European Union Referendum Bill

John Bercow Excerpts

Tuesday 8th December 2015 Commons Chamber

Consideration of Lords amendments.

[Mr Speaker]

I must draw the House’s attention to the fact that Lords amendment 1 engages financial privilege. Lords amendment 1 is the first amendment to be taken, and to move the Government motion to disagree I call the Minister, eager and expectant.

Clause 2

Entitlement to vote in the referendum

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir William Cash (Stone) (Con)]

I beg to move amendment (a) to Lords amendment 5.

[Mr Speaker]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Lords amendment 6, and amendment (a) thereto.

Lords amendments 2 to 4 and 7 to 12.

Lords amendment 13, and amendment (a) thereto.

Lords amendments 14 to 46.

[Sir William Cash]

I tabled amendment (a) to Lords amendment 5 because amendments were moved in the House of Lords, not the House of Commons, and accepted by the Government in respect of, in Lords amendment 5, a duty to publish information on the outcome of negotiations between member states and, in Lords amendment 6, a duty to publish information about membership of the European Union. That might sound all very well and good, but the problem is that they contain a whole raft of question marks that I want to raise today.

I will just give a brief outline of Lords amendment 5. On the outcome of negotiations, the Secretary of State will be under an obligation to publish a report,

“alone or with other material”—

we do not know what “other material” would involve—containing:

“a statement setting out what has been agreed by member States following negotiations”.

We have just seen the letter from Mr Tusk on the current state of the EU’s assessment of the negotiations and I do not think it makes for very pretty reading for the Government. In fact, I would go further than that. I find this quite astonishing, but the apparent point of the letter was to satisfy, and provide a solution for, the Prime Minister. I thought the real objective here was to satisfy the United Kingdom, in particular its voters. That, after all, is what the referendum is all about. It is not about what the Government think. Parliament is handing over the entire exercise to the voter, which is only proper and for which I have campaigned for 25 years.