European Union (Referendum) Bill

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Gareth Thomas

Friday 29th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Thomas]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Surely it is a tradition of the House that when one Front Bencher seeks to intervene on another Front Bencher, the intervention is accepted.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

The hon. Gentleman has made his point. He knows that it is not a point on which I should rule from the Chair. The Minister has been speaking for only a minute or two. He is in the opening stages of his speech and I am sure that he will take interventions when it becomes appropriate.

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[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is well aware that he must stick specifically to the question in hand. The question proposed by the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) was one that requires only a short answer, and the hon. Gentleman may then resume his consideration of the amendments.

[Mr Thomas]

rose—

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[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

The hon. Gentleman appreciates that the Chair has power over many things and many people, but the Government deputy Chief Whip is not one of them.

[Mr Thomas]

As I was saying, following the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Windsor, we know that the Conservative party is deeply divided on the timetable for any referendum. Some want it next year, others want 2017, and Foreign Office Ministers are not sure when they want it. Therefore, I understand why my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South suggests different dates by which the Electoral Commission should report on the rules.

Amendment 6, tabled by my hon. Friend, refers to the broadcasting rights of the proponents and opponents during the election campaign. There is a clear British tradition of party political and referendum campaign broadcasts, and I understand that that is relatively unusual in comparative terms. This is in part because political advertising in broadcast media is prohibited in the UK. Indeed, the ban was the subject of a recent European Court of Human Rights case, which upheld the UK position. I understand that Ofcom is tasked with drawing up the rules regarding the allocation, length and frequency of referendum campaign broadcasts for commercial broadcasters with public service obligations. I acknowledge that the amendment takes particular care to highlight the importance of Welsh language broadcasts.

The amendment seeks to place on the face of the Bill clear provisions for a minimum of six broadcasts, with the possibility of 10 broadcasts, of 60 minutes in length. I am not sure why my hon. Friend has settled on 10. If he gets the chance to wind up the debate, perhaps he will say why. Is it, perhaps, because of who he thinks might want to appear in the 10 broadcasts? After all, no one is quite sure where the Foreign Secretary stands on Europe. This is the man who famously, while wearing a baseball cap, said that there were only 12 days to save the pound. He was wrong, but notwithstanding that flurry of Euroscepticism, some Conservative Members believe that he is part of the problem on Europe. Clearly, if the Foreign Secretary appeared in one of the broadcasts for either side, a less divisive figure would be needed to appear in the next broadcast. Perhaps the difficulties that the anti-EU campaign might face if there were not enough broadcasts are a further reason why my hon. Friend has suggested 10 of them. Imagine if it put up one of UKIP’s MEPs—it might provoke scrutiny of their low work-rate in Brussels.

I think that at least one broadcast during the campaign ought to focus on how the ordinary, hard-working people of this country would be affected. We know from CBI research that every UK household stands to take a £3,000 hit to their living standards if the Prime Minister’s reckless gamble to keep his party together results in a British exit from the European Union.

Why else might we need 10 broadcasts? Is it possible that the Prime Minister might want to feature in one? Perhaps he might want to dwell on the powers and competences he has repatriated back to the UK due to the treaty change he thinks is coming. As we do not know what powers and competences he wants to repatriate, it is hard to judge how successful he might be and therefore whether such a broadcast, and resulting opposition broadcast, would be necessary. We have tried at length, as has the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), to elicit from the Minister for Europe what powers and competences the Prime Minister wants to repatriate as a result of the treaty change he thinks is coming, but there has been absolutely no clarity from the Minister at all.

Perhaps a further reason for my hon. Friend’s advocating 10 broadcasts is to give the last Conservative Prime Minister to win a majority, John Major, the chance to speak in a referendum campaign broadcast. Yesterday he said that Britain will pay a “severe price” if it votes to leave the European Union, and that an exit could cost billions and leave the UK isolated internationally yet still required to implement EU regulations it had no part in framing. I could see him being an excellent choice for one of the 10 broadcasts that my hon. Friend suggests. One wonders why the current Prime Minister wants to take such a risk for Britain if this is anything other than a desperate effort to keep his party united.

One could imagine that a further reason a limit of 10 broadcasts is needed is that UKIP would want one of the no campaign broadcasts to dwell on the unnecessary expense—some £100 million to £150 million a year—of the Strasbourg Parliament, that expensive and unnecessary extra European parliamentary body that the French like so much and that they bullied John Major’s Conservative Government into accepting as the price for staying out of the social chapter.

Perhaps we need so many broadcasts in order to focus on the issues, such as the economic case for staying in Europe and the folly of the idea that we should try to be like Switzerland or Norway. We would certainly need a broadcast to focus on the benefits that EU membership delivers for co-operation on crime and justice matters across Europe. If we want to tackle the mafia-like gangs that control illegal immigration, we need cross-border co-operation.

I can see the case, then, for some broadcasts, but I am not sure, if I am honest, that we need to be quite as specific as my hon. Friend proposes. I think we can trust the broadcasters and the Electoral Commission to get this right. However, he has raised an important issue, which, along with many other important elements of this Bill, has so far been ignored by the Conservatives as the red mist of Euroscepticism has descended.

Let me raise a few points about my amendment 64, which I may want to press to a Division. We have already discussed on Report and in Committee many of the unique aspects of Gibraltar’s position with regard to EU matters and the proposed referendum—thankfully so, as Conservative Members had singularly failed to consider the Gibraltarian people in this matter before the Bill emerged from Lynton Crosby’s office. In fact, Labour Members are becoming increasingly concerned that the Minister for Europe is being insufficiently robust with his Spanish counterparts over Gibraltar, but that debate is rightly for another time.

