Roger Gale
Main Page: Roger Gale (Conservative - North Thanet)Department Debates - View all Roger Gale's debates with the HM Treasury
(8 years, 10 months ago)
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The Temporary Chair (Sir Roger Gale)
Order. The hon. Gentleman is straying rather far from the dates that are the subject of the amendment. It is fascinating material, but we do not really need another Second Reading debate.
Mike Gapes
I was tempted by the interventions, so I apologise to you, Sir Roger, for following the temptation. I will get back to the point.
There is an issue here to do with purdah and how the purdah requirements would apply. There will be great difficulty in holding a referendum at the end of 2017, when we are chairing the Council of Ministers meetings, because of that issue alone. For that reason, I hope that, if we are to have a referendum in 2016, we plan for it now—and that may already be, privately, the Prime Minister’s intention—rather than getting into great difficulties with the way in which it can be conducted, and damaging the United Kingdom’s role and relationship with the other 27 member states of the European Union. Once the referendum is over, assuming that it is won, we must work constructively with our partners to restore the trust and relationships for the future. It is better that we confront the issues early, rather than slipping into some kind of disastrous outcome.
Alex Salmond
On a point of order, Sir Roger. At various times during this debate, there has been reference to a letter. I was somewhat puzzled because I did not seem to have been sent such a letter. But now, through access to Twitter, it seems I may have found it. What I now have is a letter from the Minister for Europe to various Members on the Conservative Benches—it can be described only as a letter begging for support. I am somewhat disappointed not to have received it, and to have been ruled out of providing such support. If we are debating amendments—this letter specifically gives Government assurances relating to those amendments—should this communications not have been available to all Members, and should it not now been placed immediately in the Library of the House?
The Temporary Chair (Sir Roger Gale)
As the right hon. Gentleman knows, Ministers are responsible for making available their own documentation. It may be a courtesy, but it is not a matter for the Chair.
Mr Kenneth Clarke
I think I am fairly confident in saying that the starting point of this debate is that every Member of the House—from the Prime Minister and Ministers to the acting Leader of the Opposition and shadow Ministers to the most newly elected Back Bencher—agrees that if we are to have a referendum it must be perceived to be fair. The most balanced position possible must be taken vis à vis those who wish to advocate yes or no, for a variety of reasons, so that the public hear the broadest possible range of views and can make a reasonably objective judgment.
I have never known a referendum settle any question. It certainly has not settled questions of Scottish independence, elected mayors, proportional representation or AV, and does not seem to have settled the European question either. However, I think that those who believe that a referendum is a valuable way forward agree with me that we should bend over backwards to make sure that all those who feel strongly either way on this subject are treated as fairly as possible.
Mr Nuttall
I agree with my right hon. and learned Friend to the extent that I have every respect for the British people and am sure they are capable of considering two separate issues at the same time. I do not have a crystal ball, but I suspect that my right hon. and learned Friend is on the other side of the argument from me. The real problem with holding local or Assembly elections on the same day as a referendum is that Members of a political party—
The Temporary Chair (Sir Roger Gale)
Order. The hon. Gentleman’s intervention is becoming almost as long as the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s speech.
Mr Nuttall
The point is that Members of the same political party may well campaign on different sides of the referendum question while at the same time being on the same side for the local elections. That is the key reason we need to have them on separate days.
Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con)
May I say how much we are enjoying my right hon. and learned Friend’s speech? His casual wafting around of various sections, whether they are the right ones or not, reminds me of one of those lovely days when he said that he had not bothered to read the Maastricht treaty. Will he clarify something that seems to be a bit of a caricature? He says that the whole of Government would have to be closed down and that Ministers would not be able to engage in any business at all, but surely that could only possibly be true if the European Union was so involved in every nook and cranny of this country’s affairs that it could not possibly function without those relationships. Is not that the whole point?
The Temporary Chair (Sir Roger Gale)
Order. Before we proceed, in case there was any implied criticism, I have to say that, although the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) might be rambling around the European Union, this is a broad-ranging set of amendments. I have listened to him very carefully and he is, in fact, in order.
Mr Clarke
I hope I am not being too light-hearted, but this has been a long debate. I have already confessed that the issues have not engaged me as passionate issues of great principle to the same extent as they have engaged others. I was genuinely surprised to hear Eurosceptics take off and pronounce that there was a monstrous conspiracy in all the details. I am trying to reassure them that if there was any risk of a conspiracy, it could be laid to one side. I will treat the arguments with every due solemnity.
