European Union (Referendum) Bill

John Denham Excerpts

Friday 5th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr John Denham (Southampton, Itchen) (Lab)]

I trust I will be judged a suitable speaker to make sure the Chamber is not completely empty.

I am delighted to speak in this debate, which has so far lived up to expectations. I would not have missed it for the world, because it must be one of the oddest debates ever held in this Chamber on a private Member’s Bill Friday. It is odd because of the politics of the occasion. I do not think there has been a private Member’s Bill Friday in the time that I have been in this House when the Prime Minister has been forced by his Back Benchers to come here to jump to their tune. Normally, Prime Ministers hold a sort of lofty disdain for private Members’ Bills, but our Prime Minister, in the eyes of Europe, has been humiliated here today by his own Back Benchers. That is one oddity about today. The second oddity is the reason the Bill is here at all, which I shall come to, and the third oddity is what is in it.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

The right hon. Gentleman may have observed that the Conservative Back Benches are full of volunteers supporting their leader. Has he noticed that there are fewer than 25 Labour MPs here and no leader?

[Mr Denham]

As I will explain to the hon. Gentleman and the House, the reason for that is that this is a Bill about the private problems and the private political difficulties of the Conservative party, so it is not surprising that so many Conservative Members are here today. These matters do not really affect the rest of us very much, except for—I will come to this—the damage that is being done by the antics within the Conservative party to the interests of this country.

[Philip Davies]

The right hon. Gentleman talks about the oddities of today’s Bill, and there are certainly some oddities in today’s proceedings. The greatest one I have heard so far is the shadow Foreign Secretary asking the Foreign Secretary how he will vote in a referendum in four years’ time, when the shadow Foreign Secretary cannot answer how he will vote on this Bill in less than four hours’ time.

[Mr Denham]

For my part, I very much doubt that I will be here in four hours’ time to vote at all on this Bill. Let me explain why.

[Heather Wheeler]

rose—

[Dr Offord]

rose—

[Mr Denham]

No, I will make a little progress.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. The right hon. Gentleman has said that he will not be here. I wonder whether you could give some guidance on how long Members should remain in their places at the conclusion of a debate to hear the winding-up speeches.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Mr Rees-Mogg, I think you know the answer to that. Members are required to hear the speech before them and two after. We are on a private Member’s Bill today, not a Government Bill, and the Front Benchers have already spoken.

[Mr Denham]

I am not one of those who have been accused of abusing the courtesies of this House, but there is no requirement in the courtesies of this House to vote on a motion that is ridiculous, so I will not be voting on it.

There was a time, not so long ago, when private Members’ Bills were used for matters of great social reform, such as homosexual law reform and gay marriage. Issues of great constitutional importance were seen as the responsibilities of the Government. That may have changed. Gay marriage is an important social reform, so perhaps making it a Government proposal is progress—the Government’s gay marriage proposals certainly had many Government Members beside themselves. However, constitutional reforms, such as the Great Reform Act, the devolution referendum and the initial referendum on the European Union, which were the responsibilities of Government, have now been devolved by this weak and hopeless Prime Minister to private Members’ business. That is one great oddity.

[Mrs Main]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Denham]

No, I will make a little more progress.

Why has this situation come about? Why has supposedly the most powerful politician in the land come begging his MPs to support a private Member’s Bill? The Prime Minister’s position on the issue seems clear enough. He made a speech in January in which he said that after the next election, if there is a Conservative Government, he would aim to renegotiate our relationship with the EU, with an in/out referendum by 2017, come what may in those negotiations. That might not be wise—there is absolutely no guarantee of any negotiations being clear by 2017—but it is certainly a clear position, and it came from the Prime Minister.

Why was that not good enough for the Conservative Members who have turned up today? Of course, many of them just want to leave the EU. They do not care when, as long as it is as soon as possible, and they do not trust their own Prime Minister. As soon as the Queen’s Speech was published, they were after him. The hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) was first off the mark, moving an amendment regretting the failure to mention a referendum Bill in the Queen’s Speech. He was very clear why one was needed. He wrote in The Daily Telegraph:

“The Prime Minister made a historic pledge to the British people during his January speech,”

but

“where the Prime Minister’s pledge falls down is its believability.”