As the House will know, in ordinary European parliamentary elections the results of voting in Gibraltar are included in the south-west region of the UK. My amendment suggests a provision to allow a change from this norm whereby for referendums only the results are published separately, allowing it to be clear and beyond doubt how the Gibraltarian people have voted should such a referendum go ahead. I cannot, in all honesty, foresee a great added expense in such an arrangement. I gently suggest to Conservative Members that adding such a provision to the Bill might go some way towards making up to the Gibraltarian people for the rather—dare I say?—rude way in which they were treated in this proposed legislation at the outset. I would have welcomed the Minister’s comments on the amendment, but I do not think he touched on it at all.

Amendment 84 suggests a proper audit of the arrangements and conduct of any in/out referendum. The hon. Member for Cheltenham has said that we can always learn from what has gone before, and he is right. I gently suggest that the amendment is a sensible provision for the Minister to reflect on.

European Union (Referendum) Bill

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Gareth Thomas

Friday 22nd November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Thomas]

I beg to move amendment 72, page 1, line 7, leave out subsection (4) and insert—

‘(4) Before making an order under subsection (3) the Secretary of State shall conduct a consultation lasting not less than six months on what question should appear on the ballot paper, and shall by order set out the question to be asked.’.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Amendment 35, page 1, leave out lines 8 and 9 and insert

‘Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union?’.

Amendment 36, page 1, leave out lines 8 and 9 and insert

‘Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?’.

Amendment 37, page 1, line 10 , leave out ‘version’ and insert ‘translation’.

Amendment 38, page 1, line 11, after ‘order’, insert

‘after consultation with the National Assembly for Wales and the Welsh Assembly Government.’.

Amendment 39, page 1, line 11, at end insert—

‘(5A) In Scotland, a Gaelic translation of the question is also to appear on the ballot papers, as provided by order, after consultation with the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government.’.

Amendment 40, page 1, line 11, at end insert—

‘( ) In Northern Ireland, a Gaelic translation of the question is also to appear on the ballot papers, as provided by order, after consultation with the Northern Ireland Assembly and the Northern Ireland Executive.’.

Amendment 71, page 1, line 12, leave out subsection (6) and insert—

‘(6) An order under this section shall be made by statutory instrument.

(7) An order under subsection (3) may not be made unless each House of Parliament has passed a resolution that the referendum shall take place on a day specified in the resolution and the day specified in the resolution is the same as in the order.

(8) An order under subsection (5) may not be made unless a draft of the order has been laid before, and approved by, a resolution of each House of Parliament.’.

[Mr Thomas]

I am grateful to the Speaker and to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for selecting amendment 72, which concerns the crucial issue of the wording of the proposed referendum question, as do amendments 35 to 40, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes). I also hope to speak to amendment 71, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North East (Mr Bain). My amendment 72 seeks to ensure there is a consultation about what the question appearing on the ballot paper will actually say.

If there were any doubt about whether this Bill was anything other than a party political stunt, we had the spectacle of the Conservative party chairman attacking the Electoral Commission when its statement about the question came out. He attacked it for raising concerns about the wording of the question to be put in any referendum. As I understand it, the Conservative party backed the establishment of the Electoral Commission as an independent force in British politics to help to enforce proper standards in the way that elections and, crucially, referendums take place. Now, because the Electoral Commission’s work produces some inconvenient truths, the Conservatives seek to rubbish it.

One would have thought that the whole House would recognise that if we are to have a referendum, we need to present a clear, impartial question that favours neither one side of an argument nor the other, in order to allow the British people a genuine choice. The great deficiency of this Bill is the lack of consultation with anybody before it emerged from Lynton Crosby’s office. The problems that the Electoral Commission has identified could have been ironed out before now if there had been a proper consultation. It is clear from the Electoral Commission’s work so far that we do not have clarity about what, in its view, the question should be, that the wording in the Bill as it stands is not appropriate and that further work by the commission to test the most appropriate options is necessary.

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[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

As the hon. Gentleman knows, that is not a point of order. I expect that the hon. Gentleman in question meant to be sitting and will do so from now on.

[Mr Thomas]

For the avoidance of doubt, I should say that I took no offence. Anything that can be done to enlighten the Minister for Europe about what the Prime Minister’s question might be on the crucial issue of the powers and competences that he wants to repatriate to the UK can only be helpful.

I was focusing on the work of the Electoral Commission, which was established by the 2000 Act. It has the crucial statutory responsibility to report on the intelligibility of a question included in a referendum Bill, as soon as is practicable, once it has been laid before Parliament. What we are discussing is the Electoral Commission’s ninth such referendum question assessment report; it has done sterling work on a series of other referendums. It is worth our reflecting on those.

The Electoral Commission was asked to assess the intelligibility of questions for the 2011 referendum on the powers of the National Assembly for Wales; for the 2011 UK-wide referendum on the parliamentary voting system, on which I would rather not dwell; for a range of local government referendums that have been held in England since 2008; and, of course, for the forthcoming referendum on independence for Scotland. This is the first time the Electoral Commission has undertaken an assessment exercise for a question included in a private Member’s Bill. However, there can be no doubting the experience of the commission in judging accurately what the referendum question should be, given its extensive previous involvement in eight other referendums.

The provisions for the holding of a referendum to be included in a private Member’s Bill are extremely unusual.

The Electoral Commission is probably not the only organisation looking on in confusion at the strange road down which the Prime Minister and the hon. Member for Stockton South (James Wharton) have decided to travel.