European Union Referendum Bill

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Tuesday 16th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Europe (Mr David Lidington)]

I start by congratulating the hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq) and my hon. Friend the Member for Morley and Outwood (Andrea Jenkyns), who made maiden speeches in this afternoon’s debate. Both spoke with warmth and conviction. The House looks forward to hearing from both hon. Ladies many times during their parliamentary careers.

The amendments that we are debating cover a wide range of issues. The House will expect me to spend most of my time addressing the arguments about the proposal to disapply section 125 of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000. However, I will start by addressing amendment 16, moved by the right hon. Member for Gordon (Alex Salmond). I was not surprised that he and his party should have moved such an amendment or that they had the support of Plaid Cymru in so doing, but I doubt whether the right hon. Gentleman will be shocked when I say that the Government do not intend to accept it.

Amendment 16 does not make sense in the context of the Bill. The legislation is about holding a vote; it makes no provision for what follows. The referendum is advisory, as was the case for both the 1975 referendum on Europe and the Scottish independence vote last year. In neither of those cases was there a threshold for the interpretation of the result. The Government take the view that, in respect of EU membership, we are one United Kingdom. The referendum will be on the subject of the United Kingdom’s membership of the European Union and it is therefore right that there should be one referendum and one result. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will choose not to press his amendment.

I say briefly to the hon. Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes), who spoke to amendments 49 and 50, that the timing of the referendum should, subject to the deadline at the end of 2017, depend on the progress of negotiations at European level. I do not think that the inflexibility introduced by his amendments would be helpful in that process.

The right hon. Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden), who spoke to amendments 4, 5 and 6, was right to say that the British public will expect information to be provided about the consequences of the UK’s leaving the European Union. For the most part, that will clearly be the job of the designated campaign organisations for the two camps during the campaign. However, at the end of a period of renegotiation, the Government will obviously want to set out their conclusions and reasons for the recommendation that the Prime Minister and the Government will make at that point. In the past I have mentioned that that could be done through a White Paper or some other such communication. It would not be right for specific requirements to be set out, especially at this early stage even in the negotiation process, about what the Government would be obliged to publish at a given time ahead of the referendum. Neither is it necessary to define in statute responsibilities on the Bank of England or the Office for Budget Responsibility. As has been said by others during this debate, they are independent entities, and ultimately it is for them to decide whether and how to express their views to a wider public.

I move on to section 125 of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000. In response to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), I highlight to the House the fact that schedule 1 provides for a disapplication of section 125 in relation to this referendum and no other. The underlying statutory framework would continue unless Parliament decided that it wanted to have a similar provision for disapplication for any future referendum.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Lidington]

Yes, but I do want to respond on the detail.

[Dr Murrison]

Many Conservative Members will trust these Front Benchers and I accept his remarks about section 125, but does my right hon. Friend not accept that a precedent would be set and that many of us would be worried in case, under different Governments, referendums were not conducted on the fair basis that he and I both want?

[Mr Lidington]

I want to explain to the House why section 125 causes some real difficulties. We should not be under any illusions about the starting point. It is not at all the same as the purdah guidance that is published by central Government at election time. The purdah traditions for both national and local elections rest on convention. With section 125, we are talking about a very wide-ranging statutory prohibition on Government activity. In the words of the section, public bodies are banned from publishing material that

“deals with any of the issues raised by any question on which such a referendum is being held”,

as well as general information, putting arguments or even setting out the competing arguments, and encouraging people to take part in the referendum. The definition of publication in the section is very broadly phrased: the word “publish” is defined as making material

“available to the public at large, or any section of the public, in whatever form and by whatever means”.

Under section 125, there is a very wide-ranging ban on what the Government can do.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

My hon. Friend is right and will no doubt recall the 1970 general election when Harold Wilson, as Prime Minister, was not allowed to reveal the trade figures that came out immediately after the general election even though he knew them and they would have been very helpful to him. So there have been cases in which Prime Ministers were prohibited from making announcements on the basis of purdah, and I think it would be quite right to follow them in the context of a European referendum.

