European Union (Referendum) Bill

Debate between Thomas Docherty and Kelvin Hopkins

Friday 17th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)]

I will be suitably brief, because I know that many colleagues wish to speak in this important debate. I congratulate the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) on introducing the Bill. I got to know him quite well when he was a Minister in the Department for Communities and Local Government and always found him to be a thoughtful and considerate fellow. I thought that he set out his arguments extremely well this morning, but I am afraid that I disagree with him on three points. I will touch on them briefly.

First, on the need for the Bill and, more importantly, for the referendum, if we listen carefully to the party on the Government Benches, and it is now a party—I think that all the Lib Dems are in Rochester and Strood trying to hold on to their deposit in the by-election—we hear that it somehow takes no responsibility for the changing nature of the European Union over the past 40 years. Let us be clear that the two Prime Ministers who transferred more powers than any other from the United Kingdom to Brussels were Lady Thatcher and John Major. Government Members act as if they had no role at all in that, and that somehow there is a need today that was not there 20 years ago. I think that with the exception of the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, none of the Conservatives who were Members of Parliament in the early ’90s argued against the Maastricht changes. None of them thinks that Lady Thatcher was wrong to have ceded so much power to our European neighbours.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

My hon. Friend is reminding the Conservatives that they did indeed commit many sins in relation to our membership of the European Union, not least of which was joining the exchange rate mechanism, which proved to be an economic disaster. Many of them now regret that because it led to Labour’s victory in 1997.

[Thomas Docherty]

I am most grateful to my hon. Friend. He has reminded us of the key role that the current Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer were playing in the early ’90s in forming the economic policies of John Major and Lord Lamont which led us so disastrously to Black Wednesday. I am not sure that they have had a chance to apologise for the mistakes that they made.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I have to remind my hon. Friend that the Labour leadership at that time also supported the ERM strategy, which I did not.

--- Later in debate ---

[Thomas Docherty]

I know that one or two of them did come up for a few days to help out.

Scotland went on “pause” for three years. Its economy suffered because we were having a referendum. The poison and the nastiness in that debate was something I had never previously encountered in my 20 years of political activism. Business and industry deferred investment decisions because of the uncertainty that having a referendum was going to create. It is a fantasy to think that if we decide now that we are going to have a referendum in three years’ time, we will not see companies such as Nissan and those cited by my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) putting off investment decisions. It will cause nothing but uncertainty, put the fragile recovery at risk and lead to a three-year obsession with the single issue of Europe.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

rose—

[Thomas Docherty]

I have already given way twice to my hon. Friend, who has spoken at some length. I want to make some progress because other Members want to get in.

Another problem with the timetable is that it assumes that the Prime Minister will be able to renegotiate by the end of 2017. My right hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Mr Alexander) spoke eloquently about the Prime Minister’s track record of not being the strongest at winning friends and influencing people, not just in his own party, but in 27 countries. [Interruption.] I appreciate that it is difficult for the hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke) to stand up sometimes, but he should just get up and say it rather than sledge from a sedentary position. He just wants to chunter away and that is fine.

The Prime Minister has failed repeatedly to win in Europe. Do we really think that the other 27 nations are going to allow the United Kingdom unilaterally to have a series of opt-outs from Europe?

Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Debate between Thomas Docherty and Kelvin Hopkins

Tuesday 18th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Thomas Docherty]

I do not like to leave the House in suspense, but on this one occasion hon. Members will have to wait and see how many of our amendments the Government are prepared to accept. Clearly, if the Minister accepts all the considered amendments that we have offered, we would be more than happy to give strong consideration to supporting Third Reading. I look forward to the Minister’s reply shortly.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

My hon. Friend is being very generous to the Government. Even if they accepted the amendments, I would be inclined to vote against Third Reading.

[Thomas Docherty]

The Minister is a thoroughly reasonable individual and I am sure he will not hold that statement against the rest of Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition when he considers accepting our amendments.

As has been outlined previously—it would be inappropriate for me to go into great detail—we do not support the principle of a five-year term, for one practical reason that has not been touched on before, which is that it would take us into a clash with the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and the Northern Ireland elections that are scheduled for 2015.

As this is the first opportunity that the Minister has had to address the House on the matter since our Committee stage last year, I hope that he will be able to provide us with an update on the Government’s plans for providing flexibility to the devolved Administrations to vary the dates of their elections. That is an extremely personal matter, as I shall explain. Perhaps he can tell the House what progress has been made in his consultation with the devolved Administrations on how any such alteration of the date of their elections would be achieved.

That is directly relevant to the issue under discussion because of the different number of days of Prorogation. As my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda outlined, we have 25 days for the Scottish Parliament, the Northern Ireland Assembly, the National Assembly for Wales and local elections, and just 17 days for this place. Let me give a simple local example to show why new clause 4 and others are so important to the date.

The differing number of days will cause great confusion for parties and for the electorate in the 2015 election cycle. Part of my constituency is the Dunfermline East Scottish Parliament seat. We have an MSP called Helen Eadie. Under the current rules—we still do not have firm proposals from the Government to alter the date—some two and a half weeks from polling day it would be legitimate for the Labour party, for example, to send out leaflets saying, “Vote Helen Eadie for your Member of the Scottish Parliament and vote Thomas Docherty for Member of Parliament.” That is an unsatisfactory situation, and it is the reason why my hon. Friend and I are hoping to persuade the Minister tonight that he should change the length of Prorogation to 25 days to give us consistency across the whole of the United Kingdom.

There is also the question of how campaign finance will work. Members are painfully aware of the importance of ensuring that money is correctly apportioned to the long campaign, as it is commonly known, as opposed to the short campaign. Joint elections could give rise to difficult legal and technical disputes, as we saw in the case of the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, the right hon. Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale (David Mundell), if sums of money are inadvertently misallocated. We therefore hope that the Government will accept our reasonable amendment.