I am not saying that every Minister in the Department of Energy and Climate Change—although this might apply to them—or the Scotland Office would necessarily find that they could not do anything. It is not like during an election, when they would not be allowed to go into the office or take any decision of any kind, but the proposal could be very wide-embracing indeed. It is all very well for people to dismiss light-heartedly—though perhaps they are not speaking in the same tone as I am—the Prime Minister’s warnings that there would be a serious impact on the conduct of business, but I think that that is what would happen.
To repeat the point I made earlier: strict purdah stems from long before the statute was passed. It stems from the rules for a general election, and they are right. Once we get into the campaigning stage of a general election, the Minister is the Minister only if he or she is required to sign something that has to be signed. When an election comes, the party political Minister is prevented from taking any decisions. Nothing can be changed. The civil service goes into its totally non-political mode because the whole point of that election is to decide which political masters are going to return to the Department, so that eventually we again have a Government who are able to act.
What we are discussing is a referendum being held by a Government. It is part of the Government’s policy to hold the referendum. The Government have been negotiating a deal as part of their policy on reform to supplement the arguments in the referendum. The Government will continue to be the Government for the next three or four years and will have to live with the consequences of the referendum, so what is being argued is that these men and women and the civil servants who support them should all switch off for four weeks, stop having an opinion on these issues and, unlike my hon. Friend the Member for Stone and myself, the day after the election pretend that they now agree with the enlightened view of the electorate and that they are going ahead and taking all the decisions on whatever is now the position.
I am sure there is a balance to be struck. I would deplore it if the Government were to spend taxpayers’ money on sending out ridiculous pamphlets and so on. That would misfire. I expect the Government to be in favour of a yes vote. I will be campaigning for a yes vote. I do not want the Government to squander taxpayers’ money and plainly abusing their position by putting out material that I might not wholly agree with anyway. The electorate would react if it was obvious that the Government were resorting to using the machinery of government for campaigning. But the statute is too severe. I hope we will not all get carried away and that we will allow my right hon. and hon. Friends the chance to come back with a sensible compromise.
Let me move on. I am sure the Whips will be very happy, but I am taking rather longer than I intended. I am attracted by the Opposition amendments, although I am not going to support them, as I shall explain in a moment. The shadow Minister, with unusual naiveté, seems to believe in evidence-based politics. He obviously believes that the more rational information is produced objectively and placed before the public, the more certain one can be that the correct result will be arrived at.
But this is politics. This is the European issue. Nothing of that sort has intruded into the debate on the European Union for the past 30 or 40 years, and it will not do so now. The Government have tried to move in that direction. The Foreign Office carried out the most objective study of the division of powers—the division of competences, in the jargon—[Interruption.] Precisely. I hear colleagues behind me shouting out, “Whitewash!”, by which they mean that the study came to the wrong conclusion, in their opinion. Evidence-based politics was rejected the moment it emerged. It could not find that the balance of competences, as negotiated by successive Ministers of all political persuasions over the previous 40 years, contained anything that was to the disadvantage of the British public.
The reaction was not to try to challenge any of these arguments with any new facts, but to try to bury the document, which most members of the public were never allowed to hear about. I suspect that it has not been picked up—it is pretty voluminous stuff—by very many Members of this House, let alone people outside, but it is a noble aspiration.
I have one serious reservation about what the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden) proposes. He suggests that those pre-eminently independent bodies, the Bank of England and the Office for Budget Responsibility, should be, as it were, enjoined by this Bill to produce those reports, which is quite attractive. I have the highest regard for the Bank of England and the Office for Budget Responsibility. We should all vigorously continue to ensure that their independence is maintained in every possible way, but there is a danger of politicising them. The Bank gives its opinions all the time, as most central Banks do, about the outlook for the economy, the latest statistics and the way things are unfolding. Central bank governors become notorious for talking a kind of obscure, slightly ambiguous mandarin language. That is precisely to try to avoid getting themselves immersed, which the Bank and the OBR would do if they seemed to be leaping into something that is a partisan opinion or appears to be a position of strong partisan support for one question or another.
The Temporary Chair (Sir Roger Gale)
That is not strictly a point of order for the Chair. The Minister knows whether to sit down or not.
Mr Lidington
We will ensure that there is a clear mechanism so that in the four weeks before polling day, the Government will not undertake a range of activities that most would regard as the province of the campaign, such as issuing mailshots, running commercial advertising campaigns and emailing voters in one way or another.
There are various ways in which that might be done. Some colleagues have talked about a code of conduct. The Opposition have tabled a constructive amendment, which we welcome, but there are some technical problems with it, not least how the Government could anticipate what might be published by all public bodies, which is required by the text of amendment 54. As an alternative to a code of conduct, we could include provisions in the Bill that would restrict Government activity to particular named forms of publication or prohibit the Government from taking part in specific forms of communication.