Let me repeat that:

“where the Prime Minister’s pledge falls down”—

this “historic pledge”, let us remember—

“is its believability.”

What an extraordinary statement! The reason we are here today is because the majority of Tory MPs do not believe that a historic pledge made by their own leader is believed by the British people. That is the only reason we are here, and that is why the Prime Minister is humiliated by these proceedings today.

[Mr John Baron]

I am afraid the right hon. Gentleman quotes very selectively from that piece. Having written it, I will correct him for the record. What I went on to say was that the issue was believability, not because there is an issue between the Prime Minister and his Back Benchers, but because the issue has been between politicians in general and the electorate, because far too many promises in the past have been broken, particularly by the Labour party and the Liberals, at every single general election. If the right hon. Gentleman is going to quote me, he should please do it correctly.

[Mr Denham]

I quoted absolutely verbatim from the hon. Gentleman’s article. Let me respond to his further point. I would expect a Conservative MP to say, “You can’t really believe what Labour MPs say”, and I would expect Labour MPs to say, “You can’t really believe what Conservative MPs say.” That is what we do here in this House. It probably does not do us much good with the general public, but that is what we do—we throw these things about. What I do not expect is a Conservative MP to say, “You can’t believe a Conservative Prime Minister,” and that is what the hon. Gentleman did. The Bill has arisen from the decision of Conservative Back Benchers—

[Mr Baron]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker.

--- Later in debate ---

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

The issue is a matter for debate, as the hon. Gentleman knows. I believe his name is down to be called in this debate and he will have ample opportunity at that point if he feels that the record needs to be corrected. I think he is experienced enough to know that these matters tend to be a point of debate rather than a point of order.

[Mr Denham]

The first point is that this is really a private matter for the Conservative party. Whether they believe that their Prime Minister is trustworthy or believable is primarily a matter for them, not for the rest of us. If they wish to humiliate their party leader, that is up to them. I do not intend to participate in the vote later today.

We know what happened. The humiliated Prime Minister was forced to let the Tory party publish a referendum Bill, and the hon. Member for Stockton South (James Wharton) was unfortunate enough, from his point of view, to come top of the ballot. He might have made his name by trying to improve the lot of carers, improve animal welfare or tighten gas safety, or by engaging with the traditional territories of private Members’ Bills, but instead he has introduced this Bill. I do not blame him for it, but the Bill is about the Tory party and not the national interest.

[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Denham]

No, I am going to make a little more progress and then I will take another intervention.

The aim seemed clear enough: to put the Prime Minister’s promise on to a statutory basis. We know what the promise was: after the next election to have a renegotiation and then to have a referendum by 2017. So imagine my surprise when I read the Bill, because it does not commit to a referendum after the next election. The Bill is very clear: the referendum could happen as soon as the Bill has been passed. It is not about after the next election or after renegotiation—it is any time now. That is very odd, because the Prime Minister is on the record as opposing a referendum Bill now. Why, then, does the Bill, which was introduced by the hon. Member for Stockton South and drafted in Tory party central office, provide for the possibility of a referendum now? The hon. Gentleman gave the game away in an interview, again I am afraid, in The Daily Telegraph. Discussing possible amendments to the Bill, he said that the most difficult amendment to deal with would be one calling for a referendum before the next election, because

“many MPs would be sympathetic”

to such a move.

There we have it: the Bill has been drafted as broadly as it has, because if it accurately reflected the Prime Minister’s January speech and excluded a referendum before the next election, too many Tory MPs would have turned up demanding to amend it for an early vote. Far from showing the unity of the Conservative party, all the Bill has done is show how thin is the veneer of unity that they are trying to present. Again, this is private grief and is no business for the rest of us. Of course, it is entirely pointless, because no Bill of this sort can bind the next Parliament. Either the Conservatives win the next election or they do not—this is a pointless exercise.

[Steve Brine]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman and near parliamentary neighbour for giving way. I think that the people of Winchester and Chandler’s Ford, which are both near to his constituency, are clear that they want a choice on our relationship with Europe. He has called the Bill ridiculous. Will he explain why he is so sure that the people of Southampton, Itchen do not want a say on our future relationship with the EU?

