European Union Referendum Bill

John Nicolson Excerpts

Monday 7th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[John Redwood]

My hon. Friend make his comments in his own inimitable way. That is not quite what I was trying to say, or how I was going to say it, but this is a free country and it is wonderful to hear him contribute to the debate.

I am just trying, in the brief few moments that you have kindly allowed me, Mr Speaker, to extend the conversation from this great Chamber to the BBC and to say to it, “We all want you to be part of this big family conversation in the run-up to the referendum, but you have a unique responsibility, because you are charged with independence, fairness and balance. We trust that you will be especially careful, because many people have very passionate views on both sides of the argument, and that always creates more tensions and difficulties for broadcasters.”

[John Nicolson (East Dunbartonshire) (SNP)]

I am curious to know whether the right hon. Gentleman was as acutely aware of that bias among business leaders during the Scottish referendum campaign, when they were wheeled out repeatedly as part of “Project Fear” to hone their skills, which we will doubtless see much of in the coming months. I just cannot remember him being so outraged at the time. Perhaps he could confirm that.

[John Redwood]

If the hon. Gentleman cares to check johnredwoodsdiary.com, my blog, he will see that I wrote on that very subject during the Scottish campaign ahead of the referendum and made very similar points to the ones I am making now about the role of business, where it can help and where it cannot. He will be disappointed to learn that I believe in being consistent. It has been one of my problems in politics, trying to be consistent, and if one seeks to combine consistency with being right, it can be absolutely devastating. I must now teach myself humility and realise that no one can always be right; we just have to carry on the conversation as best we can.

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[John Nicolson]

Since the right hon. Gentleman has raised the issue of intimidation twice, is he aware that the father of the chapel at BBC Scotland said that far from being intimidated by the protesters, the main intimidation broadcasters felt was in fact from the Better Together campaign? The father of the chapel has no dog in the fight, as I am sure the right hon. Gentleman knows.

[Mr McFadden]

I will just say that if the hon. Gentleman takes a sense of pride from the demonstration that took place in Glasgow, he is entitled to his view, but that is certainly not something I would feel. I do not think it was the finest moment in that referendum campaign.

On the date of the referendum, we have said all along that it should not be held when other important elections are taking place. In Committee, the House accepted a Government amendment ruling out the date of the elections due in May 2016. Our amendment 15 would also rule out holding it on the date of the elections due on 4 May 2017. I am glad to see that the Foreign Secretary has added his name to amendment 12, which would have the same effect.

Government amendment 23 deals with the new question wording put forward last week by the Electoral Commission. The Opposition respect the work of the Electoral Commission. Its job is to examine referendum questions and to comment on them. We therefore accept the change it suggests, but may I ask the Minister a couple of questions? Has he asked the Electoral Commission why it was appropriate to approve the question “Should Scotland be an independent country?” on a yes/no basis without an alternative statement about remaining part of the United Kingdom being deemed necessary? Has he asked why a yes/no question was approved for the referendum on the alternative vote a few years ago, but is not deemed appropriate this time? Does he know if this decision should be considered a one-off for this referendum, or whether we should expect all future referendums to be a choice between two alternative statements, rather than yes/no in answer to a proposition, as has often been the case in the past? As I said, we accept the new wording, but would like to know more about the reasons behind it and the contrast in the approach taken with other recent referendums.

Amendment 16 calls for a White Paper to be published outlining the terms of any renegotiation settlement the Prime Minister has reached and the consequences for the UK of leaving the European Union. We believe this is important because the referendum needs to examine not only our current relationship with the EU but what leaving might mean for the UK. This, too, was touched on in Committee. The Minister for Europe indicated at that point that the Government might produce a White Paper. May I press him on this tonight? Has further thought gone into that, and can he tell the House definitively that that will be the case? This is important, because voters deserve as much information as possible about what the decision on Britain’s future means. This will in the end be a choice between two futures and there should be information about both of them. Our amendment states that such a White Paper should be published at least 10 weeks before the poll, well away from any of the discussions about purdah, which applies to the final 28 days of the referendum period. We are not calling for Government information to be sent to every household, or for this to be a last-minute intervention. We are saying that at least 10 weeks from the poll it will be important to have a proper view on remaining and leaving. What does anyone advocating leaving have to fear from the consequences of doing so being set out in a White Paper?

