European Union (Referendum) Bill

Debate between John Baron and John Denham

Friday 5th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Denham]

No, I will make a little more progress.

Why has this situation come about? Why has supposedly the most powerful politician in the land come begging his MPs to support a private Member’s Bill? The Prime Minister’s position on the issue seems clear enough. He made a speech in January in which he said that after the next election, if there is a Conservative Government, he would aim to renegotiate our relationship with the EU, with an in/out referendum by 2017, come what may in those negotiations. That might not be wise—there is absolutely no guarantee of any negotiations being clear by 2017—but it is certainly a clear position, and it came from the Prime Minister.

Why was that not good enough for the Conservative Members who have turned up today? Of course, many of them just want to leave the EU. They do not care when, as long as it is as soon as possible, and they do not trust their own Prime Minister. As soon as the Queen’s Speech was published, they were after him. The hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) was first off the mark, moving an amendment regretting the failure to mention a referendum Bill in the Queen’s Speech. He was very clear why one was needed. He wrote in The Daily Telegraph:

“The Prime Minister made a historic pledge to the British people during his January speech,”

but

“where the Prime Minister’s pledge falls down is its believability.”

Let me repeat that:

“where the Prime Minister’s pledge falls down”—

this “historic pledge”, let us remember—

“is its believability.”

What an extraordinary statement! The reason we are here today is because the majority of Tory MPs do not believe that a historic pledge made by their own leader is believed by the British people. That is the only reason we are here, and that is why the Prime Minister is humiliated by these proceedings today.

[Mr John Baron]

I am afraid the right hon. Gentleman quotes very selectively from that piece. Having written it, I will correct him for the record. What I went on to say was that the issue was believability, not because there is an issue between the Prime Minister and his Back Benchers, but because the issue has been between politicians in general and the electorate, because far too many promises in the past have been broken, particularly by the Labour party and the Liberals, at every single general election. If the right hon. Gentleman is going to quote me, he should please do it correctly.

[Mr Denham]

I quoted absolutely verbatim from the hon. Gentleman’s article. Let me respond to his further point. I would expect a Conservative MP to say, “You can’t really believe what Labour MPs say”, and I would expect Labour MPs to say, “You can’t really believe what Conservative MPs say.” That is what we do here in this House. It probably does not do us much good with the general public, but that is what we do—we throw these things about. What I do not expect is a Conservative MP to say, “You can’t believe a Conservative Prime Minister,” and that is what the hon. Gentleman did. The Bill has arisen from the decision of Conservative Back Benchers—

[Mr Baron]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Higher Education Fees

Debate between John Baron and John Denham

Thursday 9th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Denham]

We certainly need to sustain investment in higher education, but as—again—I will show in a moment, it is not necessary to adopt our macro-economic policies to know that the Government could have made a different choice. No other country in the world is taking the step we are taking, and no other country in the world can understand why we are taking it. As always, rather than defending their position, the Government give the pathetic answer, “We had no choice.” But they did have a choice. Everyone knows they had a choice.

We in the Labour party would take a more measured and responsible approach to deficit reduction, but even on its own terms, if the coalition had cut higher education in line with the rest of public services, we would have been looking at fee increases of a few hundred pounds. The Business Secretary has told us that the figure should be not 10%, but 20%. That would mean fee increases of not much over £4,000, rather than the £6,000 to £9,000 for which the House is being asked to vote today.

[Mr Baron]

The right hon. Gentleman cannot get away from the fact that most independent experts agree that the graduate tax, which seems to be the policy of the Labour party, will make students worse off because they will have to pay back more debt and pay it back earlier. Why does he not address that fundamental point?

[Mr Denham]

Let me explain in a straightforward way to the hon. Gentleman and others who may be confused. There are two stages in this process. The first is deciding how much public funding there will be and how much money needs to come from graduates. The second is deciding how the graduates are to make their contributions. The first stage is the critical one to consider today, because it is the 80% cut in university education that is forcing the graduate contributions so high. As for the second, if the hon. Gentleman will bear with me, as did the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Miss McIntosh), I will set out the case in a few moments.