[Mr Denham]

Let me turn to the point I was about to address on how the national interest is served by this discussion. The national interest is the one thing that has been entirely missing from the debate so far. It is a debate about the Conservatives, and that is not the national interest. It is not a debate about the future of our country, our influence in the world or what is best for our children, but what is best for the Conservatives as they run away from the UK Independence party.

The debate is not doing the Tories much good. The January speech intended to lance the boil of UKIP, and some may have noticed that it led immediately to the Conservatives coming third in Eastleigh and losing seats all over the country to UKIP in the council elections. Again, that is private grief and I want to talk about the national interest.

[Andrew Miller (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

It struck me as a little odd that both the hon. Member for Stockton South (James Wharton) and the Foreign Secretary missed out UKIP in their speeches. Does my right hon. Friend think that they are totally scared of mentioning UKIP?

[Mr Denham]

There is no doubt that this whole exercise is driven by the Conservative party’s terror of UKIP.

In answer to the hon. Member for Winchester (Steve Brine)—I will come on to the specific point on a referendum in a moment—I want our future to be as a confident part of a reformed European Union. There are people who say that we could be like Switzerland or Norway. They are fine countries, but I do not want to be like them. Clearly, the days of empire and global military might are long gone and rightly so, but I am still sufficiently confident in this country and sufficiently patriotic to believe that we can be a country of influence and leadership in the world. I am not going to join those who just want to scuttle away from the challenges of the world, as Eurosceptics do.

Yes, there is a case for a referendum in principle, and I see that. It is a long time since we had one, and to an extent the demand for it has taken on a life of its own beyond the issue of Europe. However, those of us who can see that case also have a responsibility to be clear about the conditions in which a referendum would serve the national interest. If we are to ask people to vote, the choice has to be clear. We need to know what the effect of saying yes will be, and we need to know what the effect of saying no will be.

The hon. Member for Stockton South and the Foreign Secretary both let the cat out of the bag. The hon. Member for Stockton South said that no one knows what the European Union will be like in 10 years’ time, and the Foreign Secretary said that it may be very different from the way it is today. Both those judgments are true, so how can we have a referendum when the consequences of leaving might be clear enough, but it is not clear what the consequences of staying will be. Clearly, we need to pursue reform and to reshape the EU so there can be a clear and settled choice. I am not one of those—not all of those in my party agree with this, but I do not mind there being a discussion in our party—who rule out a referendum on Europe. However, a referendum should only happen if it is in the national interest and if we can put to the people a clear and settled choice. That has not yet been delivered.

[Keith Vaz]

My right hon. Friend is making an important and thoughtful speech, and he is right to embrace the reform agenda. Does he agree that that reform agenda can start now, and that we can only conduct the reform agenda if we are at the top table of Europe? There is nothing to stop Ministers beginning that process immediately.

[Mr Denham]

My right hon. Friend is right. What worries me is that the Prime Minister represents a party in which that generation of confident patriots, who believed that this country could shape Europe to the benefit of Europe and in the interests of our country, has gone. The Conservative party is split. There are those who simply want to leave come what may. They are the people Lewis Carroll satirised 150 years ago when he had the Queen of Hearts say, “Sentence first, evidence later”. They have made up their minds. The other faction of the Conservative party simply believes in repatriation and repeal: returning to the country those rights that give working people decent protections—maternity pay, the right not to be maimed and killed at work, and paid holidays—in order to repeal them. Those are the only two positions that exist in today’s Conservative party. So when my right hon. Friend says that these negotiations should start now, the problem is this: yes, but you must have people who are going to be credible in those negotiations.

We send a Prime Minister who has been forced. He goes to meetings and everyone is laughing behind their hands, because they know that he does not control his own party, and that his strength to negotiate on our behalf is being shot away by the antics of the people behind him, who know that 2017 is an arbitrary date that bears no relationship to any decision-making processes in the EU, but is entirely about trying to head off—unsuccessfully, it has to be said—the threat from UKIP. That is not a way to approach the national interest.

I am not one of those who says, “These are only matters for general elections and that there must never be a point where people have a choice.” But to return to what the hon. Member for Winchester said, if I say, “Let’s have a choice”, my constituents have a right for the choice to be clear—clear about the nature of the European Union they could vote for or the nature of the European Union that they would leave. There is no clarity to that choice today. There is no reason to believe that there will be clarity to that choice on the arbitrary date of 2017.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—