This section of the amendment paper contains many other amendments, a lot of them dealing with technical points about registration, reporting and other issues, but the amendments on 16 and 17-year-olds, the White Paper and my other comments touch on the issues that we believe we should focus on in the period available to us.

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[Sir William Cash]

The hon. Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins) and other Labour Members on my Committee put that very question to the witnesses—Lord Hall and Mr Harding in particular, as well as Rona Fairhead—because it is essential that all sides of the arguments are heard. As I have said repeatedly in this debate, this is not a party political issue in the sense that it is not Conservative versus Labour. The very fact that the referendum has been set up and the question is “Do you want to remain in or leave?” means that it is a national issue and therefore all the broadcasting authorities, including the BBC, must have regard to the fact that we are passing over in this Bill the entire conduct of the referendum. That means it must be conducted not on a party political basis, but on yes versus no and on the question: “Do you want to remain in or do you want to leave?” Therefore there must be impartiality. We do not just want a Eurosceptic view. Some might think, “I would want that, wouldn’t I?” but actually, no; it must be done on an impartial basis.

It is rather strange that the BBC was somewhat dismissive of News-watch, an organisation that runs a comprehensive analysis of all news programmes—who goes on, what questions are asked and the whole conduct of the BBC output. I am afraid that it seems to me that the BBC was somewhat dismissive of that, to say the least. I believe from what I have heard that the BBC does not in fact have its own monitoring system. If it does not have its own monitoring system, how is anybody to know whether or not it has been impartial, because that is like looking for a needle in a haystack? We do not have the facilities to be able to conduct the analysis for ourselves, but the BBC has £5 billion and I would have thought that was the least it could do.

[John Nicolson]

May I ask the hon. Gentleman the same question I asked earlier—although I might of course have overlooked his comments on this on billcash.com? Does he now regret the fact that the Conservative party acted as a cheerleader for bias during the Scottish independence referendum, and does he accept that that set something of a precedent for one-sided BBC coverage in referendums?

[Sir William Cash]

I do not blog so I am not in a position to answer the hon. Gentleman’s question. All I can say is that I would deplore any bias whether in the Scottish referendum or the European referendum, or indeed in just normal current affairs.

To return to my point, there is the facility for this if the BBC steps up to the mark and does in full what the Wilson committee report recommended and, more than that, what is in line with what the Secretary of State is now proposing. This is a hugely important question given that according to the BBC 53% of the British people depend on it for the news they trust.

[John Nicolson]

Would the hon. Gentleman accept, however, that apparently with the sole exception of the right hon. Member for Wokingham (John Redwood), there was broadcast silence from Conservative Members when there were dramatic examples of corporation bias during the Scottish referendum coverage? With all due respect, I never heard the hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) utter a cheep in complaint about that, which makes us feel a trifle cynical about his motivation. One feels that it might just be about Europe rather than bias.

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[Sir William Cash]

From what I have observed from press reports and elsewhere, she appears to have accepted that the BBC Trust is in need of significant reform. The general thrust is that the BBC Trust is bust. Basically, there will have to be a new system, and that is what the correspondence to which I have referred indicates.

Former BBC commentator and employee Robin Aitken’s book, “Can We Trust the BBC?”, covers many matters related to the European Union. I also recommend Peter Shore’s book, “Separate Ways”, the introduction of which contains some extremely pertinent views of the BBC as being deeply biased on EU matters, going back to meetings in the Connaught, alleged connections with the CIA and other similar issues.

News-watch has demonstrated the truth that

“in crucial respects, the BBC has not provided the Committee clear evidence that its EU-related output is properly balanced, informative and wide-ranging across all its platforms—or that the Corporation has raised its game in the ways urged by the Wilson report.”

I have given many of the reasons for that, and more will have to come out in our next inquiry.

