European Union Referendum Bill

Debate between Lord Mackinlay of Richborough and Steve Baker

Monday 7th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Craig Mackinlay (South Thanet) (Con)]

I congratulate the Minister on using the summer recess very well in bringing back this Bill in a different form. The fact that legislation was put together in haste before the recess can only be put down to the manifesto commitment to the referendum. We now have back, at least so far, section 125 of PPERA in some form.

This afternoon, I am not going to speak about the good or ills of the European Union; that is for a future debate. I can appreciate the concerns that led the Minister to try to alter the usual section 125 terms, given the nature of the tentacles of the EU’s involvement in vast tracts of just about every aspect of UK Government, although he is probably over-concerned about this.

My right hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Mr Paterson) put it very well when he said that legitimacy is the most important thing, in that whatever the outcome of the referendum, the losers, no matter which side they are on, must be able to say to themselves and to the world at large, “We did our best; we lost—but it was fair.” That is the position we need to be in with this European referendum, because it may not happen again for the next 40 years. I was interested to hear my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) talk about the problems of the 1975 referendum. I was obviously too young to take part in that, but it was, by all accounts, something of a shambles. For the Welsh referendum in 1997, the Neill Committee came up with the precursor ideas to what became the PPERA that we know today.

In all legislation, simplicity is best. While PPERA is far from simple, the purdah rules in section 125 are rules that we know. They are tried and tested, and they have served us in quite a number of referendums. We do not live just by legislation in this country, but by convention, a degree of case law, decent behaviour and knowing what is right. We have an enlarged Electoral Commission. Some might say that it is a somewhat bloated bureaucracy, but it has earned a high degree of respect. We have the ministerial and civil service codes. Also, the media have changed. It was said earlier that “The Andrew Marr Show” breaks various stories. We now accept that all these are just the new ways of doing things. Purdah has not been broken; we know how things are and know that normal business continues throughout elections and referendums. We know fairness when we see it, hear it and feel it.

As was described earlier, the PPERA legislation was put together in anticipation of a euro referendum, when the same concerns that have been aired by the Minister would have been known by the then Labour Government. Legislation does not always do all that it should, but PPERA served us well through the alternative vote referendum. Had there not been local elections in 2011, many people would not even have known that that referendum was on. No aspect of that was important to the day-to-day basis of normal government, unlike the Scotland referendum. PPERA has served for new forms of election as well, including the police and crime commissioner elections. We have all appreciated that government continues. The EU will continue to go through its machinations whether there is a UK referendum or not.

Conservative Members may not always be in government; I doubt it, much as I hope that we will. Changing now legislation—PPERA—that has served us well for some 15 years would be a dangerous step for the future. I urge the Government to accept that amendment 53 merely muddies the waters of that legislation. I would prefer amendment 4 or, even better, amendment 78 as a far more elegant means of having a free and fair referendum that has legitimacy, and after which the losers will be able to say, “We lost, but it was free and it was fair.”

[Mr Baker]

It might be helpful to return to the origin of this problem: some people, including many Conservative Members, are concerned about tipping the scales using taxpayers’ funds. If this place is for anything, it is about Members choosing to restrain power through the law, and that is what we are seeking to do tonight. Ministers might be tempted to take steps at the last moment to help influence the result, so we want to ensure that they are appropriately restrained in the usual way through normal purdah rules, or as close to them as we can get.