European Union Referendum Bill

William Cash Excerpts

Tuesday 8th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[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.

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[Mrs Main]

How does my hon. Friend envisage the reports being scrutinised, and who does he think will sign them off before they are published?

[Sir William Cash]

I am confident that the European Scrutiny Committee will be looking at this carefully. During our examination of the renegotiations, we have been exercised by the desire to ensure that the Government do not just come forward with a final offer. The Minister knows what I mean. We do not want to be bounced by a final offer; we want to assess the negotiations as they progress. That is what we are doing, and what we will continue to do, because that is what our Standing Orders require us to do on behalf of the House of Commons. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her intervention because it is important that the House not be bounced.

I spoke to, and received a note from, the Electoral Commission today. It regards the provision of the impartiality we would expect as beyond its own functions, which is extremely regrettable because it should have an opportunity to comment. My Committee will consider this matter carefully—the Minister knows what that means—and it is my clear assessment that any such report, if he could not guarantee it met the highest standards of impartiality and accuracy, would effectively mislead the British people. That is the test. If he tells me something along those lines, I will be prepared—

[Damian Green (Ashford) (Con)]

rose—

[Sir William Cash]

I am happy to give way to my right hon. Friend, as soon as I have finished my point.

It is important, if the voter is to make a balanced choice, that due accuracy and impartiality be implicit in any such report.

[Damian Green]

I am slightly puzzled. My hon. Friend is rightly demanding accuracy in the Government’s analysis, but he is also demanding impartiality. Does he mean, and is it the purport of his amendments, that the Government should not express an opinion on the most important issue facing the country for perhaps the next 40 years? I assume not, as that would clearly be absurd. Is he saying, therefore, that if the Government produce an accurate report and then reach a conclusion with which he disagrees, it could not, in itself, be impartial? There is a difference between accuracy and impartiality.

[Sir William Cash]

I will leave aside my own opinions on this point. As my right hon. Friend knows, I have strong views, which I will develop during the campaign, about why we should leave, but we already know from speeches made by the Prime Minister and other Ministers that there is a presupposition that a reformed Union is the way to go. The test to be applied is whether the reforms amount to much, which I do not think they will, and meet the test of changing our relationship with the EU, which is also relevant. On these questions there will be much debate, but anybody with a fraction of judgment, in respect of this huge landscape and the trust to be placed in the voter to make the right decision, will have to consider whether there is any significant bias in the reports. We have already been through the whole of the purdah debate, which was about using the civil service machinery. If I may say so, I think we won that one. There should not be a back door to achieving the same objectives relating to a report of this kind.

On that note, I give notice that I propose to withdraw my amendment. I want to know from the Minister whether or not he is prepared to accept my point about impartiality and accuracy. He knows perfectly well what I mean, and he is more than capable of giving us a decent answer.

[Mr McFadden]

I shall speak briefly, particularly now that the hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) has indicated that he will withdraw his amendment.

Lords amendments 5 and 6 quite closely reflect amendments that Opposition Members tabled in Committee and on Report. Amendment 5 calls for information and a report on the Government’s renegotiation process, while amendment 6 calls for a report on the rights and obligations entailed in membership of the European Union and invites the Government to outline the rights and obligations of certain countries that have relationships with the EU, perhaps through the EEA agreement, but are not members of it.

I refer Members to the recent Policy Network pamphlet on these issues, entitled “What does ‘out’ look like?”, which I think would make a great Christmas present for the Minister and for anyone considering these issues. I have some copies available if the Minister would like to see them. This is not the same as the purdah issue. We are talking about something that is 10 weeks out and we are not in the absolute heat of the campaign. We are not talking about a leaflet that is to be distributed to every household in the country or anything like that. What we are calling for is for the Government to publish information on both aspects—the renegotiation and what “out” might look like. That should give the public the best information possible on a very important decision.

