National Referendum on the European Union

Debate between Denis MacShane and David Nuttall

Monday 24th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House calls upon the Government to introduce a Bill in the next session of Parliament to provide for the holding of a national referendum on whether the United Kingdom should

(a) remain a member of the European Union on the current terms;

(b) leave the European Union; or

(c) re-negotiate the terms of its membership in order to create a new relationship based on trade and co-operation.

The motion stands in my name and those of many other right hon. and hon. Members.

I must start by thanking the Backbench Business Committee for providing time for today’s debate. It is an historic debate, and the amount of interest generated in advance of it has surely put beyond any doubt the fact that the public are concerned about this matter. It fully vindicates the establishment of the Committee, and its decision to facilitate the debate. I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron), for Christchurch (Mr Chope), for Clacton (Mr Carswell), for Rochester and Strood (Mark Reckless) and for Wycombe (Steve Baker), along with many others, for their tireless work and support from the very outset. With the leave of the House, my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) will briefly wind up the debate.

The motion reflects the wishes of the hundreds of thousands of people who have signed petitions calling for a referendum on the United Kingdom’s future relationship with the European Union. Opinion polls clearly show that millions of others agree with them: in fact, the vast majority of the British people want a vote in a referendum. The arguments for and against the United Kingdom’s membership of the European Union can wait until a future referendum campaign. The motion that is before us today simply paves the way for a referendum to be held on some future, as yet unspecified, date. Therefore, any argument that now is not the right time for a referendum to be held is, quite frankly, irrelevant. Even if the motion is passed today, a referendum is likely to be years away.

One reason for people’s increasing concern about our membership of the European Union is the growing sense that this country, indeed this Parliament, is becoming ever more impotent as more and more decisions are taken in Brussels and then passed down to the United Kingdom to implement, whether we like it or not.

I want to mention one very important example of that from my constituency of Bury North. Before the last general election, the Conservatives pledged that if we won the election we would keep open the children’s department, including the maternity ward and special care baby unit, at Fairfield hospital in Bury, which was scheduled to close under Labour’s plans. Sadly, despite that pledge, and despite massive local opposition to the closure plans, these vital services are still destined to close, and one of the driving forces behind the closure plans is the effect of the European working time directive. Thousands of my constituents feel completely let down, and even at this late stage I urge the Government to keep that pre-election pledge and to ensure these services are retained at Fairfield hospital.

[Mr Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab)]

Two weeks ago at the Inverclyde Royal hospital, 23-year-old doctor Lauren Connelly died in a car crash. All her colleagues believe that that was a result of her having worked exhaustingly long hours. We should not mock the working time directive. Although it is sometimes improperly applied in the UK, it is also saving the lives of doctors and patients.

[Mr Nuttall]

I believe it is for this Parliament to decide what rules and regulations should be taken up.

The voters know that the tentacles of the European Union intrude into ever more areas of our national life. Understandably, they are saddened—and, indeed, disillusioned—at being fobbed off, as they see it, by the political elite, who always seem to find a reason to stop them having their say.

More than a decade ago, my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary coined the phrase, “We want to be in Europe, but not run by Europe.” The sad fact is that since then we have increasingly become run by Europe. I and millions of others in this country want to be in Britain, and run by Britain.

More than 36 years have passed since anyone had the chance to have their say on this crucial matter, and in that time not a single power has ever been repatriated. I suspect that for some in this House there will never be a right time for a referendum on this issue, but I think that, by anybody’s standards, nearly four decades is quite long enough to wait.

Moreover, almost two thirds of the people of the United Kingdom have never had the opportunity to vote on this issue. Indeed, figures supplied by the House of Commons Library show that approximately 8 million of the people who voted yes to continuing our membership of the Common Market back in 1975 are still alive today. That is just 16% of the current voting age population, leaving a staggering 84% who have never voted in favour of Britain’s continued membership of the European Economic Community.

Equality and Diversity (Reform) Bill

Debate between Denis MacShane and David Nuttall

Friday 21st October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab)]

I have been following the speech by the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) very closely and taking a considerable number of notes. Unfortunately, I had to deal with something in my office but, alas, I could repeat almost word for word what he has said; however, I will not.

In my 17 years in the Commons, this is the most reactionary, right-wing, regressive Bill ever put to this House in a serious speech. The hon. Gentleman will probably take that as a compliment. However, there is something more profoundly serious at stake, because he represents a growing view within his party that the minor progress that we have made on equality in recent years has gone too far and should be reversed. The whole history of British legislation is precisely to use the power of Government and state to redress imbalances and unfairnesses, first, between those who did and did not have the vote—between the aristocracy and the non-noblemen in our communities—and, over time, through other positive action to ensure that there was full equality for all.

Some of the hon. Gentleman’s proposals are ridiculous. He suggests that there can be no “affirmative or positive action” in order to help people depending on their “sex”—I think he means gender. Presumably, that would outlaw the recruitment of women into convents because they were nuns and not men, or perhaps rugby players should now be hired not on the basis that they are trained, fit, male athletes, but that they are women.

