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Mr. Dismore: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. I admit that that is one of the reports that I have not read; perhaps my hon. Friend will lend me his copy afterwards so that I may read up on what the Home Affairs Committee said. There is much in what my hon. Friend says; in fact, that would have been my next point.
One of my main anxieties about the Bill is the fact that the hon. Member for Blaby regards the Bill as a referendum Bill, and therefore he proposes a referendum
commission, which might, in due course, be subsumed into an elections commission. My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, West (Mr. Thomas) makes an extremely important point when he says that we risk a plethora of different bodies advancing a variety of ideas and suggestions, some of which may be mutually contradictory.
Later, if there is time, I hope to point out some of the contradictions that exist between, for example, the Jenkins report and the Neill report on one or two of those important issues. In that context, I believe that it is extremely important that one body oversees all these issues--a Neill committee recommendation that the hon. Gentleman does not seem to have taken into account when drafting the Bill.
Mr. Cash:
Surely the Government would understand that there is a distinction between a referendum and an election. I strongly support the proposal made by my hon. Friend the Member for Blaby (Mr. Robathan), irrespective of the Neill committee report, for precisely that reason. There are rules relating to broadcasting and to expenditure which are, and should be, specifically geared to the question of the issues that arise in a referendum, which is quite different from an election. The electorate vote in both elections and referendums, but in one case one is asking for support for a Government, and in the other for support for a yes or a no to a question.
Mr. Dismore:
The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting intervention, but I am not sure that the distinction that he draws is as clear cut as he suggests. In the end, many of the issues that a referendum commission would address--precisely the points that the hon. Gentleman raises about party funding or campaign funding--need to be looked at in the round. It would be bizarre if, for example, the ceiling on funding for a referendum campaign was totally out of kilter with the ceiling on party election funding for a general or local election. Those issues need to be considered comprehensively, in the round, as the Neill committee recommended.
Sir Michael Spicer:
It was the Neill committee that drew the distinction between endorsement of policy and consultation about policy, which is what a referendum is all about. That was a fundamental point within the Neill committee, and much flows from that.
Mr. Dismore:
I do not believe that that greatly affects my argument. I believe that a single body should oversee all the aspects of involving the electorate in the decision-making process, whether it be through elections or referendums, to ensure that we have a comprehensive way of supervising those things that knits together and does not produce contradictory and conflicting ideas.
Mr. Linton:
Does my hon. Friend agree with the evidence that the Labour party submitted to the Neill committee--but that, sadly, does not appear in its report and is not incorporated into the Bill--that there should be a limit of £5 million on what a party spends in a referendum campaign, and of £500,000 on what any outside organisation spends, to prevent the huge spending that has been mentioned? At one stage, Paul Sykes said that he might give £20 million to the no side in a
Mr. Dismore:
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. I know that he has done a great deal of work on all the issues relating to elections and referendums. He makes a valid point and I hope to return to it. Whatever emerges from the decision-making process, there must be a level playing field and, inevitably, that must include caps on spending during an electoral or referendum campaign.
In that context, we need to consider the issue of donations made by individuals to campaigns, to ensure that those are properly supervised and above board. That is another issue that the Bill does not address, and to which I hope to return shortly.
I shall now consider some of the detail of the Bill. My first concern is that, although the Bill is called the Referendums Bill, nowhere in it do we find a definition of "referendum". There could be a very grey area about whether something was a referendum.
Perhaps I may start my development of this argument by questioning the hon. Member for Blaby about whether a ballot on the future of an individual grammar school would be a referendum in the context of the Bill. As I read the Bill, I believe that a grammar school ballot would fall within the definition, because that ballot would be held under an enactment, which is the criterion that the hon. Gentleman sets for control of the referendum by his proposed referendum commission.
Mr. Robathan:
I have been listening to the hon. Gentleman's wise and wonderful words with great interest for the past 13 minutes. I note, though, that his interest in referendums must be quite new, as he has only recently realised what a referendum means. I trust that he has consulted a dictionary. Could it possibly be that he has been asked--I should like him to state categorically whether this is the case--by a member of the Government to make as long and boring a speech as possible? If he is one of those supine and feeble members of Government parties who do such things, may I assure him, from my greater experience in the House, that it never leads to advancement and always elicits the scorn of his fellows?
Mr. Dismore:
I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman finds my speech boring. The interventions that I have had from both sides of the House may show that it is not as boring as he says. Perhaps I may return the compliment and say that I found his recitation a little turgid.
The hon. Gentleman questions whether I know what a referendum is. I actually asked that question of him. Perhaps it is my legal training, but, as a lawyer, if I were to take a case--which of course I would not, because I am not taking cases while a Member of Parliament--I might well be asked to construe the Bill. I was going to give one or two examples later of how the legal profession might make a large amount of money out of the Bill. That might be done by taking advantage of the lack of a definition of "referendum".
When the hon. Gentleman intervened, I was giving the example of grammar school ballots. I believe that, as the Bill stands, a referendum commission would look at grammar school ballots, because those ballots are
conducted under the School Standards and Framework Act 1998 and the Education (Grammar School Ballots) Regulations 1998. The Library brief says that categorically.
Judy Mallaber:
I am slightly surprised, as a non-lawyer, that my hon. Friend is suggesting that the Bill might apply to referendums on the future of grammar schools--an issue in which I am greatly interested. Will he give me some advice as a lawyer? I do not like to be rude about lawyers, but they are all able to go on at inordinate length about the most nit-picking matters. I believe that it comes naturally to them; they never need to be asked to do so.
Can my hon. Friend give me guidance on clause 2(1)? It appears to me that, when the Bill says that the referendum would apply to
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. The hon. Lady must sit down when I am speaking. The hon. Lady's interventions are getting longer and longer. I think that she has said enough in this intervention.
Mr. Dismore:
I think that I have the thrust of my hon. Friend's point.
It being Eleven o'clock, Mr. Deputy Speaker interrupted the proceedings, pursuant to Standing Order No. 11 (Friday Sittings).
Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney, North and Stoke Newington)
(by private notice): To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment if he will make a statement on the proposed privatisation of the education directorate in Hackney.
The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Ms Patricia Hewitt):
The Secretary of State is not proposing to privatise the education directorate in Hackney. He has today written to the leaders of the three political parties in Hackney to say that, having considered the findings of the Office for Standards in Education inspection report on Hackney local education authority, which is published today, he is of the opinion that the LEA is failing to perform a number of functions to an adequate standard, and that he is minded to direct the director of education of Hackney LEA to contract out several functions. Contractors could include public sector or private sector bodies or consortiums. The LEA has been given until 13 April to comment on the proposal. We are determined to ensure that every child in Hackney receives a good education. That is why the Secretary of State is taking this course of action.
"any bill which provides for the holding of a referendum",
it means that it would apply only to a referendum campaign in respect of that referendum--that is, that referendum would have to have been specifically mentioned in the Bill and therefore, on my reading of it--
11 am
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