National Referendum on the European Union

Douglas Carswell Excerpts

Monday 24th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Douglas Carswell (Clacton) (Con)]

For 40 years, we have left Europe policy to Ministers and to mandarins—to a tiny Whitehall elite. Look at the collective mess that they have made of it. We have a fisheries policy with no fish; red tape strangling small businesses; financial regulation that suffocates the City; and now we are being asked to spend billions of pounds bailing out a currency that we never even joined. We have lurched from one bad deal with Brussels to the next, and from one disastrous round of negotiations to another. That is the price we pay for leaving it to Ministers and mandarins to decide our Europe policy. It is time to trust the people. Today, every Member of this House faces a straightforward choice. They can either vote to give people a referendum on the EU or they can vote not to trust the people.

[Mr Charles Walker]

Would my hon. Friend like to expand on that point?

[Mr Carswell]

I shall try to do so over the next three minutes, and I am grateful for that thoughtful and erudite intervention.

This is a matter of principle: is it right, in principle, to put the question of EU membership to a popular vote? Too many people in Westminster—in SW1—try to second-guess how the voters may vote in a referendum and then work backwards to decide whether or not they favour a referendum. Instead we should start from the principle: is it right for the people to decide? Yes it is, and I believe that this issue qualifies for a referendum. The issue is of massive constitutional significance, it divides all three parties and it cannot be adequately settled in a general election.

Referendums can no longer be dismissed, as they have been for many years, as somehow alien to the British tradition. We have had dozens of referendums since 1997, including a national referendum on the alternative vote.

[Richard Drax]

Does my hon. Friend accept that the reason why we are having more and more referendums is that the people who put us here simply do not trust us?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Carswell]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. There has been a mood change in this country away from what one might call “deferential democracy”, where people leave it to the 650 people here to make public policy, to a new kind of democracy, where people want more choice and they want politics to be done by them, rather than to them by a remote elite. Some people in my party and in our own Whips Office have not truly understood that sea change.

If we are to have a referendum to decide how we elect Members of Parliament, surely we can have a referendum to decide whether or not those we elect should make the rules under which we live. Today’s motion has been put on the Commons agenda by the people. It is to this coalition’s immense credit that it has introduced a mechanism to allow voters to trigger debates—some 100,000 voters have triggered this debate. But we cannot say that we want to renew democracy if we shy away from the outcome of what the people say. We cannot claim that we want a new politics if we then use old-style whipping tactics from the 1950s to crush debate—or, rather, we could do all that but then we would have the credibility of a Greek Government bond.

Today’s vote is about change. I am voting for an EU referendum because I want change—change not only in our relationship with Europe but fundamental change in the way this country is run. I am not voting for a referendum in the hope that it will take us to some insular, mythical island past: I am voting for an open society—a truly global country. Ultimately, this is not about flags, anthems or identity, but about whether it is right for millions of people to have their lives arranged for them by deliberate design of technocrats. It is about democracy.

I ask each Member to cast their mind back to the day they were first elected to this House. I ask them to recall that sense of pride mingled with awesome responsibility when the returning officer read out the winner’s name. Most hon. Members will have felt in their bones that entering this House was one of the most exalted and greatest moments in their lives. Look at how today we are scorned. “MPs don’t keep their promises,” say the cynics. “You say whatever you say to get elected,” they cry. Today is our chance to show the cynics that they are wrong.

All three parties until recently promised the people a referendum on the EU. There is no point in clever wordplay or in reading the clever brief from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office officials—most people understood that we were going to give them a referendum. That is what MPs in all parties wanted the people to believe and it is the impression that we deliberately conveyed. This evening, we have a chance to keep our promises, to honour our word and to keep faith in our country. I will vote to let the people decide and I urge other hon. Members to do so. My hon. Friends the Members for Peterborough (Mr Jackson) and for Gravesham (Mr Holloway) are indeed honourable and it is a privilege to be their colleague on the Back Benches.