EU Referendum: Timing

Debate between Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick and Alex Salmond

Tuesday 9th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Ms Margaret Ritchie (South Down) (SDLP)]

I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Ochil and South Perthshire (Ms Ahmed-Sheikh). I rise to speak in support of the motion and I would like to take the opportunity to commend the right hon. and hon. Members responsible for it. We may not agree at all times, and perhaps not even on the very issue on which the referendum will be held, but I none the less hope that the debate so far has motivated a desire for a fair and open debate on the EU referendum.

As other hon. Members have said, we should be worried about electoral fatigue setting in among the voting public this year. I know, however, that people will still want to register their votes. What I am more concerned about is the issue of purdah, which was raised by the right hon. Member for Gordon (Alex Salmond). We will have two periods of purdah running from the end of March to 23 June—if that is the date. Many of us have been led to believe that that is the date in the Prime Minister’s head, subject, of course, to his getting agreement in Brussels on 18 February. Notwithstanding that, to me and to my party colleagues it is undemocratic to have such a period of purdah, because it prevents Ministers, MPs and members of devolved Administrations from properly representing their constituents.

[Alex Salmond]

The hon. Lady will have heard earlier one of the “speeches for England,” to quote the Daily Mail, in which it was suggested that an Administration being elected and then going into an immediate period of purdah was somehow a good thing. Can the hon. Lady explain that extraordinary argument any better than the hon. Member who made it?