European Union (Referendum) Bill

Debate between Barry Gardiner and Peter Bone

Friday 17th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

I have in the past been a great supporter of Friday morning debates on private Members’ business. We often get some very straight talking on a Friday morning, and I gained that impression this morning. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers), who has had a tradition of opposition to the European Union going back many years, as have many Conservative Members. I do think, however, that it would have been better if this motion had been made more clearly one about getting out of Europe, rather than hiding behind the pretence that it was a motion about giving choice to the British people.

We should beware of politicians calling for common sense without telling us what that common sense actually is. What we have not had from the Conservative party or the Prime Minister is clarity about what a renegotiated Europe would look like or about the red lines as we go into the negotiations. Neither have we had clarity about a time scale within which to enable the British people to make the informed and common-sense judgments—I certainly trust the British people are able to do so, as many Conservative Members have claimed they do—that are needed. A common-sense judgment demands having some real questions on the table to look at, examine and then to decide on.

Because the Prime Minister has been unwilling to provide clarity over the red lines and because the Conservative party has been unwilling to set out what a revised European Union would look like after a renegotiation, within 19 months of next May, there would have to be clarity on those issues. I do not think that that is a reasonable time scale. The hon. Gentleman who often speaks for his wife and whose constituency I have forgotten—

[Mr Bone]

Wellingborough.

[Barry Gardiner]

Wellingborough: of course it is. The hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) said that the end of 2017 was a backstop, but, as he knows full well, in the last six months of 2017 Britain will be chairing the European Union, and it is inconceivable that we could hold the referendum within those six months. The hon. Gentleman drew the date forward, saying that there could be a referendum during the first six months of the year, but that would shorten the time that the British people would have in which to look at what was on offer.

I do not think that the Bill is lacking in disingenuity. It is disingenuous because it claims to rely on the good wisdom of the British people to make a judgment without giving them the basis on which to make that judgment, and without giving them a time scale that will allow them to exercise it.