EU Referendum Leaflet

Debate between Julian Lewis and William Cash

Monday 9th May 2016 Westminster Hall

[Sir William Cash (Stone) (Con)]

My fellow European Scrutiny Committee member, the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey), so rightly referred to scaremongering. I simply say that there is nothing to fear but fear itself. Those words will haunt the Prime Minister in due course.

The leaflet arises from sections 6 and 7 of the European Referendum Act 2015. The words were only introduced, with a degree of connivance, I would suggest, in the House of the Lords, and came back to the House of Commons on ping-pong. We did not actually have an opportunity properly to look at the wording, which imposes a legal duty on the Government to provide information.

I tabled an amendment on the question of accuracy and impartiality. As the matter was drawing to a vote, I was besieged by various buzzing bees, who suggested that I should withdraw the amendment. I said, “No, I will not, unless I know that the Minister will answer the question I am putting to him.” The question was like this: “Yes or no—will he accept that the information must be accurate and impartial?” The Minister replied, “Certainly,” and said it would be “perverse” to do otherwise. He remembers that and knows perfectly well that I am saying exactly what happened.

When such a senior and highly respected Minister in the House of Commons replies on the Floor of the House specifically to the question of withdrawing an amendment, it is regarded by all of us on both sides of the House as being binding on the Government. I simply cannot accept that that has in any way been fulfilled. I am sorry to have to say that I regard it as disgraceful that this leaflet has been produced in those circumstances. It is not accurate and it is not impartial. In fact, a whole slew of White Papers have been produced in pursuance of those two sections of the Act.

To add insult to injury, when a White Paper is presented to Parliament—unlike the leaflet, which goes to all the households—by the Foreign Secretary and the Minister for Europe, the ministerial code kicks in. In Prime Minister’s questions, I asked the Prime Minister whether he accepted the White Papers were in breach of the accuracy and impartiality prescribed in the framework of the ministerial code, for which he has direct responsibility. It is up to him to make certain that those are reviewed as the situation could even lead to resignation by senior Ministers and Cabinet Ministers. This is a very grave and serious matter. It is not just a question of whether we like it or not.

I entirely agree with and commend the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully), who laid out many of the issues and the reasons for the petition. We ought to be 100% behind the petition for all the reasons that so many hon. Members are here today. A serious issue lies beneath the petition, which is that what has happened is a serious breach of the ministerial code. Nobody can argue that those White Papers fulfil the criteria.

With regard to the issue of war, the remarks of my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox) were extremely apposite. The reality is that none of that is in the documents, and nor is the catastrophic effect that the Chancellor of the Exchequer yesterday alleged would happen with regard to leaving the single market in reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Jonathan Lord). The plain fact is that the omissions—to get this right regarding impartiality and to be anything other than economical with the truth—are of the gravest concern to the people of this country. They are being asked to go to the polling booths on 23 June on the basis of arguments to which they have a right, particularly as they are paying for it and for the running of the machinery of government, which is being thrown behind the referendum, despite the fact that we won the argument on purdah. As my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) said, it is atrocious that the machinery of government is being used to put such material on the Government website. That would be regarded as unacceptable in any democratic country.

I take the view of the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) on what happened in 1975, and I was around in 1975—in fact, I have been around since 10 May 1940, so it is my 76th birthday tomorrow. As it happens, I was born on the day that Hitler decided to invade France and Holland, and Churchill became Prime Minister that evening, so I take particularly badly to the Prime Minister’s references to what Churchill would think about all this. We were drawn into that war by unprovoked aggression and, with respect to the questions of defence and other matters contained in these documents, I do not believe for one minute that the people who fought and died in the war, as my father did, would ever have believed that we would be where we are now as a result of the sacrifice they made.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

My hon. Friend has just anticipated my intervention. I recently raised that point at Prime Minister’s questions, because I know my hon. Friend does not normally touch on it. His father paid the ultimate sacrifice at the battle of Normandy, having won the Military Cross. He lies in France, having secured the freedom of the people of not only Britain but France to rule themselves. We now have a little video, timed to coincide with the Prime Minister’s speech, showing four veterans of world war two saying that they were fighting for a united Europe, but I very much doubt that that is the view of the vast majority of people who fought and died in that campaign.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully) for an outstanding opening presentation and for taking so many friendly and supportive interventions. I also echo the thanks to the petition organisers, who have done a brilliant job. As of now we are at 219,560 signatories.

