European Union (Referendum) Bill

Debate between Richard Shepherd and Kelvin Hopkins

Friday 5th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Sir Richard Shepherd (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)]

I just reflect that, after the last three contributions by Labour Members, I genuinely think that their policy is unsustainable; this will, I am sure, be changed before we get to a general election.

I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South (James Wharton) on moving a Bill to give the British people a referendum, and wish him well in this. It is a curious Bill for a private Member’s day, but I give a cheer for that as well, because, on 21 February 1992, I also introduced a private Member’s Bill—I was No. 1 in the ballot—to have a referendum on Maastricht. Unfortunately, in those days Mr John Major—Sir John Major as he became—was against the matter, so perhaps I was a Prime Minister or two short. I mention that because I also moved a referendum Bill during the Maastricht treaty considerations in 1993, one year exactly after the private Member’s Bill.

I also notice that there is a three-line Whip on this Bill; I think it diminishes it. I say that straight away, because I remember that when I tried to reform or failed to reform—I am sorry that this is a catalogue of failed private Member’s Bills—section 2 of the Official Secrets Act in 1988, so aggrieved were the Government, with movements on the Back Benches, upstairs, outrage and all the rest, that this was clearly not a matter for a Back-Bench Member of Parliament, that the then Conservative Government, under someone I respected greatly, put on a three-line Whip, again, against me. There is no paranoia in what I say, just realism.

I will say that, on the private Member’s Bill on the Official Secrets Act, there was a queue in Central Lobby of Conservative Members who had served in the second world war and were what used to be called, unlike me, knights of the shires, going into the Whips Office to tell them that this was a constitutional outrage, that their Fridays were being interrupted and that this was exclusively a space of time left for the consideration of Bills by private Members, and to bring forward Bills of great importance, as we all think of our own initiatives.

I wish my hon. Friend well and I shall most certainly vote for this Bill, because there would be a slight inconsistency if I did not—although that has never been a difficulty for most politicians in the past.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I am most interested in what the hon. Gentleman is saying. He is right about three-line Whips. We Labour Members have not been three-line whipped. I have come here of my own volition. Are his colleagues being three-line whipped to attend or to vote for the Bill?

[Sir Richard Shepherd]

I assure the hon. Gentleman that I am not the progenitor of the Whip, but I respect my wonderful party, which at last has found a voice to express those they represent. I think that the Labour Front Bench is in genuine difficulties over this matter, because it is a rejection of a movement and feeling that is now effective in the country. This has been too long coming: an unconscionable period of time. I made a famous prediction, which I regret to say did not come about, with the experience and arrogance of youth, and in a television studio in Birmingham announced that this common market racket would be over in 10 years. That is, of course, now 32 years ago.

I learned from that the tenacity with which a particular class of those who lead us have sought to control this issue. There is no defence of conversation within a nation, or anything. All the way through this, an elite in our political parties, which rises to the top, forms judgments and changes its judgments. Peter Shore wrote perhaps the most balanced speech, titled “A thousand years of British history”, when we knew nothing, rather like the other day in the Commons, about what the Government’s intentions were in joining. That speech asks a series of questions. We know nothing about this. We wonder. We have to wait. The Conservatives also knew nothing about it and did not have to wait. So in the end they were great supporters of our joining what was called the common market.