REFERENDUM PERIOD (Hansard, 16 February 2000)

§ Mr. Dominic Grieve (Beaconsfield)
I do not want to take up the Committee's time, but we should widen the discussion a little to look at what clauses 96 and 97 contain, in the absence of amendment No. 46 which we discussed earlier. Clause 97 is of particular concern.
As the Committee will be aware, the whole purpose of the legislation is to establish a set of ground rules. It provides for fairness between the respective parties participating in a referendum campaign. As some of the clauses concern the provision of funding to one side or another, fairness is essential—above all, fairness for a campaign to get off the ground to put its case.
Clause 97 is linked to clause 96. There are two provisions. Clause 96 provides for a period not exceeding six months from when the draft of an order comes in to the date of a poll, but, crucially, clause 97 provides that the date so fixed shall not be earlier than 28 days after the end of the period in which the various parties participating in the campaign have been identified. If it were taken to its absolute conclusion, the 28-day period would be very short.
After designation, I would find it hard to imagine getting a national campaign off the ground with funds in only 28 days. I think that the Minister would agree that that is the absolute minimum period in which a referendum campaign could properly take place and be described as fair, yet clause 97 will not apply to a referendum where the date of the poll is specified in the Act.
The explanatory notes put it in a way that the Minister might say is a little disingenuous: Nonetheless, the expectation in such cases will similarly be that there will be at least 28 days for campaigning following the designation of campaign organisations. That fills me with some concern. We are enacting complex legislation, some issues in which have taken up much time upstairs in Committee and which we have tried as best we can to speed through, yet we are left with a clause—clause 97—that the Minister would have to agree could be circumvented at will by a Government who wished to do so. All they would have to do would be to designate in the Act that the period concerned was reduced to 10 days, five days or four days. What is the purpose of the Bill if it is not to set a fair framework? Yet, as things stand, what I have outlined could easily happen: it will not matter how much funding is provided to the campaign that the Government do not like because, in reality, the campaign will never have an opportunity to get off the ground.
I should therefore be grateful if the Minister could comment on that issue as we debate the two clauses, but particularly clause 97. It might also give him pause for thought in relation to amendment No. 46, to which my hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Sir P. Cormack) spoke earlier and which was dismissed 965 rather out of hand by the Minister as being "unnecessary". The Minister said that those are political decisions—of course they are political decisions—but the whole purpose of the legislation is to remove party politics from, and introduce a note of fairness into, proceedings.

§ Sir Michael Spicer (West Worcestershire)
I am listening very carefully to my hon. Friend's comments. I wonder whether his interpretation of the Bill is such that he believes that the 28-day period specified in clause 97 is relevant also to the powers that the Government would have to intervene and to make their case? Is it part of the quarantine period that the Government would have applied in communicating their own point of view? If so, such a period is not only very short, but highly relevant.

§ Mr. Grieve
My hon. Friend has a good point. The clauses are complex, but the Minister may care to enlighten us. Certainly there is a whole series of mechanisms of interlinked timings. Part of that is the quarantine for the Government, which would run up to the time of the referendum. I would assume, therefore, that that is the time in which the umbrella organisations are up and running and the Government have no part in the proceedings. If I am wrong about that, the Minister will enlighten me.
The point I was making—my hon. Friend has rightly just added another element to it—is that, if in fact we are leaving open the opportunity for the House or a Government using their majority to specify in an Act a shorter period, one might well ask why on earth we are being bothered with passing this complicated legislation with all these rules. Without so much as altering this Bill or having a debate on whether its provisions should be changed, it would be possible for a Government who wished to do so completely to circumvent the purpose that the legislation is designed to achieve. That is a matter of concern.
Why bother to have the Electoral Commission's input into referendums if the Government could, with a short wave of the hand, simply introduce a referendum Bill stating that these clauses will not in reality have effect?

§ Mr. Mike O'Brien
We are considering clauses 96 and 97. In clause 96, we are ensuring that we establish a basis for subsequent clauses, in part VII, such as those providing for the designation of umbrella groups and for expenditure restrictions. Those later clauses lean heavily on the concept of there being a defined referendum period in which the provisions will apply.
The purpose of clause 96 is to establish how the referendum period is to be calculated. The main provision is in subsection (4) and applies to the great majority of cases in which the date of a referendum poll is specified in a Bill. It is an important point. Parliament will decide the date of the great majority of referendums. Therefore, the length of time for a campaign will be a matter for political discussion in this place.
If a Government were to seek to introduce a Bill attempting unfairly to constrain the period for the public to consider a debate, the public would make a judgment 966 on the integrity and proper behaviour of that Government. Anyone who sought to manipulate the electorate in quite that way would undoubtedly be judged by the electorate.

§ Mr. Grieve
Is it not the purpose of this legislation to impose a little fetter on the Government's ability to do that, or have I completely misunderstood why I have spent the past four weeks upstairs in Committee?

§ Mr. O'Brien
The hon. Gentleman knows well—he is a lawyer; he knows perfectly well—that the Bill cannot bind a future Parliament or prevent another Bill from being introduced that makes entirely different provision. He also knows that any Government who introduce legislation on a referendum will in all probability be raising a highly politically charged issue, and that the electorate will be very well briefed on the way in which the Government are handling the matter. If it is clear that a Government are seeking to fix the referendum—in other words to fix the voters—the electorate will not be terribly pleased. Any Government would be well aware of that.
Any future Bill providing for a referendum could override this Bill. However, we believe that a minimum campaigning period should be 28 days. General election campaigns can be of a similar length. In the past—although not in 1997—Prime Ministers have often concluded that 28 days is highly adequate for the electorate to decide which way they want to vote in a general election. I suspect that that view has not escaped the minds of Conservative Prime Ministers in the past couple of decades.

