EU Referendum: Electoral Law

Wera Hobhouse Excerpts

Tuesday 27th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Tom Brake]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, and his point is well made. I am sure he will agree with me and the other Members who have already expressed strong views on the fact that when anyone has broken electoral law—if indeed it has been broken—that requires investigation and appropriate action needs to be taken.

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that Conservative Members are so desperate to get Brexit that they are happy to get Brexit at any price, even at the price of democracy?

[Tom Brake]

I do not know if that is the case for all Conservative Members; we will see whether their enthusiasm for the debate leads any of them to make a contribution setting out concerns about whether democracy might have been jeopardised if these allegations are true. But they seem to be treating the debate more as a matter of hilarity, so I am not entirely confident that their contributions will reinforce the points made from the Opposition Benches.

I am now going to ask the Minister some questions which I hope she will be able to answer. In some respects I feel sorry for her in this, as I know her to be a very fair Minister. I would much rather have had the Foreign Secretary here to answer questions, because he has a lot of questions to answer in this respect, including on the role he played in the Vote Leave campaign.

I hope the Minister will be able to explain why the investigations of the existing allegations have taken so long. Is that a question of the Electoral Commission or the police lacking appropriate powers or resources? We have heard that the Electoral Commission has said it is not a resource problem. Is there a discrepancy between the different statutory regimes for elections on the one hand and for referendums on the other, which cause difficulty in the examination of infringements? Do these differences cause particular problems when seeking to establish illegal collusion or ineligible donors?

Can the Minister also set out what action the UK Government intend to take to address any failings in electoral law they or the Electoral Commission have already identified, and set out what mechanisms are in place to right past electoral wrongs? Given the narrow margin of the result—for every 17 people who voted to leave, 16 voted to remain—does the Minister recognise that continuing doubts about the referendum’s integrity fuel challenges to the legitimacy of the entire Brexit process? Is the Minister confident that no one who works for the Conservative party, or indeed Ministers or the Prime Minister, is going to be charged as part of this investigation?

I will conclude by saying that whether people voted leave or remain, they are entitled to know that the EU referendum campaign was fairly and squarely delivered, or that people were in fact cheated and the law was broken. As Members from all opposition parties, at least, have said, this will require a thorough investigation. It requires Ministers to refrain from the Trumpian tweeting preferred by the Foreign Secretary, who has already said that there is no case to answer before the case has actually been heard.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Edward Davey]

A number of bodies could ultimately look at the different accusations. We have a live investigation by the Electoral Commission, and we await the result of that. My right hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington spoke very much about the Electoral Commission in his speech. We also have the investigations by the Information Commissioner’s Office into the related allegations with respect to Cambridge Analytica and Aggregate IQ. Many of us feel that the evidence so far suggests that the police should be investigating these organisations, because there could be a criminal act. Let me absolutely clear: I certainly am not suggesting that Ministers are responsible for any investigation. That would not meet my requirements for an inquiry.

[Wera Hobhouse]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that while an independent body should investigate, we perhaps need to update the law and do something here in Parliament in order to adequately respond to these things in the future?

[Sir Edward Davey]

Indeed. I have written to the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), to ask whether her Committee could hold a parliamentary inquiry into the different aspects that are not covered by the inquiry of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee. I seriously think that the House needs to augment and support the investigations by those independent bodies. We have powers in the House to bring people to the bar to discuss and to give evidence, and that is the right and proper thing to do.