The Government and the Prime Minister have placed great emphasis on the renegotiation itself, and we have seen the exchange of letters between the Prime Minister and the President of the European Council, who published his initial reply yesterday. We know there will be some discussion of these issues at the European Council next week, but probably not a conclusion until the European Council in February next year.

It remains to be seen what the outcome of these renegotiations is going to be. We had some indication in the letter from the President of the European Council yesterday. Many Opposition Members do not place the same weight on this renegotiation as the Prime Minister does, because we think there is a broader case for membership beyond the four points that the Prime Minister outlined in his letter of last month to the President of the European Council. It is obviously also the case that many Government Back Benchers place no weight at all on the renegotiation, because there is nothing in it that could get them to change their minds about the outcome of the referendum. I believe it was the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) who asked during questions on a statement after he had seen the contents of the Prime Minister’s letter, “Is that it?”

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[John Redwood]

I put my name to the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) because I thought that Lords amendments 5 and 6 were ill considered and unwise, and that we needed to debate them for that reason.

Lords amendment 5 is easy to deal with and I have no particular problem with it, because it states the obvious—namely that, when the negotiations have been completed, the British Government should share their view of the outcome of those negotiations with Parliament and the people. Well, of course they will: it will happen naturally. There will be a statement, and I dare say there will be a written text as well. I therefore think that the amendment is an unnecessary addition to what was a simpler Bill before their lordships got hold of it.

Lords amendment 6 is far more worrying, because it is so sloppily drafted and because it leads to all sorts of arguments that are properly arguments for a referendum campaign rather than for good legislation to set up the referendum. The first part of the amendment says that the Government must publish information about the

“rights, and obligations, that arise under European Union law”

from our current membership. As has already been remarked, if that were done properly it would result in a very long book, given that we are now subject to so many legal restrictions and obligations as a result of an extremely voluminous consolidated treaty and thousands of directives. I think that to fulfil that remit properly, the Government would have to set out all the directives, and explain to the British people why there are now very large areas of law and public practice that we in the House of Commons are not free to determine as we see fit and as the people wish. While that might be a useful thing to do, I fear that the Government might fall short because they might not wish to give a comprehensive list of our obligations, and it is not good law to invite people to do things that they do not really intend to do.

I look forward to hearing the Minister clarify whether he will be publishing a full list of the thousands of legal restraints that now operate on this Parliament in preventing us from carrying out the wish of the British people, and also on the British people, who must obey these laws as they are translated into British law, or else obey the directly acting laws. Of course, all these laws, and our own laws, can be construed by European justice through the European Court of Justice, which, rather than this court of Parliament, is now the true sovereign in our country because we have submitted ourselves to the ultimate judgment of the European Court.

[Sir William Cash]

Does my right hon. Friend attach the importance that I attach—and the Electoral Commission itself has attached—to the fact that the reports proposed by Lords amendments 5 and 6 should be produced on the basis of both impartiality and accuracy? We remember the review of competences: it was a whitewash. If these reports were anything like that, we would be significantly misleading the public, would we not?

[John Redwood]

Indeed. That is why I share my hon. Friend’s concern about Lords amendment 6, and fear that the Government might fall short of the full remit. Will they spell it out to people that we cannot control our own borders, our own welfare system, our own energy system and energy pricing, our own market regulations, our own corporation tax or our own value added tax, because all those matters have been transferred to the superior power of the European Union? That should be the very substance of the referendum debate about whether we wish to restore the full sovereignty of Parliament for the British people, or whether we wish to continue on the wild ride to political union that the EU has in mind, which will mean that even more powers are taken away.

The second part of Lords amendment 6 states that the Government must set out

“examples of countries that do not have membership of the European Union but do have other arrangements with the European Union (describing, in the case of each country given as an example, those arrangements).”

I have not read or heard anything so woolly for a long time. The amendment refers to all the countries that are not in the European Union but have some kind of arrangement with the European Union without even specifying a trade arrangement, although the Opposition seem to think that it relates to trade.