§ Sir Patrick Cormack
The hon. Gentleman puts his case with disarming charm, but he knows that when a Government have a huge majority, as his Government currently enjoy, they can get away with whatever they want. We do not have a written constitution providing for qualified majority voting and a two-thirds vote in Parliament before a constitutional issue can be decided. If the Government decide that they are going to do something and they have a majority such as the present Government's, they can do it. That is why we are anxious for amendment No. 46, which we shall shortly press to a Division, to be inserted in the Bill and why we take the line that we do on these clauses.

§ Mr. O'Brien
That brings me back to the first point that I made in reply to the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr. Stunell). I disagreed with his cynical view about politicians and suggested that it was arguable that the history of our unwritten constitution was one of abstinence from the abuse of power by various Governments, taking cognisance of the fact that they are answerable to the electorate who will form a view about how they behave. They have to behave reasonably and deal with the electorate in a way that commands broad support. Every Member of Parliament is aware that a Government's majority—and their seat—can be taken away by the electorate. The majority in the Commons may be big or small, but even with a majority of one, a Government have power if they can carry the House. The size of a majority is not the issue. The issue is whether a Government can command support. Every Member of Parliament has to deal with their constituents and will be aware of the how the public will view the Government if the Government seek to abuse their power.
967 One can hold all sorts of paranoid views about any Government, but Governments have to manage the political debate in a way that commands support in the country, as we seek to do. No doubt, in their own way, previous Governments sought to do the same, however well they have managed it. No Parliament can bind another. Some of the concerns expressed by Opposition Members are not of the real world.

§ Mr. Stunell
The Minister has missed the central point of the argument. Politics in this country is comparatively free of the abuses seen in some other democracies—and certainly in non-democracies—not because we have a better class of politician, but because we have a strong framework of regulation. The point of the Bill is to ensure that we have a strong framework for referendums, which are a new constitutional development. We are good because we are made good, not because we are good by intention. I hope that the Minister understands that that is how the system works. It is important to get these rules and regulations right, so that in 10 or 15 years we can still say the same thing.

§ Mr. O'Brien
I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman has not quite understood the nature of the debate between the two Front-Bench spokesmen about whether everything has to be in the Bill so that it can become the basis of all future referendums. The reality is that Parliament makes laws. We do not simply have a system of regulations; we have a Parliament that is answerable to the electorate and a Government who have to respond to the electorate and are ultimately dependent on the electorate for their future.

§ Mr. Richard Shepherd (Aldridge-Brownhills)
Will the Minister give way?

§ Mr. O'Brien
I shall give way when I have finished this point.
Conservative Members have suggested that the Bill must somehow cover everything. That is not necessary. We have to ensure that the Bill provides a basis, a template or a foundation for future referendum campaigns so that, broadly speaking, we know how they should be conducted. The detail will be decided by the House in the normal way—by the passing of a Bill. The broad-based political debate will take place then. That is why the concerns that have been raised about clauses 96 and 97 are unfounded.
Most of the arguments were based on the idea that a referendum campaign will last for 28 days. As I have said, 28 days is not a short time for a general election campaign. The Bill envisages that, at least in normal circumstances, there should be at least a further 14 days for preparing the various umbrella groups that might be needed. As there will probably be a fixed date, there will be months of lead-in time to any referendum.
Referendums do not appear from nowhere. Many of them have gestations of many years. Indeed, it is arguable that we are now into a long gestation period in respect of deciding whether to join the single currency. Almost invariably, there is a long time to consider such issues.
968 The hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) asked me to give way.

§ Mr. Shepherd
I would rather make my own speech.

§ Sir Michael Spicer
rose—

§ Mr. O'Brien
Then I shall give way to the hon. Member for West Worcestershire (Sir M. Spicer).

§ Sir Michael Spicer
Will the Minister explain the Government quarantine period? Are the 28 days the period during which the Government may not interfere, get involved financially or proselytise? Does he envisage a further period, or will he say that that is a matter for a future Bill, in which case what is the point of this one?

§ Mr. O'Brien
The quarantine period is covered later in the Bill, when we shall debate whether the Government could use their influence over civil servants. I must be careful what I say as I am conscious that you will rule us out of order, Mr. Martin, if we discuss a clause that we have not reached. We shall have the opportunity to debate the quarantine period, but our view is that it should be the same as it is during a general election campaign. It has never been a matter of great controversy in the past and I suspect that it need not be in future.
We believe that clauses 96 and 97 provide a framework. They do no more than that, and issues relating to the conduct of future referendums will be dealt with at the time by legislation that will determine the detail of those referendums.

§ Mr. Shepherd
The Minister is quite right to say that Governments come and go and that the British public can take a view on whether they wish to continue with an Administration. The 28 days may be appropriate for that. However, the Minister will also be perfectly well aware that referendums are an attempt at a permanent settlement, and are therefore different in character from general elections. I cite that fact that because my party—that is why I support it so vigorously—is concerned about the position of the pound.
In the treaty that will be put to the British people—if the Government fulfil their pledge and the conditions are met—it is intended that the judgment taken by the British electorate should be irrevocable and for all time. "Irrevocable" and "irreversible" are the actual words of the treaty. In a general election, the British people can say whether they wish to continue to be governed by new Labour, but after a referendum the terms are set in concrete. The point that my Front-Bench colleagues have made is valid, and the Minister should reflect on his counter-argument that a referendum campaign is equivalent to a general election campaign, because of the nature of the referendum decision. That is why I support my right hon. and hon. Friends on the issue.