It was pointed out earlier that the reason the Government are so worried about this is part of the problem—namely, that the EU is involved in so many aspects of our lives that what they are restricted from doing will be much broader than it would be for a normal referendum. That makes it all the more important that this purdah is strictly observed.

We are arguing about whether the situation in which our lives are organised by the EU should remain or whether we should do something different. If, in the month or six weeks before the referendum, popular announcements about the EU were made but unpopular ones were held back—or vice versa—that would be completely improper.

[Dr Murrison]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the Executive in this country and the one in Brussels are perfectly capable of restraining themselves for 28 days? Indeed, it happens every year. It is called August.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

My hon. Friend is absolutely spot on. The activities of the European Commission come to a grinding halt for at least the whole of August. Perhaps that is the answer to another question—one that I was less exercised about—on the matter of the date. If we were to hold the referendum in the first week of September, the EU would have been shut down throughout August and there would be no great problem with purdah.

I urge the Government to come back with something pretty serious on this. They cannot get away with most of what they want; this needs to be a thorough purdah. I do not know whether they will do this today, but it is open to them—as a sign of goodwill and reassurance—not to proceed with the proposal that schedule 1 be the first schedule to the Bill. Instead, they could bring forward a new schedule to deal with this problem on Report. That would leave everyone content, and there would be no great opposition or need to press amendments.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

The hon. Lady is receiving a lot of letters this week, including one from the Minister for Europe and one from the European Movement. People are obviously interested in her views and she seems to have a great deal of sway on the Labour Benches—if only—as to how the debate will go forward. She is right.

I do not want to pick on the European Movement. I have many friends in the movement. I suppose I should declare an interest as a former Member of the European Parliament, I believe I have a pension that is nestled away out there for my dotage. However, I am very wary of the fact that the European Movement can fall on only one side of this debate, funded by British taxpayers’ money channelled through the European Commission. Will the Minister be able to tidy up the regulations to ensure fairness in the way that taxpayers’ money is spent?

There are a host of non-governmental organisations and some charities—this goes to amendments which the right hon. Member for Gordon (Alex Salmond) and my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) spoke about—to which European funding goes. Those organisations may then feel obliged to take part and push forward their own ideas on one side or the other in a European referendum.

[Dr Murrison]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the organisations that he is talking about are supranational organisations and therefore do not fall within the scope of the legislation we are debating today? Does he agree that we need to come to some sort of accommodation, as other hon. Members have suggested, with the institutions of the European Union to self-deny some of the actions that they and their organisations may be taking? If they do not, it is likely that some of those actions will be counterproductive and act against what we all want—a free and fair referendum.

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I agree entirely. That is why I was attracted by amendment 10 in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash). The British people are savvy enough to make their own decision in the referendum, based on the arguments presented to them about how their lives will be affected. The choice they make will be theirs and theirs alone. I do not believe that these organisations will have great influence.

However, now is a good time for us to discuss how we deal with some of the points that have been raised. I want the referendum to be seen to be free and fair, as I believe it will be. This is the ideal time in the process to do that as we have the Bill before us. I am keen for the Minister to be aware of the issues. Maybe there is no need to act. Maybe there is no need to go further than discussing them here today. Perhaps some tidying-up provision could be introduced on Report, though I have no idea what that might be. My hon. Friend the Member for Stone has consulted the Electoral Commission about foreign sources of funding. This is a grey area, with quite a large sum of money going to numerous organisations, NGOs and charities, and it would be nice for us all to know that that money will be spent fairly and not for political purposes in the referendum in the next couple of years.

Sovereign Grant Bill

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Thursday 14th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Ed Balls]

I shall deal with that point in a minute.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that if those costs are indeed taken into account the reduction between 1991-92 and the present day becomes even greater? The figures do not include, for instance, the royal yacht, which has been decommissioned and is no longer a burden on the Ministry of Defence.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Jones]

Yes, but what I am talking about does not relate to security. I am talking about equerries and other people who play a vital role in running the royal household and who are important in Her Majesty’s representational role. In the previous debate people tried to conflate the two issues, but I am talking about ceremonial duties that are being paid for from the defence budget.