We will not programme the Report stage until the autumn, which provides ample time for Ministers to consult parliamentary colleagues in all parts of the House to understand their concerns and views more closely, and to frame a set of amendments that will command the widest possible consensus in the House on Report. That is probably the best way to ensure that the referendum is conducted on a basis that everybody believes to be fair.
We have always been clear that it is not our intention that the Government should be a lead campaigner in the referendum. It is right that the Committee should seek reassurance from us on that point. We are happy to bring forward the amendments that I have described and, in the meantime, to discuss proposals with hon. Members in all parts of the House. However, I believe that section 125 of the 2000 Act is deficient for these purposes and urge right hon. and hon. Members not to press the amendments that would impose the provisions of that section on the referendum.
The Temporary Chair (Sir Roger Gale)
With this it will be convenient to take the following:
Amendment 9, in schedule 1, page 6, line 6, after second “period”, insert—
“of not less than 16 weeks”.
The purpose of the amendment is to ensure that the referendum period lasts for at least 16 weeks.
Amendment 20, page 6, leave out lines 23 and 24.
Amendment 28, page 6, leave out lines 23 to 31.
Amendment 24, page 6, leave out lines 25 to 31.
Amendment 53, page 6, line 33, at end add—
“(ix) the total number of permitted participants shall be limited to a number specified by the Electoral Commission to ensure broad equality of resources between those campaigning for each of the outcomes of the referendum and those taken into account for the purposes of this provision will be the first persons to give notice under section 106(1) of the 2000 Act.”.
The amendment would require the Electoral Commission to ensure that during the referendum campaign, the total spend of the campaign on either side of the referendum would be broadly equal by limiting the number of participants, taking into account moneys spent by business, government, the European Commission and the campaigns themselves.
Amendment 32, page 6, line 33, at end add—
“( ) Nothing in this Schedule alters the law governing charitable organisations in any part of the United Kingdom to confer an entitlement to participate in a referendum which would not have been possible prior to the coming into force of this Schedule.”.
Amendment 29, page 7, line 5, leave out “any of sub-paragraphs (v) to (viii)” and insert “sub-paragraph (v)”.
Amendment 22, page 7, leave out lines 16 to 19.
Amendment 30, page 7, leave out lines 16 to 23.
Amendment 26, page 7, leave out lines 20 to 23.
Government amendment 14.
Amendment 33, page 12, leave out lines 18 and 19.
Amendment 41, page 12, leave out lines 18 to 25.
Amendment 37, page 12, leave out lines 20 to 25.
Amendment 10, page 12, line 38, at end insert—
“(6) For the purposes of paragraph 6 of Schedule 15 of the 2000 Act a permitted participant must not accept a relevant donation, irrespective of whether or not it meets the requirements of the 2000 Act and this Act, if the donation is funded directly or indirectly in whole or part from moneys, resources or support disbursed or allocated by or at the direction of the European Commission, its agencies or any related European institution to the donor or via other parties to the donor.”.
The purpose of the amendment is to ensure that no funds or support provided directly or indirectly by European Union bodies have a bearing on the outcome of the referendum.
Amendment 45, page 12, line 38, at end add—
“( ) Nothing in this Schedule alters the law governing charitable organisations in any part of the United Kingdom to confer an entitlement to make a donation during a referendum which would not have been permissible prior to the coming into force of this Schedule.”.
Amendment 42, page 13, line 6, leave out “any of the paragraphs (c) to (f)” and insert “paragraph (c)”.
Amendment 43, page 13, line 10, leave out “any of the paragraphs (c) to (f)” and insert “paragraph (c)”.
Amendment 36, page 13, leave out lines 12 to 16.
Amendment 44, page 13, leave out lines 12 to 22.
Amendment 40, page 13, leave out lines 17 to 20.
Government amendment 15.
That schedule 1 be the First schedule to the Bill.
That schedule 2 be the Second schedule to the Bill.
That schedule 3 be the Third schedule to the Bill.
Mr McFadden
On a point of order, Sir Roger. I seek your guidance. The Committee has just agreed to Government amendment 55, which states that the referendum will not take place on the same day as elections in May of next year, but other amendments that we did not get the chance to discuss fully this afternoon also deal with the date of the referendum, including amendment 3, which is in my name and those of my right hon. and hon. Friends. Can you give the Committee any guidance on whether there will be time to debate those further amendments on Thursday?
