Oral Answers to Questions

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Thursday 7th July 2016 Commons Chamber

The hon. Member for South West Devon, representing the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission, was asked—

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

4. If the Electoral Commission will make an assessment of the merits of requiring lead campaign groups in referendum campaigns to publish manifestos.

[Mr Gary Streeter (South West Devon)]

Thank you for your earlier endorsement, Mr Speaker.

The Electoral Commission is collecting information to inform its statutory report on the EU referendum, and I will pass the hon. Lady’s suggestion to it for its consideration.

[Dr Huq]

Rapidly after the referendum results, central claims on both sides evaporated—the extra spending for the NHS, the emergency punitive Budget, and the UK being the fifth largest economy—so surely, if we are ever to conduct referendums again in this country, should not the lead campaigns on both sides publish measurable claims in a manifesto, so that truth is not the casualty of the scramble for votes?

[Mr Streeter]

The Electoral Commission has no desire whatsoever—it certainly has no such power at the moment—to sit in judgment on the truthfulness of any claim made in any campaign. The hon. Lady’s idea that lead campaigns should produce manifestos is an interesting one that I will pass on to the commission for its consideration of the referendum overall.