European Union (Referendum) Bill (Money)

David Lidington Excerpts

Tuesday 16th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Europe (Mr David Lidington)]

I beg to move,

That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the European Union (Referendum) Bill, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of money provided by Parliament of:

(1) any expenditure of the Secretary of State in consequence of the Act, and

(2) any increase attributable to the Act in the sums payable under any other Act out of money so provided.

It is standard Government procedure to introduce a money resolution for any private Member’s Bill to which the House has given a Second Reading to enable the Bill to be fully debated in Committee. It is inevitable that costs would be incurred in holding a referendum on the UK’s membership of the European Union, and a money resolution is required to enable those costs to be paid.

Under the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, the chair of the Electoral Commission is the chief counting officer, responsible for the conduct of referendums. So far, no detailed estimate has been made of the cost of this national referendum. We do, however, have the precedent of the referendum on the parliamentary voting system in May 2011. We would expect the cost of running a UK-wide referendum to be similar to the cost of that referendum on the alternative vote system, which was just over £75.3 million. Of course, that would depend in part on whether a referendum on EU membership were held alongside local or other elections, as the alternative vote referendum was. I commend the motion to the House.