European Union Referendum Bill

Owen Paterson Excerpts

Tuesday 9th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Owen Paterson (North Shropshire) (Con)]

This is a great day, a remarkable moment: we have a Conservative majority—now, I am delighted to hear, backed by the Labour Opposition—that will deliver a Bill to give the people of the UK a choice on who actually makes their laws and regulations. The mentors, sadly dead, who encouraged me to come to this place more than 20 years ago, such as my predecessor the late Lord Biffen of Tanat and the late Lord Ridley of Liddesdale, would be delighted that we have the opportunity to go back to the question of whether this country voted in 1975 to join a market and, as the shadow Foreign Secretary has commented, have the benefits of a market, embrace the world and get our full seat back on organisations such as the World Trade Organisation, and not be told what to do by the political and judicial arrangements that we are currently under.

This is a glorious moment in history, because the eurozone will inevitably move to become a co-ordinated country, in which significant amounts of money are shifted from the northern wealth-creating areas of Germany and Holland to southern Europe, and we have a chance of really radical change. I am delighted that the Foreign Secretary expounded that today and that the Prime Minister has made a start. We have a real chance.

[Mr Jenkin]

I would recall other mentors who were in the House when I first entered it, such as the late Lord Shore of Stepney and, indeed, the late Tony Benn.

[Mr Paterson]

I am glad to have the endorsement of those key figures from the Opposition Benches.

I want to touch on two points. First, I strongly advocate that the Prime Minister gets the maximum time for his negotiations, and I would like the referendum to be held in late 2017. Secondly, on the question, I favour two positives, rather than having one side as a negative.

The issue that really concerns me, however, is the suspension of purdah. I am afraid that I was dismayed to read the Foreign Secretary’s comments on ConservativeHome this morning, which are nonsense. The rules of purdah have developed steadily over 20 years. We have just fought a general election very satisfactorily, during which the wheels of government continued to turn without attempts to use taxpayers’ money to influence the way people voted.

I want to take the House through the long process that goes right back to 1996, when the Nairn report called for referendums to be brought within election law. The result of the Welsh referendum, when the Conservatives were in total disarray, was extraordinarily narrow: 6,721 was the majority across Wales, or 168 per seat. By any standards, that was a very marginal result. Particularly in north Wales, near where I come from, there was widespread dissatisfaction at the fact that the result was affected by very significant Government interventions.

In October 1998, Lord Neill of Bladen’s Committee came up with some absolutely key recommendations. I want to cite Vernon Bogdanor of Oxford University—he taught the Prime Minister a thing or two about politics, philosophy and economics—who, in a very telling contribution, said:

“I hope also the Committee will make some suggestions about referendums because one purpose of a referendum…is to secure legitimacy for decisions where Parliament alone can not secure that legitimacy. For that legitimacy to be secured, the losers have to feel that the fight was fairly conducted.”

That issue is absolutely fundamental: the British public have a real sense of fairness, and if they have a sense that this referendum is rigged, the result will not be legitimate.

On that basis, the very distinguished figures on the Neill Committee stated:

“We believe it is perfectly appropriate for the government of the day to state its views and for members of the Government to campaign vigorously during referendum campaigns, just as they do during general election campaigns. But we also believe that, just as in general election campaigns, neither taxpayers’ money nor the permanent government machine—civil servants, official cars, the Government Information Service, and so forth—should be used to promote the interests of the Government side of the argument. In other words, referendum campaigns should be treated for these purposes in every way as though they were general election campaigns.”

They also said:

“We believe that it is extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible, for the government of the day to offer purely objective and factual information in the course of a referendum campaign, especially when, as will usually be the case, itself it is a party to the campaign. We believe governments should not participate in referendum campaigns in this manner, just as it would be thought to be wholly inappropriate during a general election campaign for the government to print and distribute, at the taxpayers’ expense, literature setting out government policy.”

Their recommendation 89 stated:

“The government of the day in future referendums should, as a government, remain neutral and should not distribute at public expense literature, even purportedly ‘factual’ literature, setting out or otherwise promoting its case.”

I stress that very senior, respected figures on both sides of the House have participated in this long debate over the past 20 years. In an Adjournment debate on the Neill report on 9 November 1998, there was a significant contribution by the then Home Secretary Jack Straw, but, on the Conservative side, the now Lords Fowler and MacGregor of Pullham Market were absolutely clear in calling for full implementation of Neill. Sir Norman Fowler, as he then was, said:

“However, we accept the findings in the report and believe that legislation based on it should be introduced with the proviso that it should implement all the major proposals. There should be no cherry picking of one proposal, leaving the others to one side.”—[Official Report, 9 November 1998; Vol. 319, c. 59.]

Second Reading of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Bill was on 10 January 2000, introduced by Jack Straw. Interestingly, Mr Speaker, there was a significant intervention, at column 36, by the hon. Member for Buckingham (John Bercow). Only you could use such a phrase as this:

“I am sure that the House has listened to the right hon. Gentleman’s historical exegesis with great interest.”

