European Union Referendum Bill

Jonathan Edwards Excerpts

Thursday 18th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

My hon. Friend is quite right. The precedent, from 2011, is that the British public were able to make that distinction perfectly reasonably in their own minds.

[Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (PC)]

If the Government have accepted the principle that there should be no clash with elections for the National Assembly for Wales, the Scottish Parliament and the Northern Ireland Assembly in 2016, why do they not go a step further, accept the amendment and rule out a referendum in 2017 at the same time as local authority elections?

[Mr Lidington]

Partly for the reasons that I have given, and also because I think there is a qualitative difference, which we acknowledged when we introduced amendment 55, between elections held for a constituent nation of the United Kingdom and elections held for local government. We accepted that distinction in the amendment we introduced earlier this week.

If we look at the number of occasions when local elections and general elections have been held on exactly the same day, we find plenty of examples where the public have indulged happily in ticket splitting, sending a Member to this House representing one political party and electing a different political party to run their local authority. The public are able to make that distinction perfectly well.