EU Referendum: Electoral Law

Madeleine Moon Excerpts

Tuesday 27th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is absolutely amazing that the Foreign Secretary is not in his place, given the gravity of the accusations, his personal centrality to them and the pivotal part he played. He has said that the allegations are “ludicrous” and farcical, that the vote was won legally and that there was fair play. Frankly, what we have already heard and know casts those basic assumptions into doubt. These issues need to be looked at very carefully.

We are talking about the electoral law on which our democracy is based. People watching this debate will be asking themselves whether the referendum was a cheat. Was it based on a lie? Were the economic dice loaded with illegal and dark money? Were the electorate cynically manipulated by Cambridge Analytica, which illegally harvested people’s Facebook data without their knowing it and manipulated their choices to take us on the journey we are now on, which is going to take us into economic Armageddon?

[Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)]

In yesterday’s Russia debate, I called on the Government to pull together a Russia commission so that we can have a root and branch examination of where Russia has interfered not only in our elections, but in our economic, legal and accounting systems. Does my hon. Friend agree that the problem we currently have is that the Electoral Commission and the Information Commissioner lack the powers and the numbers of staff required to carry out the sort of inquiry we need to the depth that we need?

[Geraint Davies]

I certainly agree with my hon. Friend’s last point. The Electoral Commission and the Information Commissioner are going to have a great deal of difficulty evaluating Cambridge Analytica’s role and the dirty money involved. Russia is a much bigger question. There are questions around whether the targeted bombing of innocent civilians in Syria in the run-up to Brexit, in the knowledge that the Germans were allowing in a million refugees, was instrumental in the Brexit result and whether that was intentional; there are questions about whether President Trump was elected through the influence of the Russians; there are questions about whether the fascists in France got a third of the vote because of the Russians; there are questions about how the Russians influenced the German elections; and there are certainly questions about how they influenced Brexit.

I suggest that I limit my comments here to Cambridge Analytica, its abuse and manipulation of British voters and the dirty money behind it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Edward Davey]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right. It is astounding, because this debate is about more than Brexit and the issues being raised in this debate are bigger than Brexit. They are about how our democracy works, parliamentary sovereignty and the rule of law. I thought that Conservative Members, particularly the Brexit Conservatives, had wanted to pull us out of the EU in order to defend parliamentary sovereignty and the rule of law as they describe it. But they are not here to defend that rule of law today, which is what is so shocking about their failure to make speeches in this debate.

[Mrs Moon]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that if we ignore this issue—if we do not take it apart and examine it in full—we are allowing a criminalisation of our democracy? We must acknowledge that that is what is at risk here. No matter how inconvenient a truth it is, we must absolutely get to the bottom of it.

[Sir Edward Davey]

Of course, the hon. Lady is absolutely right. If the law has been broken in the serious way that is alleged, it will be a criminal offence. If that is the case, that criminal offence would have been committed in relation to a massive vote that will result in huge constitutional changes. As this is such a serious matter, I would have thought that right hon. and hon. Members from both sides of the House would surely want not just to listen, but to participate.