European Union (Referendum) Bill

Debate between Martin Horwood and Neil Parish

Friday 5th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Neil Parish]

If the hon. Gentleman is so keen on talking about Liberal Democrat policy on a former referendum, why is he not supporting us today? I also congratulate him on being the only one of an endangered species here in the Chamber today.

[Martin Horwood]

I was not, in fact, the only Liberal Democrat Member here, and my colleagues are probably focused on jobs, A and E departments, the good deal we are delivering for pensioners and promoting employment and economic prosperity in their constituencies, rather than spending an entire day banging on about Europe. I am reassured that so many Conservative Members are so confident that all the jobs are provided and all the A and E departments are safe and no green spaces need protecting that they are willing to spend an entire day here talking about the minutiae of European referendums. I am equally confident that at one stage we had the Prime Minister, the Chancellor, the Foreign Secretary and, I think, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions all in the Chamber for this debate, so I assume the Deputy Prime Minister must have been busy running the country at that point.

The consistent position the Liberal Democrats have taken is to be in favour of an in/out referendum either at a time of major, fundamental treaty change or at a time of a transfer of power, which also has to happen under treaty provisions. That is the consistent position we have taken, and that is the position we still take today. [Interruption.] Does the hon. Member for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray) want to point out when we have said anything different? She does not; I thought as much.

The Conservative party, by contrast, has taken a bewildering variety of positions on referendums. I think it was the hon. Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound), who is no longer in his place, who pointed out that Margaret Thatcher opposed the original European referendum and she quoted Clement Attlee saying referendums were a device of demagogues and dictators. At that point she was a supporter of European Union membership, which at that stage was already identified as a discussion about social and political union as well as about access to an economic common market. That is clear from the literature produced in that referendum campaign. It talks about the new regional fund, the social fund, bringing the peoples of Europe closer together and promoting peace and freedom—so even the defence and security aspects of the EU’s work were already being debated. Margaret Thatcher said that for the Labour party the proposal of a referendum was

“a tactical device to get over a split in their own party.”—[Official Report, 11 March 1975; Vol. 888, c. 306.]

I think history might be repeating itself now.