The very first pamphlet I ever wrote as a political activist—

[Mr Nuttall]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr MacShane]

May I just make my points, and then I will give way? I do not mean to be discourteous, but I want to be brief because I am conscious that other people want to speak on other issues.

The very first political pamphlet I wrote in 1978 was an appeal to the BBC and other media organisations to hire journalists who were not white—at the time, we would say they were from the Asian or Afro-Caribbean community—because there was not a single byline reporter or presenter of that description on TV, despite the fact that by then we had hundreds of thousands, if not more, among our fellow British citizens and journalists I worked with, but in subordinate roles for which they had been able to offer themselves. I am glad, 30 years later, that that is not the case. We do not have a mono-coloured BBC or ITV or bylines in all our great newspapers evidently comprising only sturdy British citizens.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr MacShane]

The hon. Gentleman is quite wrong. I did fall on my sword, in the sense that the BBC made me do so by liberating me from its employment at the time. Whether I was replaced by a journalist from the black and minority ethnic community, I do not know. The point is that we expanded journalism, and yes, we went in for positive discrimination in the sphere of broadcasting, and I am very glad about that. Certainly, when the time comes for me to leave my position as MP for Rotherham, I will be delighted if there is an all-women shortlist. The real question that the hon. Gentleman’s party has to ask is why, even with the all the people put on to the A-list, there are still so few women sitting on the Conservative Benches.

[Mr Nuttall]

rose—

[Mr MacShane]

I will take just one more intervention, because I want to make my contribution very short.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Nuttall]

Going back to the question of rugby players, does the right hon. Gentleman not agree that women’s rugby is a very popular sport?

[Mr MacShane]

Women’s rugby and football, and other sports, are very popular. On the strict reading of the Bill, it would be illegal for Rotherham, Wasps or Harlequins not to entertain the notion of a woman rugby player, but I do not want to go too far down that road.

The notion that I find exceptionally offensive is that we make no efforts to help people with disabilities. We are facing thousands of people being fired from Remploy because of the wicked actions of the governing party. These are people who will find it incredibly difficult to get jobs elsewhere in the normal labour market. Quite rightly, in the 1940s, after the war, we honoured our war veterans by saying that those who came out of the war with particular disabilities could work in normal jobs and have the dignity of labour rather than living on handouts and the dole—but according to this wretched Bill, that, too, would be illegal.

On religion, we had an interesting discussion this week in Education questions about whether Cardinal Vaughan school in London can maintain its Catholic identity or, as some might wish, should no longer do so. I think that my many Jewish friends would find it very offensive, but oh so typical of the chauvinist, nationalist spirit that now reigns in the Conservative party, that they cannot define who comes into their schools on the basis of religion.

The whole balance of legislation, going back to the abolition of the slave trade and Lord Shaftesbury stopping children going up chimneys, was precisely to alter law to give particular protection to people who would otherwise be unfairly exploited on the grounds of their socio-economic status. I find it profoundly distressing that in October 2011 we are seriously being asked to rip up every decent parliamentary value that we and our predecessors have fought for over the years.

This is a Friday morning debate, and we all know that these Bills never go anywhere, but this Bill is symptomatic of the entire approach of the Conservative party. The Conservatives are refusing to support the International Labour Organisation convention on domestic workers because that, too, is aimed at giving a little bit of protection to people of a particular socio-economic and sex, or gender, status who are facing the most appalling exploitation in this and in other countries. Conservative Front Benchers have nothing to do with this Bill, of course, but the hon. Gentleman speaks for much of today’s Conservative party. That is why the quicker it is replaced in government by a party or parties that support the standards and best values of Britain, the better.

European Union Bill

Debate between Denis MacShane and David Nuttall

Tuesday 25th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Nuttall]

I have no idea what each individual thinks—that is up to them. All I am saying is that those who promote the EU project, which states the need for ever-closer union—[Interruption.] Those who promote the EU project would very much like there to be simply EU elections and local, regional elections, effectively bypassing Members of Parliament. The thrust of the legislation means that that is where we are headed, and it is one of many reasons why I tabled amendments 54 and 55, and I commend them to the Committee.

[Mr Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab)]

My treat, which I can never find the resources or time to put into effect, is to send the comments that hon. Members on both sides of the House make to our fellow European politicians. I should like President Sarkozy, Chancellor Merkel, Prime Minister Tusk or the representatives of any one of the nine Nordic and Baltic states that were hosted by the Prime Minister at Downing street last week, to read that someone stood up in the Chamber of the House of Commons and said that we are about to abolish national elections. They would realise what a wonderful world the House of Commons can become. To paraphrase Karl Marx on history in the famous opening lines of “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte”, the House of Commons, when it debates the EU, starts as muddle and descends quickly into farce. We are already firmly into those two categories today.

Clause 6 refers—