[John Nicolson]

What would the adjudicator’s role be vis-à-vis the BBC Trust? Would the adjudicator have primacy over it? Would the trust’s power to make a ruling on the issue of bias be removed, or would the two compete with each other, giving perhaps contradictory rulings?

[Sir William Cash]

New clause 1 states:

“Notwithstanding any enactment or legal instrument”,

so that would affect the Broadcasting Acts and the charter. Under my proposals, the Secretary of State would make provision by regulations

“to ensure the impartiality of broadcasters during the referendum period.”

There would also be a requirement for

“the appointment by the Secretary of State of a referendum broadcasting adjudicator”,

who would be completely separate. In effect, during the referendum period, the adjudicator’s arrangements would take the place of those of existing broadcasting authorities and the BBC. I do not dispute the fact that the Government do not want to go down that route, but it has emerged from the correspondence between the Secretary of State, Ofcom and the BBC Trust that serious discussions are taking place to make sure that the BBC and broadcasting authorities generally are properly impartial during the referendum campaign. There are those who do not think that there is a problem, but there are many who think there is, and that it needs to be rectified.

Even if the Government do not accept my amendment, the elements that I have described will need to be addressed in the charter review. The problem is that it is highly possible, if not probable, that the conclusions of the charter review will emerge after the referendum. It is therefore a matter of urgency that we sort this matter out in the run-up to the referendum, and before the charter review is completed. We shall look into this in the European Scrutiny Committee proceedings, to which we have invited Lord Hall, and we will continue to look into it because we believe that it could have a significant bearing on the outcome of the referendum if the situation is not remedied. If, on the other hand, the matter is taken seriously by the BBC and the broadcasting authorities, we will be able to find a solution in the framework of the existing legislation. This is a really serious matter.

I will not spend too much time on the other amendments, except to say that I think I will get an interesting response from the Minister to my amendment 1, which proposes a referendum period of not less than 16 weeks. I shall therefore not dwell on that one. We have to have a proper length of time for the referendum, so that the arguments can be properly put and understood on all sides.

New clause 11 deals with the limit on the expenditure of registered political parties. We have taken advice on this, because it is a matter of grave concern that the political parties, three of which are known to be pro-EU in the broadest sense, might find that they had too much money at their disposal, or at any rate have what we think is too much money if we look at this from the point of view of those who wish to leave. We have proposed a cumulative limit of £14 million. We have also proposed:

“Each political party’s share of the cumulative limit shall be determined in proportion to its share of the total votes cast at the general election that took place on 7 May 2015.”

The new clause also proposes that

“the Electoral Commission shall calculate and notify each political party of its share of the cumulative limit.”

For practical purposes, I look to the Minister to give me his view on that one.

In addition, I have tabled amendment 3, which states:

“Regulations made under this Act or the 2000 Act in respect of the referendum must be made and come into force not less than six months before the start of the referendum period.”

We discussed some aspects of that in the debate on the previous group of amendments. A further amendment relates to the question of permitted participants and the European Union. I should add that quite a lot of my amendments have been endorsed by the Electoral Commission. The Minister can no doubt refer to that body as he goes through the amendments. This is not just a matter of Back Benchers coming forward with proposals; I have been in discussion with the Electoral Commission on many matters, including my amendment 78, which we covered in the previous debate. The commission endorsed that amendment, but unfortunately it was not accepted by the Labour party.

A significant number of Members have signed my amendment 2, which proposes that

“a permitted participant must not accept a relevant donation, irrespective of whether or not it meets the requirements of the 2000 Act and this Act, if the donation is funded directly or indirectly in whole or part from moneys, resources or support disbursed or allocated by or at the direction of the European Commission, its agencies or any related European institution to the donor or via other parties to the donor.”

The object is to ensure that no funds come from the European Union for the purposes of promoting pro-European arguments, including, obviously, the yes vote. It is an important amendment, and my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) has sensibly suggested that we add the words

“Notwithstanding the European Communities Act 1972”,

just to make sure we do not slip up by finding that there is some law in the European Union that would contradict our proposals.