The Opposition try to perpetuate the myth that our businesses and people would be able to trade with the rest of the European Union only if we resubmitted ourselves to some of the powers of that Union through some kind of arrangement like those entered into by Norway and Switzerland. Have they not heard that America is a mighty trading partner of the European Union that does not have one of these special trading arrangements, and certainly does not pay a contribution to the European Union in order to sell goods and services to it—nor does China, nor does India, nor does Canada, and nor does Australia—and have they not heard that some individual countries have free trade agreements with the European Union which are arguably better than the arrangement that we have as members of the EU, because they do not have to pay anything like the very large levies and contributions that we must pay for the privilege of trading from within the internal market?

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[Peter Grant]

It is perfectly in order for the UK Government to take an impartial, neutral stance once we get closer to the referendum. We do not know what stance they will take. There is a question as to whether it was appropriate for somebody else’s Government to interfere in our referendum, but I know that that is not an argument we will win just now. However, that degree of interference probably contributed to the fact that on most days these Benches are significantly more crowded than they were before. If the Government do not produce information, as opposed to campaigning opinion, about how the EU works now, who will produce it? If we are happy for the two opposing camps to produce the information, then they can go ahead and do it, but we know before we start that all that will happen is that people will be drawn to believing statements of fact because of their opinion of the politician or TV personality who has associated their name with them, rather than being presented with a factual, well-researched document that sets out how things are just now.

[Sir William Cash]

rose—

[Peter Grant]

I will give way to the Chair of the European Scrutiny Committee with pleasure.

[Sir William Cash]

I rise to intervene on a member of my Committee simply to say that we know that the broadcasts and the information that will be delivered and published by the designated organisations on either side will provide that information. We saw it in Ireland, and there are many other examples in other referendums in the EU. But the idea that the Government are not going to try and organise the view that they want, which is to stay in a so-called reformed union, is, I think, for the birds.

[Peter Grant]

I wish I could share the hon. Gentleman’s absolute faith in the impartiality of broadcasters during important referendums, but that might be one of the very small number of issues on which we disagree.

The point about broadcasters is that if they are found to be in breach of the requirement of impartiality, a sanction is available and there are ways in which they can be held to account—and certainly the BBC feels as if it is being very severely held to account by any number of Committees in this place just now.

[Sir William Cash]

I was not referring to the impartiality of broadcasters in this context; I was referring to the fact that under the designated arrangements each side will have the right to issue broadcasts and provide information by way of literature. That is what I was concentrating on.

[Peter Grant]

I apologise for misunderstanding the hon. Gentleman’s comments.

My essential point is that I do not think it is enough to leave it to campaign groups to provide information. The purpose of campaign groups is to persuade people to vote for the cause that they are promoting. They will provide information that supports their cause. They will choose not to provide or emphasise information that does not support it. That is what we all did in order to get elected, and as long as it does not involve deliberately making untrue statements or trying to mislead people, that is part of the democratic process; it is part of politics. It is up to the electorate to judge whose arguments they believe, but if the electorate are starting from a position of significant ignorance, or in some cases significant misperception and misunderstanding of what the EU is all about, there is a danger that they will not be in a position to exercise that judgment at a critical time.

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to be at all unreasonable. In fact, it would be rather odd if the Government did not publish such information. The advantage of having this obligation in the Bill is that the Government will have to publish it 10 weeks before the date of the referendum. That will mean that it will be properly scrutinised, rather than bounced on to the electorate at the last minute. I would say in response to my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green) that it is perfectly reasonable for the Government to express their own opinion in such a document on the outcome of their own negotiations, as they would in any White Paper. It would be a good thing to have this provision in the Bill.

[Sir William Cash]

My hon. Friend should bear in mind that the White Paper that led to the European Communities Act 1972, which went through by only six votes in this House, contained a very precise promise that the use of the veto in our national interest would never be abandoned, because to abandon it would be to endanger the very fabric of the European Community itself. Is that not an example of how unreliable White Papers and other Government reports can be?