The Temporary Chair (Sir Roger Gale)
If the right hon. Gentleman is referring to amendments 3 and 7—I think he is—it will be a matter for the Chairman of Ways and Means to consider them for debate on Thursday. I think the answer to the right hon. Gentleman’s question is yes, there is the opportunity, or there is likely to be the opportunity, for debate.
Alex Salmond
Further to that point of order, Sir Roger. Does the same apply to amendment 17, which is also in that category? We would not want to lose any opportunity to debate further the extent of the Government’s humiliating climbdown and acceptance that they should show courtesy to the people of Scotland.
The Temporary Chair
The answer to the right hon. Gentleman’s question is no, because that was not debated under the group.
The Temporary Chair
Amendment 11 comes later in the proceedings. Whether or not that is the subject of a Division will be a matter for whoever is in the Chair later in the day. My expectation is that there will be a Division, but that is a matter for the Chairman at the time.
Sir William Cash
My view about the clause is that we have managed to have a wide-ranging debate. In the interests of brevity, I do not think much needs to be said on the subject. We really ought to get on to other matters, including the question of European Union financing. I have no further comments to make on clause stand part.
The Temporary Chair
Order. I am at the disposal of the Committee and looking for hon. Members to speak, but there appears to be no one but Sir Edward Leigh.
Sir Edward Leigh
Is it appropriate that I speak to my amendment 53, Sir Roger?
Sir Edward Leigh
Amendment 53 would state that
“the total number of permitted participants shall be limited to a number specified by the Electoral Commission to ensure broad equality of resources between those campaigning for each of the outcomes of the referendum”.
I refer the Committee to the Member’s explanatory statement, which states:
“The amendment would require the Electoral Commission to ensure that during the referendum campaign, the total spend of the campaign”—[Interruption.]
The Temporary Chair
Order. Will Members leaving the Chamber please do so quietly? There are people who wish to hear the debate.
Sir Edward Leigh
I was just referring to the explanatory statement. It is very helpful that the Public Bill Office now publishes explanatory statements, as it makes it much easier for us to understand amendments.
Alex Salmond
As I understand it, and I am open to correction from Sir Roger, the sinner may get a chance to repent even before that. Amendment 11 has still to be called in our proceedings, so the sinner may get a chance to repent on Report, at the eleventh hour or at 7 o’clock this evening. Let us all hope that the sinner does repent whenever they choose to.
The Temporary Chair (Sir Roger Gale)
As I am being quoted, may I just say to the right hon. Gentleman that I shall not be taking repentance at that time?
Alex Salmond
I wish to make it absolutely clear for the record that the only sinners to which we are referring are those who were previously located on the Labour Front Bench. I am not talking about anyone else in the House.
There is a serious point. Whatever side of this referendum campaign we want to adopt, and if we are all agreed that it is important that everyone sees the referendum as fair and square, the rules should be drawn up in such a way to give a proper contest—a square goal, as some of my Glaswegian colleagues might say. If there is to be a genuine and fair contest, it does require us, when opportunities present themselves to defeat the Government, as they so rarely do, to ensure that those opportunities are taken. I appeal to the Labour Front Bench Members—perhaps they will communicate this to their colleagues—to see that that opportunity still beckons to ensure that that can happen later in our proceedings.
The Government’s position across a range of matters seems to be somewhat disorganised. I know that there was a great anxiety on the part of Government to rush forward with this Bill immediately after the general election. Perhaps they wanted to catch out the Labour party, which was still in a state of leadership limbo. A number of things already in our proceedings tell us that insufficient thought has gone into the Government’s position. There was that extraordinary climbdown, or cave-in, on Government amendment 55. I welcome the fact that respect has belatedly been shown to the nations of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, but it does not have the smack of a Government that have considered their point of view. Across a range of matters, particularly with regard to purdah, there is a sign that the Government have not sufficiently thought through their position.
Earlier, I was told that it is in order for the Minister for Europe to circulate a letter, only to his colleagues, that says what might happen on Report if people do not press their amendments inconveniently. I see that the experienced hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash), who spoke from a sedentary position—we all welcome him back to his place—is smiling. He has been on the receiving end of many such letters over the years—probably more than the rest of us put together. I do think that it is somewhat remiss of the Government to distribute information only to those on the Conservative Benches.
Earlier, I was struck by the actions of the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke). He had not received the communication, but within seconds of it being passed to him, decided that he was in favour of it. That was a remarkable rush to judgment, I would say, both in terms of the climbdown we have seen on the date of the referendum and of the inadequate thought that has been given to this hasty revocation of the purdah considerations.