Very pertinently, as the first person to raise the issue of time, you went on:

“If he is against the purchase of votes, how does he justify promoting a Bill that will allow the issue by Ministers of official press releases in support, for example, of the abolition of our national currency, while regulating the activities of campaigning organisations in any such referendum for up to six months, thereby preventing the supporters of national self-government from effectively arguing their case?”—[Official Report, 10 January 2000; Vol. 342, c. 36.]

That was a most pertinent intervention because the issue of time reappeared in Committee.

My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), who has sadly left his seat, argued hard on the amendments, and, Mr Speaker, you and I participated on the issue of special advisers. Respected figures such as my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes) and my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash), and a number of us who have held this party together through the long winter of opposition, all made the point that 28 days was not sufficient. We were absolutely clear that we did not like Jack Straw’s proposals on 28 days. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield said:

“we are worried that the 28-day period on its own will be insufficient. The particular mischief is that there will be a preliminary period, in which the campaign that will be set up in opposition to the view that the Government want to put forward, but which they will subsume into their own campaign organisation, is not up and running because it has not received validation from the commission.”—[Official Report, 16 February 2000; Vol. 344, c. 1062.]

Lord MacKay of Ardbrecknish, another distinguished Conservative, said:

“I believe that purdah should apply during the whole referendum period. I consider that to be fair and equitable.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 22 November 2000; Vol. 619, c. 884.]

A helpful intervention came from the Electoral Commission yesterday:

“We are therefore disappointed and concerned that the Bill includes provision to remove the restrictions on the use of public funds by governments and others to promote an outcome right up until voters cast their vote.”

[Mrs Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Paterson]

No, I want to finish my comments because other Members want to speak.

The question we have to ask is why this power, which has been debated by serious Members on both sides of the House over a 20-year period, resulting in what Conservative Members thought was the very unsatisfactory compromise of 28 days, is being lifted arbitrarily. We have fought a number of general election campaigns during which cars continued to be made, cows continued to be milked and the world did not stop.

It absolutely must be taken on board by the Government that if the British people sense that there is no fairness and that the referendum is being rigged against them, because a deluge of local government, national Government and, above all, European government money and propaganda can be dropped on them—there will not just be election material, as the Foreign Secretary said, but reports, briefs and analyses on the terrifying consequences of the vote going in a certain way—it will be unacceptable and will go down extremely badly with the British people.

What really worries me is that this extraordinary, incredibly important event in our history could be seen as illegitimate, and that whatever system of government for this country emerges after the referendum might not be seen as valid. I appeal to the Foreign Secretary to go back, talk to the Prime Minister and remove this arbitrary suspension of the process of purdah that has been thrashed out over 20 years.

[Mr Speaker]

In calling the right hon. Member for Gordon (Alex Salmond), I remind the House that as his party’s Front-Bench spokesman, he is not subject to the 10-minute limit.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Kenneth Clarke (Rushcliffe) (Con)]

I have to tell the right hon. Member for Gordon (Alex Salmond) that, though I enjoyed his speech very much, he has not persuaded me to support the SNP amendment tonight. That is not because I no longer have fundamental doubts about referendums. Like every politician of my generation, I prefer parliamentary democracy, but we are where we are and it is obvious that we will have a referendum. I probably will not vote in favour of the Bill tonight, but I shall do nothing to stop it going ahead in principle.

I would only warn my right hon. and hon. Friends that since Harold Wilson made the unwise decision to introduce the institution into our British constitution it has never yet been used to settle any question. The question of proportional representation, for example, is very much alive and kicking. The question of elected mayors does not seem to have been totally resolved by all the local referendums. The future of Scotland, and what I hope will be its continued relationship with the United Kingdom, has been enlivened, not quietened, by the result of the recent referendum. Now we are to have one on Europe again.

I agree with the right hon. Gentleman that politicians of conviction fight in referendums and accept that they have lost them, but they do not change their fundamental views. I do not believe that my right hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Mr Paterson) will become an enthusiastic Europhile if he is on the losing side of the referendum, and he will not be surprised to learn that I am likely to be found supporting the yes campaign, but I hope that the referendum campaign will be of the same extraordinarily high quality as the Scottish one, in which I took some small part. I have never known the population be so politicised or have such an intense debate. So far, I have been on the winning side in all the important referendums, and I hope that I will be so again after an interesting campaign.

[Mr Owen Paterson]

I think that I have one over my right hon. and learned Friend in that I have been the president of a European trade association and he has not. He really must not muddle the idea of the European Union, which is a political and judicial organisation, and the European market, of which I am a most enthusiastic proponent.

[Mr Clarke]

My right hon. Friend appears to believe that we can somehow have all the advantages of the European Union and the market without complying with any of the obligations. I know of no trading bloc that allows anybody entry to its markets on the basis that they will decide whether to comply with its rules.

I approve of the form of words in the Bill for the question but I hope, as the campaign goes on and we all form all-party campaigns, it becomes crystal clear what the question actually means. It is not solely about the negotiations for reform. Personally, I completely concede that the European Union has a lot of defects and is ripe for reform, and I approve very strongly of some of the measures, particularly those in the Bloomberg speech, which my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister is pressing for—if he can achieve them. However, the yes vote involves a decision on the future role of the United Kingdom in the modern world: how we are best able to further the interests of our citizens, defend our security, develop our economy and bring prosperity. That is the big question.