European Union (Referendum) Bill

Richard Burden Excerpts

Friday 17th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

That is a question that the shadow Foreign Secretary is infinitely better qualified to answer than I am, and no doubt he will deal with it when he gives the House the benefit of his remarks.

[Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Hammond]

I will give way to the hon. Gentleman, who has been incredibly patient.

[Richard Burden]

The Foreign Secretary said that he has been going around Europe, talking with other partners and setting out his objectives for reform, but he has not yet told the House what criteria he would use to judge whether the resulting package of reforms will be enough for him to recommend yes or no. Will he please now clarify that point?

[Mr Hammond]

The hon. Gentleman is wilfully missing the point. I do not have to make that judgment, and neither does this House; it is the British people who will decide once they have looked at what is on offer on the table.

I would rather move forward to a referendum as a matter of national consensus, because I think that would be good for our democracy, so I have to say to my absent Liberal Democrat colleagues—I exclude my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming), who is present—that they need to be consistent in their policy on Europe. They wanted an in/out referendum on the transfer of powers in the Lisbon treaty, and that is what we are offering, so they should vote for it. For the sake of our democracy and their own reputation with the British public, they should support the Bill, give it coalition backing and get it on to the statute book before the general election.

To the Labour party, I say that if ever we wanted a perfect illustration of the Leader of the Opposition’s utter inability to make up his mind one way or another, his European policy is it. It has not been easy for him, because he has been advised that he should hold a referendum, that he should not hold one, that he should make up his mind, and then that it would be better if he did not make up his mind, so he dithered. Now, 14 months after he responded to the Prime Minister’s Bloomberg speech by telling the House emphatically that

“we do not want an in/out referendum”—[Official Report, 23 January 2013; Vol. 557, c. 305.],

he unveils Labour’s new position—perhaps he got a phone call from someone—which is, as I understand it, that they would have an in/out referendum only if new powers were transferred from Britain to Brussels, a situation that the shadow Foreign Secretary has described as “frankly unlikely”, and one that could arise only if the Government agreed to a transfer of powers. In short, he is saying that he would be willing to agree to an in/out referendum in principle, so long as it would never happen in practice.

Just to make sure that people heard what the Leader of the Opposition wanted them to hear, his team spun the message, so readers of the Daily Mirror read that Labour was going to have a referendum, and on the same day readers of The Independent read that it was not. No amount of spin can conceal the reality of his position: no say on Europe under Labour.