Referendums

Tom Brake Excerpts

Monday 29th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

Will the Minister take some reassurance from the fact that in the canvassing that I have been doing for Caroline Pidgeon, the Liberal Democrat London mayoral candidate, I have found that voters have no difficulty whatsoever in understanding that there will be elections for the London Mayor and the London Assembly, and that the European referendum will take place a few weeks later?

[Mr Lidington]

The right hon. Gentleman puts the case very well. Others have said that June is simply too soon, and I do not agree. Traditionally, in our history, a general election has been held with only six weeks’ notice. Only since the implementation of the Fixed Term Parliaments Act 2011 under the coalition Government have we moved away from that practice. The referendum has had a much longer gestation period. The intention to hold a referendum before the end of 2017 was announced in the Prime Minister’s Bloomberg speech in January 2013, and it was reaffirmed at the general election last May, and again when the European Union Referendum Act received Royal Assent in December 2015. The intended date was announced four months in advance. The referendum has been a long time coming.

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[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

The Liberal Democrats will support this statutory instrument, which, as the Minister says, puts in place legislation for the referendum on 23 June. He will know that the coalition legislated so that any treaty change would trigger a referendum, but, as we know, his party won the election on the basis of a manifesto commitment to offer a referendum independent of any treaty change, and so we are where we are now.

[Sir William Cash]

Is the right hon. Gentleman thinking that the European Union Act 2011, which many of us opposed for all sorts of reasons, should be severely amended and/or repealed with regard to treaty change?

[Tom Brake]

We have a referendum ahead of us, and I suggest we get on with that before looking at whether to make any changes to that Act.

The Liberal Democrats support the referendum on 23 June. I have been in this House for some time now—longer than some Members but not as long as others—and it seems to me that, in this House and beyond, we have had a very full debate in recent general elections about the EU and whether we should or should not be members of it. As I said in an earlier intervention on the Minister, there is certainly no confusion in the minds of the electors in my constituency between the mayoral and Assembly elections taking place in May, and the EU referendum that will take place, presumably on 23 June. Clearly, it is more difficult for the political parties and the campaigners if one election follows on so relatively quickly after another.

[Jonathan Edwards]

I take the point the right hon. Gentleman is making, but is he aware that Kirsty Williams, the leader of the Liberal Democrats in Wales, has written a letter to the UK Government saying that the vote should be moved from 23 June?

[Tom Brake]

I am aware of that, and I suppose one consequence of devolution is that people in different places adopt different positions. Like many others, I am suspicious of the motives behind the Scottish National party’s position: is it about the need to delay the referendum for the reasons it sets out, or is it about increasing the chances that the UK might vote to come out of the EU, in order to facilitate the SNP’s campaign to hold a second referendum? In relation to splits within parties, there appears to be one within the SNP, as the First Minister of Scotland is clear that this should be a positive campaign, but what we have heard here today from SNP Members has been all about the procedure and not at all about the positive nature of what the EU campaign should be.

[Patrick Grady]

Will the right hon. Gentleman confirm that, like the Labour party, the Liberal Democrats’ position is that if Scotland votes to stay in the EU and the rest of the UK votes to leave, they are happy to see Scotland forced to leave the EU against its will?

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Brake]

The Liberal Democrat position is that those who want to stay in the EU should be united behind the campaign and should start campaigning positively. That includes not only the SNP but the leader of the Labour party, who perhaps needs to spend some time with the leader of the Labour campaign and draw on some of his enthusiasm so that he can put his back into ensuring that we win on 23 June.

[Ms Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh (Ochil and South Perthshire) (SNP)]

On suspicious intentions, may I remind the right hon. Gentleman that he campaigned with the Conservative party and the Labour party in Scotland, telling the people of Scotland that if they voted no in the Scottish referendum, they would be guaranteed to remain in the EU? What is his position on that point today?

[Tom Brake]

I am confident that if we have a united front from the SNP campaigning positively on the matter, from the Labour party and from the Prime Minister—I am pleased to say that he has, after I requested it, come out forcefully behind the campaign in support of staying in—we will collectively win the campaign. I look forward to doing that.

As I said, we need to get on with the campaign, which is actually about the peace, prosperity, opportunity and security that we derive from being a member of the EU; it is not about “Project Fear” at all. The Conservative party, or those on the Benches immediately in front of me, may refer frequently to “Project Fear”, but I must say that quite a degree of whitewash or “Project Status Quo” is coming from those on the Government Benches.

[Sir William Cash]

I am so glad that the right hon. Gentleman has referred to “Project Status Quo”, because I am sure he will accept that almost nothing has changed, for example, on ever closer union, or in any word of any treaty or law in relation to the EU. Would he therefore be good enough simply to say that he agrees with us that proper, impartial information should be published, and that the current documents simply do not cut the mustard?

[Tom Brake]

What I will agree with the hon. Gentleman on is the fact that there is a “Project Status Quo”, but I think he has misunderstood the point I was making, which was that there are people on his side of the argument who would like us to come out of the EU and who claim repeatedly that the basis on which we would be able to trade with the EU would be unchanged. They say, “There is no change. It will be exactly the same. We will get exactly the same terms whether we are in or out.” That is why I referred to “Project Status Quo”.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

I have made the point many times, as have other hon. Members, that we have a gigantic trade deficit with the rest of the EU, and with Germany in particular. Germany is therefore not going to play games with us on trade, because it will only shoot itself in the foot by doing so.

[Tom Brake]

I am pleased that the hon. Gentleman can read forward two, three, four, five, six or seven years to what the arrangement between the UK and the EU would be if the UK were to leave. I cannot do that, but clearly he is clairvoyant.

One serious question I wish to put to the Minister is whether he is confident that the Electoral Commission and the police will have the resources and the tools they need to ensure that the rules on expenditure will be observed in the campaign. He will be aware of a recent exchange in which the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker)—I warned him I was going to raise this point in the debate—said in an email:

“It is open to the Vote Leave family to create separate legal entities each of which could spend £700k: Vote Leave will be able to spend as much money as is necessary to win the referendum.”

I hope that the Minister will provide some clarification on that. My memory of being a Minister and being involved with the rules of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 is that it is very clear that if organisations are working in concert—the Vote Leave family suggests that that is exactly what would happen—the total limit would be £700,000, and that to seek to go beyond that by some artificial creation of a number of identities would be a breach of the law. However the campaign is conducted, we need to know that all sides will treat it in a way that observes the law.