I have just one regret about the debate. It ought to have been held in the main Chamber of the House of Commons, because then we would have been able to have a vote at the end of it and put to the test the sincerity or otherwise of those who say that the Government have behaved decently, fairly and honourably, rather than deeply unscrupulously, over the production of this expensive leaflet. It was produced at the expense of taxpayers, most of whom—hopefully we will find this out on independence day, 23 June—do not believe the Government’s argument.

I must make an observation on something quite striking here. I may be wrong, and I may have misinterpreted the voting intentions of some of the colleagues from various parties who are here today, but it seems that there is not a single right hon. or hon. Member here, other than the Front-Bench spokesmen for the Government, the official Opposition and the Scottish National party, who is likely to try to defend the production of the leaflet. If that is the case, it may well be that had a vote been possible, at least among Members in this Chamber, any motion deploring the Government’s production of such a leaflet at such expense for the benefit of one side in a contested referendum debate would have been overwhelmingly carried.

There is something else I find deeply worrying about the whole process. It seems that the Government arrived at their conclusions first and are now scrabbling around ever more desperately for one new argument after another to buttress them. As right hon. and hon. Members have already asked, why were these terribly important arguments about war and peace not included in the leaflet that was sent out? Why, indeed, was the Prime Minister willing to threaten—during what appear, I am sorry to say, to have been sham negotiations in Europe—that if he did not get his way on whatever minor changes he was trying to get he would be prepared to leave the European Union? If war, pestilence, flood, boils, frogs and the rest of the 10 plagues of Egypt will descend on us—

[Sir William Cash]

The apocalypse.

[Dr Lewis]

The apocalypse as well. A future apocalypse, if not an immediate one. If all that is going to happen, why on earth was the Prime Minister ever willing to contemplate leaving the European Union in the first place?

[Dr Lewis]

Indeed, and I will come to the question about war and peace a little further along, if I may.

It is a strange argument to suggest that out of something between 150 and 200 countries recognised at the United Nations, we, with the fifth strongest economy, are somehow deemed incapable of surviving outside the European Union. The vast majority of countries in the world do not, at least so far, belong to the 28-strong European Union network of nations. Who knows where the ambition will end? Perhaps one day half the countries in the world, or all of them, will belong to the European Union. One thing is clear, however. If countries are forced to integrate without the consent of the peoples concerned, the resultant political construct cannot possibly be run democratically.

[Sir William Cash]

Does my right hon. Friend accept that although we keep being told that we have to stay in the European Union because the other countries want and even need us for stability, democracy and accountability, the one thing that can be guaranteed to come out of the process of political integration is that we will be dumped into the second tier of a two-tier Europe, which I believe will largely be run by Germany? The consequence will be that we will not have influence because of the majority voting system and the lack of democracy.

[Dr Lewis]

As in so many things, my hon. Friend is absolutely correct. Let us be in no doubt about this: if, heaven forbid, we vote to remain in the European Union on 23 June, other countries will know once and for all that our ability to assert any independence or influence within that organisation is done for.

Iran: Nuclear Issues

Debate between Julian Lewis and William Cash

Tuesday 24th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Sir William Cash]

This is the first opportunity we have had to put the point about the timing to the Minister. It is because we recommended it for debate that we can raise the question in this context. On the logjam of documents, to which the hon. Gentleman, who sits on my Committee, rightly refers, it is the constant and persistent determination of the Committee to get issues debated as early as possible, as he knows. I will not go down that route now—it is for another occasion—but I take very seriously what he says.