[Mr Jenkin]

Indeed, but it is unavoidable that the Government are going to produce information of this kind.

The second duty, in Lords amendment 6, is not something that I expected to see. The Lords amendment asks the Government to produce judgments and opinions on a vast topic, using examples that, by their very nature, will be subjective. I am not at all surprised that the Electoral Commission has decided that it would be far beyond its competence to make a judgment about what such a document might be. The Government have accepted this amendment, but if they are to justify retaining it—as I expect them to do—they will have to answer some questions about it.

What do the Government mean by the word “publish” in the amendment? It would be one thing to place a learned, detailed and technical paper in the Library of the House of Commons in order to present the depth of analysis that the hon. Member for Glenrothes believes would be justified, but would the Government produce such a subjective document in a form that could be circulated to every household? How would we feel about that, 10 weeks before a referendum? It is reasonable for the Government to explain the outcome of their negotiations, but it would not be reasonable for them to use public money to present their entire world view on European Union membership as part of a campaign to remain in the EU.

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[Mr Jenkin]

I am waiting to hear what the Minister has to say on that point. The proposed amendment changes the wording. It now says that it should be allowed to make that decision only if

“no permitted participant makes an application to be designated under section 109 as representing those campaigning for that outcome except for a permitted participant whose application the Commission states is, in its opinion, vexatious or frivolous.”

That would mean that, provided there are two legitimate applications for designation, the obligation would be clear in the Bill that the commission has to designate two campaigns. That is not clear in the Bill at the moment. If one such campaign was “vexatious or frivolous” and was clearly just there to spoil in some respects, the Electoral Commission would have to justify its action. I hope the Minister will tell us that he can accept our amendment. If he cannot do so, I hope that he will make it clear that the substance of the amendment should be understood, and that it would be unconscionable to have only one campaign designated in this referendum. If an application is made in such a way as to be construed as vexatious or frivolous, such an application would have to be considered. We should be in no doubt that there will be an application in respect of both sides of this campaign.

[Sir William Cash]

I endorse what my hon. Friend has just said. Let me repeat for the sake of clarity that these amendments are the result of ping-pong between the Commons and the Lords, which is not the best way for them to be considered. We have not had enough time to have a really good look at this matter, and I hope that the Minister will take that into account when he gives us the very full explanation on amendments 5, 6 and 13.

[Mr Jenkin]

In closing, let me add that in all three amendments we have been discussing the potential role of the Electoral Commission. In respect of amendments 5 and 6, the Electoral Commission has shrunk from the possibility of being given an obligation for which it is not fit. It is worth reminding ourselves that we have already developed one new role for the commission during the passage of this Bill, which is that it will give its advice about possible new regulations on the restriction of section 125 of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 in respect of purdah. It did not want that obligation, but we gave it to it. Electoral commissions in countries such as Ireland or Denmark have a very much more active policing role in respect of fair referendums, and that is a role that we, in this country, have not set up the Electoral Commission to undertake.

[Sir William Cash]

With both amendments 5 and 6, we need to bear in mind that a duty would be imposed. That duty would imply and carry with it the potential for judicial review. If there were any failure in carrying out that duty in the manner that was expected under all the precepts of administrative law, the Minister should accept that there is more than a high probability of a challenge in the courts. That challenge could arise not only because of the manner in which a report arose, but if any of the information were misleading in any way.

[Mr Jenkin]

I agree with my hon. Friend, and will add that, where the Electoral Commission clearly has a duty, its decision can be judiciously reviewed. In respect of the designation of only one campaign, I have absolutely no doubt that there would instantly be a judicial review, and I speak with knowledge aforethought.

