Referendum (Hansard, 6 November 1974)

§ 37. Miss Fookes
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will outline what part he intends to play in the preparations for the referendum on Great Britain's continued membership of the EEC.

§ Mr. Hattersley
My right hon. Friend will be participating in the Government's consideration of how we should implement our undertaking to consult the British people.

§ Miss Fookes
Will the Minister of State explain why the Government seem so reluctant and coy about giving any practical details as to how this consultation is to be brought about?

§ Mr. Hattersley
This is because the Government are reluctant to make statements which cannot be substantiated with fact and detail afterwards. The Government are determined to take a sensible and balanced view about how best the British people's will should be determined, and when what seems to be in the 1066 interests of the British people has been decided the details of that consultation will be announced.

§ Mr. Whitehead
Does my hon. Friend accept that many of us on the Government side believe that when the referendum is held the responsibility for the questions which are to be put before the British people rests with the British Government who have conducted the negotiations, and with no other body?

Hattersley
I leave aside the assumption my hon. Friend makes, that it will be a referendum rather than any other form of consultation. Clearly, when the time comes the Government have obligations in these matters and the Government will not try to escape from those obligations. They have an obligation to negotiate what is best for the British people. They will have to make their view known on what is best for the British people.

§ Mr. Dykes
Will not the Minister of State develop this a little further and give the House the benefit of his views on the curious dichotomy and irony of a situation in which some members of his party who are not anxious to see us remain in the EEC are always rabbiting on about the sovereignty of this Parliament and yet are prepared to entertain the idea of a referendum, which would be a "phoney" form of consultation?

§ Mr. Hattersley
Even allowing for my own views on the subject—I fear that they have been made transparently clear during the last quarter of an hour—I do not see any automatic dichotomy beween preserving the proper rôle of this Parliament and consulting the British people on a matter of such constitutional importance. The British people are anxious that they should play a direct part in this decision and the Government are determined that they should do just that.