Because this is such a controversial matter, others have made observations on it, and I would like to quote what Roger Boyes, the diplomatic editor of The Times, said on 15 July. The Minister might think that circumstances have improved since then in terms of bringing Iran and Russia nearer to the negotiations and getting a better result in respect of ISIS/Daesh, but I will quote what he said anyway, because it is of some interest. He says:

“There is nothing game-changing about teaming up with a wobbly Iran. The accord with Tehran can then only be judged narrowly as to whether it is a success as a piece of arms control statecraft—and whether the release of sanctioned funds makes Iran more or less menacing. Consider what would happen without a nuclear deal, President Obama said yesterday: no limits on the nuclear programme, on centrifuges, on the plutonium reactor. But the president has to consider this too: how does one maintain leverage on Iran once the sanctions have been lifted? Denied access to a suspicious nuclear site, inspectors will be able to appeal to a joint commission that includes delegates from Iran, Russia and China. Delays are thus built into the verification system and the idea that sanctions can come crashing quickly down again is over-optimistic. Parts of the deal read like a cheater’s charter; there is too much wriggle room.”

I put that forward not in my own name, but because I think it important for the House to hear the views of an experienced diplomatic editor such as Roger Boyes. He continues:

“What happens in ten to 15 years when the deal has run its course, restraints are lifted and a wealthy Iran which has retained its nuclear expertise, which has grown in zealous confidence, decides to remind a small Gulf state who is boss? The deal is an open invitation to Sunni princelings to invest in their own nuclear deterrent. In the meantime Tehran will have the money to throw into the subversion of its neighbours and expand its arms exporting business.”

On the other hand, to illustrate the controversy and importance of all this, Sir Richard Dalton, a former British ambassador to Tehran who obviously knows a lot about it, argued that there were good reasons to believe that it will stick, including

“the ‘snap-back’ provisions to restore sanctions in the event of violations”

and the fact that

“Iran will not want to risk a military attack, which would grow more likely if the deal fell through; no viable better agreement available and no international support for more sanctions if the US were seen to have vetoed the deal”.

Then there would be an Iran, he says, that

“is tired of being punished for something that it has not intended to do since the supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei’s ban on nuclear weapons, which dates from 2003, the year Saddam Hussein was toppled.”

He goes on to say that Iran

“has recognised that it cannot develop sustainably as a nation without allaying international concerns.”

It also “values its reputation”, and

“reneging on its commitment not to build nuclear weapons, or withdrawing its agreement to the utmost transparency, either during or after the agreed 15-year limits on its enrichment activities”

would

“demolish that reputation, with no appreciable gain to its security because of the retaliation and regional arms race that would follow.”

That just gives an indication and a flavour of the complexity and controversy that lies behind all this.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

I am glad my hon. Friend has brought this sort of politics into the debate. All this reminds me very much of the darkest days of the cold war, a policy of containment and the fact that the then Soviet Union had different factions—modernisers and hardliners. Can we not hope that a policy of containment in the case of Iran might lead eventually to the emergence of a modernisers’ victory, albeit slowly and perhaps over decades?

[Sir William Cash]

One must indeed hope so. In the extremely complex and dangerous world that we now inhabit, we must also hope that some sensible diplomatic and useful solution—I would not call it a compromise—can be found.

To conclude my remarks, in September 2015, our own Prime Minister, the President of France and the Chancellor of Germany were saying:

“Iran will have strong incentives not to cheat”—

the opposite, I think, of what Roger Boyes was saying—

“The near certainty of getting caught and the consequences that would follow would make this a losing option.”

The first moment of truth is due to come at the end of this year, which I think the Minister understands very well, when the International Atomic Energy Agency is due to report on whether Iran has fulfilled the commitments that will enable international and thus EU sanctions to be substantially lifted, which is not the same as the fact, as many people seem to think, that they have been lifted already. This is a process, and this is what will transpire towards the end of the year.