In the absence of the duties on the Electoral Commission —for example, to provide for impartial and objective information from the Government—it is a moral imperative on Ministers to ensure that they undertake their obligations in the spirit of a fair referendum, and not to abuse the trust that this legislation places on them with regard to the publication of that information.

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[Mr Mak]

I thank my hon. Friend for his characteristically cogent intervention. He is right that, beyond the walls of this place, men and women, families and businesses and community organisations play their day-to-day role, focus on other priorities and are not necessarily concentrating on the EU referendum or those issues on which this House concentrates.

[Sir William Cash]

I refer vicariously to the most recent opinion poll, which showed that 52% of the United Kingdom electorate thought that they should leave and only 48% thought that they should stay in; 60% of those in the south-west said that they wanted to leave.

[Mr Mak]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. I was just finishing my response to my hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare). I hope that through debates in this House we shall be able to take a lead on the issues. I welcome emails from people on all sides of the argument.

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[Mr Mak]

My hon. Friend makes an outstanding point. To give the Electoral Commission a role beyond its current role would be to tread on the feet of hon. Members and encroach on the democratic freedoms and roles of this Parliament. My hon. Friend is right that the Electoral Commission does not agree with the intention of my hon. Friend the Member for Stone. As my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster) says, there are better sources of information—such as literature from the various campaign groups that I mentioned and information from public bodies such as the Office for Budget Responsibility or the Bank of England. I would encourage members of the public to read Hansard, where the speeches of many distinguished hon. Members can be found, including from this very debate.

[Sir William Cash]

It would be useful, if people really wanted to hear how the debate was progressing, for them to follow the transcripts of European Scrutiny Committee, Treasury Committee and Foreign Affairs Committee proceedings. That will tell them an enormous amount about what is going on and what questions are being asked of Ministers.

[Mr Mak]

My hon. Friend makes a cogent point. The proceedings in this Chamber are available not only in Hansard but on parliamentlive.tv as well as BBC Parliament. I encourage all members of the public and all those who are interested in the proceedings of the House to tune in, particularly to my hon. Friend’s Committee, the European Scrutiny Committee, which he has led with distinction for many years, and other Select Committees, including my own, the Procedure Committee, which has been involved in numerous deliberations. I am delighted to see two of my distinguished Committee colleagues in the Chamber today.

The Electoral Commission undertook research as part of its statutory assessment of the type of information that the public would want to know as the referendum process began. As my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay and the hon. Member for Glenrothes (Peter Grant) said, it found that members of the public were not necessarily clear about what the consequences of the referendum would be. There was no real understanding among large sections of the public about what leaving would entail. There was not enough information about what staying in would entail. There was certainly some confusion about the very many campaign groups that have sprung up, which I mentioned as I opened my speech.

What the Electoral Commission did say, which I found heartening, was that there was a strong appetite for more information about the implications of leaving, as well as an appetite for information about the implications of remaining and, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham said, information about other models of engagement, including Switzerland, Norway, other members of the European economic area and, indeed, countries in Asia, Africa, Latin and South America. He is absolutely right: there are a number of models that can be invoked and, according to the Electoral Commission, the public are keen to have more information. As the hon. Member for Glenrothes said, there is an appetite for more information.

The Electoral Commission found that the public do not simply want dry facts. They would like contextual information, including worked examples, explanations and case studies, giving the views of right hon. and hon. Members. The Electoral Commission recommended that campaign groups, which I mentioned at the beginning of my speech, include on their websites and in their literature worked examples and real-life case studies, along with testimonies from Members of Parliament, Members of the other place and members of the public who wish to share their experience. That would help a great deal to educate the public about the choices to be made.

The Electoral Commission said in its letter that it would be reluctant to adopt the extra powers that some hon. Members believe that it should have, as it has no powers to police information that is put into the public domain alongside Government reports. It has no legislative powers to regulate such information. Finally, the Electoral Commission made a good, cogent point with which I agree. It does not have the capabilities to undertake an extension of its role, which some Members of the House of Lords and of the House of Commons have proposed that it should have. It said in its letter, referring to the extension of its powers regarding the referendum and the Government report, that

“it is also the case that we would not have the capabilities to do so”.

