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18 Dec 2002 : Column 967—continued

10.45 pm

Mr. Swayne: I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman is aware that there is a need for a maximum length for the campaign. Has he not noticed that people are already campaigning? Indeed, the whole process of taking soundings is, in itself, a surreptitious campaign. [Interruption.] I am glad to see that there is agreement. The Minister was involving the peers in that, at least from a sedentary position, in the debate on the previous amendment. Bishops—bishops, I ask you—have been

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campaigning for this nonsense for months with absolutely no constraint whatsoever. Back to their vestries with them.

Mr. Davey: Well, bless my soul. One felt like saying Xtally ho" to that intervention.

Matthew Green rose—

Mr. Davey: I do not want to detain the House much longer on this relatively minor matter, but my hon. Friend wants to make a very important point, so I will let him intervene.

Matthew Green: Does my hon. Friend agree that a campaign of reasonable length, and not a very short one, will increase the chances of a reasonable turnout in the referendum, which we would all like to see? There will be time to get the messages across, and that may encourage turnout.

Mr. Davey: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. A reasonable campaign would certainly help with turnout, and the Government would like a good turnout. They are taking measures in this Bill and elsewhere to encourage people to participate democratically. I hope that the Under-Secretary is listening not only to his Whip but to the power of this argument, and that he will accept amendment No. 27 or, if not, return with his own amendment on Report.

Mr. Leslie: This is an interesting debate, but I am conscious of the hour, so I shall try to keep my remarks brief.

Clause 4 is needed because the 2000 Act does not set a technical referendum period, but leaves it to be set by the provisions of another Act; hence it appears in the Bill. The Conservative amendment would require the Secretary of State to take account of advice from the Electoral Commission before making the order setting the referendum period. Although the 2000 Act does not explicitly set out how a referendum period is to be determined, it sets a timetable for designating assistance to the official yes and no campaigns. It also sets out arrangements for the date of the poll. Taken together, those periods in effect give a standard referendum period of 10 weeks, so in general our intention would be to set that as the referendum period.

Mr. Edward Davey: I am rather concerned that suddenly the Government have turned volte face, and having criticised the Liberal Democrats for wanting more consultation and discussion, they now want to delay and extend these times, when we requested a minimum campaign of a mere six weeks.

Mr. Leslie: I am troubled by the anti-democratic tendencies of the Liberal Democrats in seeking to curtail a fair and reasonable campaign period. I believe that 10 weeks strikes the right balance, and in any case—this answers the questions asked by the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr. Hammond)—it is for the Government to decide the referendum period, subject of course to parliamentary scrutiny.

Mr. Kevan Jones: Does my hon. Friend agree that 10 weeks is a good length of time to ensure that the

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campaign receives both the vigorous debate that we want and the maximum turnout in a region? The Liberal Democrats' view reinforces their anti-democratic stance in being opposed to all postal ballots.

Mr. Leslie: That was indeed a very worrying development among Liberal Democrat Members in the Standing Committee. Their expressed intention to turn their face against all postal ballots calls into question the very title of their political party, but we should leave that for another day.

Mr. Swayne: Will the Minister give way?

Mr. Leslie: I cannot resist the hon. Gentleman.

Mr. Swayne: The Minister is very generous. I entirely understand the argument for a 10-week campaign. It will clearly be advantageous to have such a long campaign, particularly for the no campaign because previously, of course, the Government were able to distribute information in a way that the no campaign was not, and it gave them a good start. However, why will the Minister not include in the Bill his choice of campaign length, or at least give an indication of it? As someone who questions the whole enterprise, I ask him to imagine that campaign—those 10 weeks of misery and exhaustion.

Mr. Leslie: If only I had time to detail what we learned about the hon. Gentleman in Committee and his history of fending off allegations of rigging ballots in Scotland. I know that he was given an honourable discharge—[Interruption.]

The First Deputy Chairman: Order.

Mr. Leslie: On amendment No. 47, if we are to use the expected 10-week period, what is the point of requiring the Electoral Commission to provide advice on the issue? In effect, it would be required to second-guess why the 10-week period is implicit in the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act. The amendment is unnecessary, but of course we are happy to discuss with the commission any practical implications of a longer or shorter campaign. However, I do not see the case for enshrining in statute the need to seek its advice on our intentions.

The hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey) tabled a reasonably probing amendment in amendment No. 27. While in theory it is possible to shorten the designated period for an official campaign, I cannot see that there are circumstances that would lead us to set a referendum period significantly shorter than the 10-week period I mentioned earlier. We would not wish to do so, and even if we did and went for a period of less than 10 weeks, an order would have to be introduced, debated and receive assent in both Houses. No doubt, tough questions would have to be answered then.

Mr. Hilton Dawson (Lancaster and Wyre): In looking at the referendum period, will my hon. Friend consider the paucity of the Opposition's argument against regional government, particularly in the north-west of England? Can we be spared the ordeal of having to

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campaign too long against the Opposition's absurd posturing, particularly as some hon. Members are inclined to use the privileges of the House to attack people outside it?

Mr. Leslie: I suspect that there is a longer story to be told, but I tend to agree with my hon. Friend. Amendment No. 27 is unlikely to have much practical effect and, together with amendment No. 47, is unnecessary. I therefore urge the hon. Members for Runnymede and Weybridge and for Kingston and Surbiton not to press them further.

Mr. Hammond: We have had an interesting debate. I am not sure that I followed the intervention of the hon. Member for Lancaster and Wyre (Mr. Dawson), but generally I am never quite sure that I do. My hon. Friend the Member for New Forest, West (Mr. Swayne) was indeed the culprit in the case to which the Minister referred, lest hon. Members fear that any outside party was being impugned.

The Government are once again giving themselves extraordinary power and, in this case, do not even want to take advice. In our debate on clause 1 we did not get a chance to talk about the amendment that would delete subsection (9). I know that you would not want me to cover that ground now, Mrs. Heal. Effectively, however, as the Bill stands, once the Government see how the land lies, they have the power in a run-up to the referendum to cancel it. If, a couple of weeks from a referendum, things are looking a bit iffy, the Secretary of State, under clause 1(9), can simply call it off, which is an extraordinarily flexible power. At the other end of the process, he has complete flexibility in setting when the referendum period should begin.

The Minister told us that he would normally expect that period to last 10 weeks. The initial and understandable reaction of my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest, West was that that is a long time. However, we must bear in mind the fact that the Government, until the referendum period begins, will have free reign to distribute literature and information supporting their position and the case for elected regional assemblies without the no campaign being able to respond and distribute counter-information.

Perhaps 10 weeks is the right period. I am happy to concede to the Minister that that may be about right, but why does he not write it into the Bill? The unconstrained power of the Secretary of State to determine the start of the period, the end of the period and, having called a referendum, whether to let it go ahead or not, under the terms of clause 1(9), seems an excessive amount of discretion for the Secretary of State to have.

I invite the Minister to consider the impact on local government and other institutions in the region while such a campaign is going on. There will be serious disruption.

Mr. Swayne: Does my hon. Friend consider that it would be helpful to the Committee if the Minister gave an indication of the circumstances under which it would be proper to have a campaign of less than the 10 weeks

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that he suggested, and the circumstances under which it would be proper for the campaign to last longer than that?


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