more mature than their counterparts in the Commons and less susceptible to ‘Punch and Judy’ knockabout, check out these comments from Lord Kinnock (whose family we’d point out earned a tidy £10m at taxpayers' expense during and after its stint in Brussels) directed at UKIP peer Lord Pearson:

My Lords, when the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, says that he wants to stick to his guns, I am inclined to hope that he goes very near to the muzzle of those guns-indeed, just in front-because that would be a suitable location.

Now that’s not very nice, is it Neil?