European Union Referendum Bill

Debate between David Lidington and Michael Ellis

Monday 7th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Michael Ellis]

Sorry, I am running out of time, so I will not give way.

The Government should have a view, and it should not be expected that the Government of the day will be silent on these issues. The Government should expect to take a position and will want to make a recommendation. Under section 125, purdah would be unnecessarily restrictive.

I am conscious of the time and want to give my right hon. Friend the Minister the opportunity to sum up, but I want to make one more point. The European Commission and foreign Governments cannot be permissible donors under our law, so they would not be entitled to contribute. The fear that has been expressed by some hon. Members is therefore misguided, because the rules are already such that their fear will not be realised. I support the Government’s measures and thank the House for its attention.

[Mr Lidington]

Everybody who has spoken has agreed that there should not be untrammelled freedom for the Government or other public bodies to campaign during the final 28 days before the referendum. Nobody has argued for that; rather, the argument has been about how best to define the scope of restrictions on such activity and the precise form that they should take. It has been about the extent to which the rules should be set by Act, secondary legislation or guidance. I emphasise again that so far as the Government are permitted to act by whatever Parliament eventually decides, those permitted actions will be subject to guidance.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) for the courtesy with which he put his arguments. As he was open enough to say in his letter to me of 21 July, a number of witnesses to his inquiry suggested

“that Section 125 could be amended to provide clarification to reduce the perceived risk of legal challenge”.

It is therefore not as if the Government have been completely on their own in saying that there are serious questions that ought to be addressed by a limited and carefully defined exemption from the section 125 arrangements.

We could have chosen to make the changes that we are offering in Government amendment 53 by way of secondary legislation, using the regulation-making power that we propose in new clause 10. We chose to table an amendment to the Bill because it offers greater clarity and certainty to Ministers and their officials, who will have to go off to Brussels and Strasbourg and argue the case for this country’s interests and circulate documents—to publish things in the terms defined by section 125—and they do not want to be looking over their shoulder trying to second-guess whether they might end up with a legal challenge. Primary legislation is just a stronger guarantee than secondary legislation.

We also felt that that greater certainty and clarity should apply to the assurance given in the same Government amendment that any such exemption could not be misused by the Government to pray in aid a piece of ongoing routine EU business to suggest that a particular outcome to the referendum—a case for leaving or remaining—was somehow validated by that publication on the ongoing business. Yes, that could have been done by statutory instrument, but we came to the House with this proposal precisely because we felt that not only the exemption but, critically, the safeguard would be better assured by means of primary legislation.

My right hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Mr Paterson) asked me about the Venice Commission. The commission’s code of good practice in respect of referendums states that, contrary to the case of elections, it is not necessary to prohibit completely intervention by the authorities in support of, or against, the proposal submitted to a referendum. The Venice Commission goes on to say that public authorities must not influence the outcome of the vote by excessive, one-sided campaigning. That is exactly the sort of balance that the Government have sought to embody in the proposed legislation and in the amendments we are presenting today.

I believe that the package is balanced and fair. It will ensure a referendum that is fair, and seen by all sides to be fair, and in which the whole country can have confidence.