It also said:

“We will have no insider knowledge of the negotiations, nor the required expertise to judge a report to Parliament about the UK’s membership of the EU.”

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[Sir William Cash]

My hon. Friend will have heard that the Electoral Commission has had duties imposed on it by Parliament, but what the amendment is driving at above all else, with respect to him and to my hon. Friend the Member for Fareham (Suella Fernandes), is that there should be proper impartiality and accuracy in the information. If the commission cannot do that, the Government can. If they do not do it, the courts will ensure that they do.

[Mr Mak]

I thank my hon. Friend for his explanation. My interpretation of the letter is that the commission did not want to take on more powers, as it already has core duties, including the good administration of elections and of the referendum. It conceded that it was not an expert in constitutional law, politics or negotiations about the UK’s continued membership of the EU; it was merely a good administrator, and that is the role that Parliament centrally wants it to fulfil. It is certainly the role that I want it to fulfil as the referendum process continues. The commission was saying, frankly and openly, that it lacked the expertise to make any determination about the Government report.

Next year, as many right hon. and hon. Members will know, we will have local, county and mayoral elections, as well as police and crime commissioner elections, which will increase the workload of the commission in its current guise, whether it is arbitrating on voter rolls, interpreting various aspects of election law or undertaking other statutory duties, which are all a drain on its resources. The Electoral Commission lacks the necessary expertise, as my hon. Friend the Member for Fareham (Suella Fernandes) said, and will be burdened with a heavy workload next year, given the frequency and geographic spread of elections in which it will be involved, particularly from an administrative perspective. There is therefore no role for the commission as proposed by the amendment, so the Government’s view should prevail.

May I turn briefly to Lords amendment 13, which was tabled by Baroness Anelay of St Johns and has some support in this House? I should like to elucidate what it does and to share my views on its place in this House. As hon. Members will know, section 108 of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 allows the Electoral Commission to designate permitted participants—that is likely to be the campaign groups that I mentioned earlier—as organisations to which assistance is available under section 110 of that Act. Such assistance could be logistical or financial, and in some cases there would be media opportunities. Where a referendum has only two outcomes, which is the case for the EU referendum, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham and others have said, under section 108, the Electoral Commission can exercise the power to designate one organisation for each of the outcomes or not designate any at all.

Lords amendment 13 would enable the Electoral Commission to designate a lead campaigner for one side of the argument, whether that is to remain in the EU or to leave it, at the referendum without designating a lead campaigner for the other side. That would apply only where for a particular outcome, whether to leave or to remain, there were no applications on the other side or the Electoral Commission was not satisfied that there was an applicant who adequately represented those campaigning for that outcome. For example, vexatious or clearly inadequate groups would be disregarded by the commission.

In the event that only one campaigner was designated, that campaigner would be entitled to a higher spending limit, a free mail-out to voters and access to meeting rooms—for example, in council or other municipal buildings—which is a positive. However, it is important for the House to note that that campaigner would not be entitled to a grant from the Electoral Commission of up to £600,000 under section 110 of the 2000 Act, nor would they be allowed to make a referendum broadcast to the people of this country under section 127 of that Act.

Having reviewed the amendments in this place and the other place, and having read representations from the Electoral Commission and from broadcasters, my view is that that is a fair compromise. The amendment implements recommendations that the Electoral Commission made following the 2011 referendum on the voting system. As I said at the start of my remarks, we must pay heed to what the Electoral Commission says, while also taking into account hon. Members’ views. Based on the experiences of 2011, the Electoral Commission recommended that steps should be taken to reduce the potential advantages under the 2000 Act designation model for a prospective lead campaigner to decide against applying for the designation. The Electoral Commission had identified an example where a campaigner might have a tactical advantage in not seeking designation with a view to frustrating the other side’s access to additional benefits. I find that a cogent observation on the part of the Electoral Commission.