[Dr Murrison]

Until recently the hon. Gentleman was a Defence Minister, and a very good one, so I wonder, since he feels so passionately about this, what efforts he made to identify those costs.

[Mr Jones]

I also chaired the value for money group in the Ministry of Defence, and those costs were on the radar screen for the work it was carrying out. There is a sense of grievance in the MOD and the armed forces that this money comes out of the defence budget. There should be some recognition of this vital work, but it should not come out of the defence budget. That would also avoid the nonsense that we saw last week in The Mail on Sunday, which claimed that the Prince of Wales and other members of the royal family stopped using the royal flight because the cost was being charged to the royal household. I understand that after representations were made to the Treasury the cost was reduced by £6,000 an hour for the use of one of the royal flights. Therefore, a basic subsidy is going to the royal household from the defence budget, which I do not think is right. If the full cost of the royal flight is £13,000 an hour, the Government should pay for that to support members of the royal family who need to travel on official duties. I have no problem with that, but I have a problem with where it comes from and how it is accounted for.

Independent Financial Advisers (Regulation)

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Monday 29th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr McCann]

I agree entirely, and I shall address that point a little later. It is why my constituents and I were so angered by the comparison of the current level 3 minimum qualification to that of a McDonald’s shift worker. It is, indeed, an insult to the many of thousands of people who work for that company—a company whose products, looking around the Chamber this evening, I am sure a few people have sampled.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman is concerned about the QCF—qualifications and credit framework—level 4 qualification, but is he not concerned also about the impact of the measure on the need for continuing professional development outlined in the RDR, and the fact that it is likely to disadvantage small operators who will not be able to rely on the critical mass of a large organisation when taking time off—probably about a week every year—to conduct CPD?

[Mr McCann]

I agree entirely. The measure will impact on small businesses, not the big part of the sector, and that is why the Financial Secretary should have been mindful of the commitments people have to make to gain qualifications in the sector. One IFA, in particular, heard the Minister’s comments and blogged:

“I’ve just spent 70 hours revision to pass RO1. Nobody has paid me for my lost time. Nobody has asked me 1 of the 100 questions in the exam for the last 22 years. This guy”—

the Financial Secretary—

“needs to get in the real world.”

That leads me to my main contention: the proposals and timetable to increase the qualifications needed to participate in this sector of the economy are not sensible. Exams and qualifications in the sector are not new, but the proposal to introduce new rules that effectively force people to re-sit exams without taking account of their experience or, most importantly, clean regulatory record is patently unfair. Moreover, the sector will not be able to absorb the cost of revalidation; instead, as other contributors have said, it will be passed on to the customer in the shape of higher fees.

Others have also mentioned that many professional groups in the United Kingdom are not asked to revalidate, so I seriously wonder why we are trying to isolate this particular sector. Why, as other hon. Members have asked, do we want to take away that valuable experience from that important part of the economy?

Our time is limited, and there is a limit of six minutes on each contribution, but I too want to mention one individual who has contacted me in the lead-up to the debate. He is an old friend of mine, a next-door neighbour, and it is important that we bring our experiences to the House when we discuss such issues. Jim Hunter sells financial products, and he contacted me, but he did not complain about the need for transparency, fairness or greater clarity. In fact, having done business with Jim, I know that he had all those ingredients many years ago. Indeed, I am sure that many people who have contacted hon. Members are in exactly the same boat.

Jim was talking to a colleague recently at a meeting. The gentleman is 60 years old, with more than 30 years’ experience in the industry, and if he sat the proposed exams he would be 63 before he finished them. Jim explained that that person would be lost to the industry and have to retire before his time, because he would not study at that time of his life. There are many people like that, trying to make a living for themselves in difficult times, and that ability to earn a living in this important part of our economy will effectively be taken away from them without any real benefit to the economy itself.

