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Mr. Hayes: The Deepings. My constituency is right next door to the Minister's.
Mr. Tipping: I know where the constituency is located--I often campaign down that way--and it is not quite next door to my constituency. Nevertheless, the hon. Gentleman asked about the position on companies. There will be a cap--£500,000--on the sums that companies can contribute.
As I said at the beginning of a this debate, partly in reply to the hon. Member for Tatton (Mr. Bell), those of us who are in politics realise the excitement and passions that certain issues can arouse. We also certainly know that, in any referendum campaign, the two opposing sides will not be equally armed. The sides will look to different sources for money, and anyone who thinks that, in any issue, both sides could raise equal sums is living in cloud cuckoo land.
The Bill tackles that situation by placing caps on the sums that individuals, companies and parties can spend. The Bill will not create a level playing field, but it will at least keep spending under control.
Mr. Shepherd:
The Irish Republic examined that problem, and I should imagine that the Home Office has spent much time examining that experience. The Irish Republic seeks equality of funding in national referendum campaigns, and its policy has had an impact on the outturn of a series of referendums on the European Union. In the most recent referendum, the policy achieved a much more equal balance in the vote turned out.
The point of my intervention is to support my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire (Sir M. Spicer). This is a framework Bill which is trying to create the ground rules to ensure fairness. It seems not unreasonable, therefore, to expect that some of the contentions that my hon. Friend mentioned should be dealt with in the framework. Specific matters could be identified and dealt with in subsequent legislation introduced by the Government--who, after all, are the initiating force in a referendum. They initiate a referendum only because they themselves have a view on the matter. The rules--in the framework Bill--should work to ensure fairness.
Mr. Tipping:
The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point. I thought that he was going to try to persuade me that different parties should have the same sums to spend on referendums.
Mr. Shepherd:
They should have an equal sum.
Mr. Tipping:
I have extracted the hon. Gentleman's view. However, I do not think that that objective is practically achievable. He asked whether European and international comparisons have been made: they have been made. He also pursued me on whether the Bill is template and framework legislation: it is.
One important aspect of the Bill--we shall have an opportunity to discuss it in a later debate--is the provision, in clauses 4 and 5, for the Electoral Commission to review both the legislation's operation and how referendums are working.
It has been acknowledged on both sides of the Committee that we are addressing new and difficult issues. Nevertheless--to reply to the point made by the hon. Member for West Worcestershire--the way to tackle those issues is to acknowledge that this is a template and framework Bill and to consider it in the light of experience. The Electoral Commission, for example, will have to respond after each election by producing a report. That issue is being addressed.
The time for discussion of Europe and funding from Europe, a subject that is clearly taxing hon. Members, is when--at some point in the future, or never, if some people have their way--the House considers a referendum Bill on that matter.
I hope that the Committee will agree to clause 98 standing part of the Bill.
Mr. Grieve:
I hope that the Minister will accept, from the long time that we have had discussing the Bill upstairs in Committee, that the Opposition have tried to take a non-partisan and constructive approach to the legislation. However, in his last remarks, the Minister sounded like Mr. Micawber, waiting for something to turn up in the future, rather than looking for something to solve his problem. As my hon. Friends the Members for West Worcestershire (Sir M. Spicer) and for Aldridge- Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) said, this is supposed to be a framework Bill. Yet, everything that I have heard in the debate suggests that the framework is flawed.
To clear up some anomalies--the Minister will correct me if I have it wrong--foreign organisations will be able to register under clause 98, and there is nothing to stop them from doing so. If they do so as individual organisations and companies, they will be able to spend
£500,000 in participating in a referendum campaign. That is notwithstanding the fact that Lord Neill, at paragraph 12.51 of his report, says that he considers that the arguments on the funding of political parties apply equally
The Minister knows that we have approved of other parts of the Bill, but the whole of this part on referendums is badly flawed.
Mr. Shepherd:
The Minister said that the commission could review the arrangements, but that would be a post mortem. The critical events would already have happened. The commission would have no status in what could be an enormously important referendum.
Mr. Grieve:
I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. We cannot support the clause and we intend to divide the House on it. It is the benchmark of a series of clauses that set up an edifice that is supposed to reflect Lord Neill's recommendations. Due to circumstances outside the Government's control--European law and the European convention on human rights--it is proving impossible to do that. This whole part of the Bill needs to be taken back to the drawing board. We should seriously consider dispensing with it until we have got it right.
Question put, That the clause stand part of the Bill:--
"to the funding of referendum campaigns, especially since these are likely to be concerned with major constitutional questions. We believe, therefore, that the same rules about 'permissible sources' that we recommend should apply to political parties and others in connection with foreign donations should also apply to individuals and organisations, including political parties, taking part in referendum campaigns."
The Minister has had to accept that that cannot happen. The Bill goes further, because even foreign individuals and organisations who do not register as permitted organisations can spend £10,000 each. If an external organisation were divided into its constituent members, it could spend hundreds of thousands, if not millions of pounds in a referendum campaign. I am not concerned specifically about a referendum on the single currency. That could apply to any referendum.
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