I said that I would touch briefly on Lords amendment 13. The Government’s position on all the amendments deserves the support of the House.

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[Mr Lidington]

The amendment refers to “rights, and obligations”, not to “the rights and obligations”. It gives the Government the discretion to select for presentation the rights and obligations that we think will best aid public understanding. I want to make it clear that our purpose in recommending acceptance of these amendments is that they should enable us to provide for greater public understanding. I completely agree with my right hon. Friend that membership of the EU touches on matters other than trade or economic policy. I am sure that the relative balance of advantages and disadvantages that arises out of EU membership on all those issues will be a matter of vigorous debate during the referendum campaign, but we do not envisage that debate taking place in the context of the obligation placed on us by amendment 6.

Lords amendment 6 is about providing factual information on the basis of which the public can take an informed decision. It is also about describing some of the existing arrangements that non-member countries already have with the European Union. We think that that is a better course of action than for the Government to attempt to hypothesise about what the United Kingdom’s future relationship with the EU would be in the event of a vote to withdraw, because that depends on assumptions made about not only the future intentions of the British Government, but the likely response of other European countries.

[Sir William Cash]

On rights and obligations, the Minister is already beginning to move the argument into the arena of the question of impartiality and accuracy. If the Government pick and choose, the public will not have a clue whether what is chosen suits the Government or them, and it is the voters who will have to make the final choice.

[Mr Lidington]

To follow my hon. Friend’s logic, the implications of a requirement to provide an exhaustive list would mean going through the entire corpus of EU law—not just the particular areas of competence, as specified in general terms in the treaties—and trying to draw out from that what would be a voluminous list of both the rights and the obligations that derive from each of the measures. I simply do not think that that would aid public understanding. Actually, I think it would act as a formidable deterrent for many members of the public to read the document at all.

My hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) asked about the form of publication. No decision has been taken yet, but I envisage it being comparable to a White Paper, if not an actual White Paper. As is normal these days, such a publication would be available online, so it would be widely accessible. The reports would have to be published at least 10 weeks before the referendum, which would give the campaigners clear time to lead the public debate. I emphasise that neither Lords amendment 5 nor 6 in any way affects the section 125 restrictions on Government publications during the final 28 days of the campaign. I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Stone, in view of what I have said and of the Electoral Commission’s express view that it does not agree with his amendment, will agree to withdraw it.

[Sir William Cash]

Before I declare whether I am going to withdraw my amendment, I have asked my right hon. Friend several times to make it absolutely clear, on behalf of the Government, that when they give information under Lords amendments 5 and 6 they will do so with due accuracy and impartiality. Is he going to do that or not?

[Mr Lidington]

Certainly, that is the case, because it would probably have a perverse impact on the Government’s recommendation if they were to be seen to be acting in an excessively partisan manner. I say again to my hon. Friend that, at the end of the negotiation, the Government will express their view, their recommendation and their reasoning, but we see the statutory provisions laid out in the Lords amendments as being about the provision of actual and factual information.

Lords amendment 13 has also been debated in detail. It would allow the Electoral Commission to designate a lead campaigner for only one side of the argument in the event that either there were no applications for a particular outcome or the Electoral Commission was not satisfied that any applicant met the statutory test of adequately representing those campaigning for that outcome. Given the vigour we already see in opposing campaigns, it is very unlikely that we will end up in such territory. I hope that the House will accept Lords amendment 13 to prevent gaming by one side of the campaign to the disadvantage of the other.

[Sir William Cash]

I simply say that in the light of the clear assurance that there will be due impartiality and accuracy, I will not press my amendments to Lords amendments 5, 6 and 13. I beg to ask leave to withdraw amendment (a) to Lords amendment 5.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Lords amendment 5 agreed to.