Financial Assistance (Ireland)

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Monday 22nd November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that one of the few redeeming features of the Labour party when in government was that it failed to take us into the eurozone? Does he understand, as I do, that the Labour party’s policy remains that we should work towards the eurozone? As the Leader of the Opposition is changing his policies, what advice can he offer?

[Mr Osborne]

Let me speak for Government policy. We will not join the euro. I believe that the Opposition’s official policy is to join the euro, but perhaps that will be discussed by their policy groups over the next two years.

Equitable Life (Payments) Bill

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Tuesday 14th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Frank Dobson (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)]

I support the Bill because it will enable Equitable Life policyholders to start getting paid. Those people put their savings into what was Britain’s oldest and, as far as they were concerned, most reputable savings institution. They were not like the people who put their savings into outfits offering dubious and extraordinary returns, such as those who decided to chance their savings with the Icelandic banks. The Equitable policyholders are in their current position through absolutely no fault of their own.

So who was at fault? First, clearly, the people who were running Equitable Life were at fault. I do not think that anyone is going to dispute that. Secondly, the House of Lords was at fault in its judgment in the case of the guaranteed annuity rate beneficiaries. When it reached its decision, it knew what the consequences were likely to be for Equitable Life and other policyholders who would not benefit from that judgment. Rather ironically, the House of Lords showed no sense of what was equitable and not a grain of common sense. It decided that it would award justice to one small group of people, almost automatically resulting in injustice for a much larger group. In view of the dubiety of certain organisations with which people put their savings, we need to look at the law to see whether we can enable the courts to come to what might be described as an adjudication rather than a judgment, where a judgment in favour of one group of innocent people might be very damaging to another group of innocent people. The Treasury, the Financial Services Authority and others were clearly at fault. Nobody can deny that, but at the time that the first ombudsman’s report came out, I believed she was wrong as well. In my judgment, her judgment did not give enough weight to the primary shortcomings and primary fault of Equitable Life, and attributed too much fault to the regulators.

Clearly, the Government were at fault in their response to that report. It was understandable that they did not fancy the establishment of the principle that people could seek compensation from a regulator. That is not an unsound concern on the part of a Government, who might not want to be subjected to all sorts of court actions—for example, when somebody decides that the police have failed to prevent burglaries in their area and seeks to bring a case against them. The financial services industry is keen always to blame regulators, as it has done in a big way.

Things changed at the time of the credit crunch. All questions about protecting the taxpayer fell away. All the old restraints fell away. The banking and savings industry, run by people of infinite greed and stupidity, was so hopeless that it was decided on both sides of the House that not only the people who had put their savings in them, but the institutions themselves, were entitled to be bailed out. From that moment on, I was convinced that had the Equitable Life issue arisen in 2007, 2008 or 2009, there would have been no doubt: we would all have agreed that the people who had lost their money should be properly compensated, and by the taxpayer. That is what we now have to do if we are to give people a sense of security in their pensions and savings.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Frank Dobson]

No, I do not want to. We must get on.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) said, the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats attacked the Labour Government—as far as I was concerned, quite rightly—and said in opposition that they strongly supported the ombudsman’s recommendations. I do not recall my opponents at the last election getting up and saying, “Well, there were a few caveats in the ombudsman’s report,” and I doubt whether that crossed Tory or Lib Dem lips anywhere else in the country.

Before, during and after the general election, the two parties that now form the Government thrice promised that the ombudsman’s report would be implemented, and they had better get on with it. However, their form of getting on with it is to establish yet another commission. That may work swiftly; I do not know. I have a question which I hope the Minister will answer. If the commission comes up with a scheme that EMAG does not like, will he send it back to the commission and insist that it comes up with a scheme acceptable to EMAG? I am happy to give way to him if he would like to contribute to the debate.

Once everyone has been paid, the situation is still not sorted out. We need to look closely at better regulation of those who are taking in people’s savings. We need to look at the regulatory system to see whether that can be strengthened in various ways. Finally, as I suggested, we need to change the law so that in circumstances like those that originally arose in Equitable Life, the courts can adjudicate between two innocent parties, not help one lot and hammer the other.