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David Cairns (Greenock and Inverclyde) (Lab):
I begin, Mr. Deputy Speaker, by wishing you and all hon. Members a happy St. George's day. I have been going out of my way to say that to as many of my English colleagues as possible, to which their response is to look at me bizarrely. They are swift to complain when people
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celebrate St. Patrick's day or St. Andrew's day, but when one tries to generate support for St. George's day, no one seems to reciprocate.
David Cairns: The right hon. Gentleman is a Scottish exile, but he is the only one to have reciprocated when I mention St. George's day. I thought that the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Mr. Maples) might have made some sort of reference to it—perhaps in connection with slaying the mighty Euro-dragons that he paraded before us. However, they were inflatable dragons, which he had to blow up himself in order to slay them during the course of his speech.
Mr. Dismore: Without wishing to derail my hon. Friend's peroration about St. George, it is important to point out that St. George is the patron saint not only of England, but of several European nations.
David Cairns: Indeed, he is a great European figure, even though I believe he originated in Palestine. Anyway, happy St. George's day and happy birthday to my brother, too—
In the course of my speech, I shall do something that the hon. Member for Stratford-on- Avon did not do in the one hour and 10 minutes that he spoke, which is address the Bill. I stand to be corrected, but I never heard him do so: he spent the whole time speaking about the draft constitution. I shall mention that, too. He presented it as axiomatic that those who support a referendum—as we all do—must support his Bill; but as one who is profoundly attached to the idea of a referendum, I cannot support his Bill, because it is deeply flawed. I shall go through it, even though the duration of his speech might mean—I do not presume to know the will of the House in advance—that we do not have time today to commit his Bill to Committee.
Mr. Maples: And that is the end of it.
David Cairns: As the hon. Gentleman says, that will be the end of it. The Bill may never reach Committee. I do not want the record to show that I voted against the Bill, if given an opportunity, because I am against the idea of a referendum. I would vote against it because I am against the Bill, which is profoundly flawed. It is not in the interests of democracy to pass a Bill that contains such profound flaws, which I shall detail in the course of my speech. Those of us who believe that the British public have a right to have final say on the matter, and that they should be consulted as a result of the constitutional treaty negotiations, do not think the Bill is the mechanism by which to deliver that.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon on securing a place so high in the ballot for private Members' Bills. Last year I came second in the ballot and succeeded in getting my own private Member's Bill, a much smaller and more modest measure, on to the
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statute book. It came into force a fortnight ago today, so I know how exciting it is to pilot a private Member's Bill.
Mr. Dismore: Will my hon. Friend give way?
David Cairns: I happily give way to another champion of private Members' business.
Mr. Dismore: My hon. Friend makes an important point. We are here today to legislate—to try to get Bills through the House. Perhaps we will be able to vote on the Bill today; perhaps we will not. If the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Mr. Maples) was serious about trying to achieve a referendum on the basis of his Bill, he would have not have spent so much time arguing about it himself. He would have allowed a proper debate to take place in the House with all hon. Members present contributing, which would have given it a better chance of being debated, rather than talked out. That is inevitable, given the short time left to debate the Bill.
David Cairns: I am, sadly, forced to agree with my hon. Friend. I expect the headline on the press releases has already been written—"Government talk out Euro referendum Bill"—and that there will be yet more confusion, not just the alleged confusion that the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon spoke about at great length at the beginning. I do not know what will happen. We might draw matters to a conclusion and have a vote, with the Bill going into Committee.
Mr. Forth: Since we are in a relaxed conversational Friday mood, I remind the hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore) that the hon. Member for Carlisle (Mr. Martlew) spent an hour introducing his Bill, which, sadly, fell as a result of a pathetic lack of support, so the fact that my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Mr. Maples) made an excellent speech setting out his views for about the same length of time is not exceptional. It is almost normal for a Friday.
David Cairns: I posit one distinction. My hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle (Mr. Martlew) referred to his Bill during his speech. The record will show that the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon made almost no reference to his Bill. He spoke at enormous length about the constitution, which is obviously at the heart of the matter, but he hardly referred to his own Bill. My hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle talked us through his Bill and explained the effect of the various clauses. He took a considerable time to do that. I enjoyed the speech of the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon. Unlike the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth), I was present for the entirety of his hon. Friend's very good speech. The right hon. Gentleman flitted in and out of the Chamber.
Mr. Forth:
I distinctly remember my hon. Friend referring explicitly to clause 1(2), saying that although the Government now happily supported the thrust of most of his Bill, that element might be more contentious. That is one example of a reference that my hon. Friend
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made to his Bill. Perhaps he did not have to go into quite as much detail as usual because, as he pointed out, the Bill is in all other respects Government policy.
David Cairns: What the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon did not do when he spoke to clause 1(2) was explain what he meant by "adoption" of the treaty.
David Cairns: If the hon. Gentleman did explain that, I apologise. If he wishes to clarify the matter, I am happy to give way.
Mr. Maples: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, as I did speak for a long time. I specifically said that "adoption" is a term of art meaning that when the treaty is agreed at the intergovernmental conference, it is usually signed two or three weeks later when the text is finalised. The hon. Gentleman is being unfair on me. I did speak about my Bill but, as it is Government policy, there did not seem to be much on which the Minister and I differed.
David Cairns: "Adoption", as the hon. Gentleman knows, is not the normal word used in the present context. It needs clarification, and I intended to ask him to provide such clarification, should his Bill go into Committee. It may be a matter of weeks between the intergovernmental conference and the signing of the treaty, but, on an issue of such magnitude, there could be many months between it being agreed and it being signed. Merely to talk about adoption without specifying that further is one of the many flaws in the Bill, which means that regrettably, although I support a referendum, I am unable to support the Bill today.
Mr. Dismore: The only part of the Bill to which I recall the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Mr. Maples) referring was the referendum question itself, which of course goes to the heart of it, but he simply said that if we do not like the question it can be changed in Committee. If the heart of the Bill is the referendum question, does not that simply show that the hon. Gentleman has no real intention of taking the Bill forward, but is simply playing with the House's time?
David Cairns: Yes, and one cannot condone such an infantile approach to making laws as simply speaking for the sake of speaking. My hon. Friend tempts me to pre-empt my own speech because I want to speak at some length on the question. He is right to say that the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon spoke about the question, but he did so only because I asked him about it. I intervened on him twice to clarify the matter and he conceded immediately that the question could be amended in Committee. How often do we hear Opposition spokesmen and spokeswomen condemning the Government for introducing amendments in Committee?
At the moment I am serving on the Committee considering the Pensions Bill—a magnificent measure representing real social progress—but because of its technical nature the Government have had to introduce a large number of amendments, and every amendment that we introduce is heralded by Conservative
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spokespeople whingeing about the fact that we are introducing amendments that should have been on the face of the Bill so that they could have been properly scrutinised on Second Reading.
Yet here we have the hon. Gentleman saying that if we do not like the referendum question, which is at the heart of this Bill, it can be amended in Committee. That approach is entirely unsatisfactory. As far as possible, Bills should be accurately drafted in time for Second Reading so that hon. Members can scrutinise them, not send them off to a Room Upstairs for debate. Again, that is part of the flawed nature of the Bill.
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