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David Cairns: My hon. Friend extrapolates from my basic point.
Broadly speaking, I am pro-Europe and believe that it would be in Britain's interests to secure a constitutional treaty that respected our red line issues. That would be good for Europe and make a Europe of 25 work better than the Europe of seven or eight when many of the original treaties were drafted. I do not want to be a little Britisher on this issue, but the people who are eligible to vote in UK parliamentary elections should vote in the referendum. I am concerned about the possibility of people having serial votes around Europe and, although this may be tending towards Euroscepticism, I am concerned about hundreds of thousands of people—I am trying not to use the word "foreigners"—
David Cairns: I am concerned about the prospect of EU nationals who are not entitled to vote in UK parliamentary elections having a vote in the referendum.
The timetable that the hon. Gentleman sets out is dictated by his six months and not by the scrutiny process of Parliament. Like me, my hon. Friend believes that the proper process is to secure the treaty and have it debated on the Floor of the House of Commons by elected Members of Parliament and by Lords in another place. That is when we should go to a referendum. We should not subvert that process, but the hon. Gentleman adds insult to injury by proposing that people who are not entitled to vote in UK domestic elections should be able to vote in the referendum. That is puzzling, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend for allowing me to address that issue.
Mr. Chope:
The hon. Gentleman has now been speaking for more than an hour. It is St. George's day
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and millions of English people want to hear the response of the Minister to my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Mr. Maples) and to the many others throughout the country who are concerned about the referendum and Government confusion on the issue. Is the hon. Gentleman intent on preventing that response from taking place?
David Cairns: I am intent on exposing the flaws in the Bill, and I am barely halfway through the process. I am sorry that I will not be allowed to do a thorough job in exposing the flaws, which is my only motivation—I do not want to prevent anyone from doing anything else.
Mr. Dismore: Again, I can only assume that the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr. Chope) has not contacted the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth). Our job in this Chamber is to scrutinise and legislate; it is not to provide vehicles for people to argue about general policy. The debate concerns this particular Bill, and my hon. Friend the Member for Greenock and Inverclyde (David Cairns) has done the House a service by exposing the flaws in it, and I hope to continues to do so.
David Cairns: I fully intend to do so. I am mildly hurt by the implication that the Minister has more weighty things to say about the Bill than me. I am personally grateful to him, because without his championing a previous piece of legislation, I would not even be here. As an elected Member of Parliament, my views on the Bill are as valid as anyone else's. This is a private Member's Bill, not Government legislation, and I am a Back Bencher doing my job, which I was elected to do, by making a speech exposing its flaws. There is no time limit on my speech, and I regret that I have so few minutes left, because I want to address other major flaws.
Before moving on, I want to stick to the issue of the Electoral Commission report. Clause 3 states:
"The Electoral Commission shall publish a report setting out when and how the referendum shall be conducted"—
apart from the question and the date, which will already have been decided—
"including what information is to be provided to those entitled to vote . . . The Secretary of State shall give effect to the provisions contained in a report of the Electoral Commission under subsection (6) by means of regulations."
The Bill does not allow the Secretary of State to reject any of the proposals—it only allows him to give effect to them—and he is bound by the report of the Electoral Commission.
"There shall be paid out of money provided by Parliament"—
"any expenditure of the Secretary of State in consequence of this Act".
Let us think the Bill through. The Electoral Commission produces a report, with no timetable on when it should be produced—presumably it has its own statutory guidelines on how it consults and reports. Next, we make a report, which includes the information provided to those entitled to vote. Finally, we give that report to the Secretary of State, who enables the referendum to
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happen by regulation, and the taxpayer pays for it. The Bill asks us to provide the Electoral Commission with a blank cheque.
If the Electoral Commission were to decide that every person in the country should have a 60-minute video on Europe, for and against, that the video should be shot across the European Union, that Kevin Spacey should introduce it, that my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon should be in it, that it should feature the beauties of the European city of culture, which will be Liverpool in a few years' time, and that it should be narrated by Sir Sean Connery, the Secretary of State would have no say in the matter and must produce it. Who would pay for it? The taxpayer. The Bill does not state how much the referendum should cost. We are being asked to produce a blank cheque, which is irresponsible.
The Bill has two major financial implications: one is the cost of the new bank holiday—presumably a bespoke figure for that exists in the annals of the Department of Trade and Industry, but nobody has ventured it today—the other is the blank cheque to the Electoral Commission to come up with any scheme. The Electoral Commission might decide to stage an opera about European integration and tour the country with it, and British taxpayers would have to pay. My hon. Friends laugh because they think that I overstate the case, but this deeply flawed Bill does not fetter the Electoral Commission.
Mr. Dismore: I regret to say that my hon. Friend is overstating the case, because the regulations are subject to approval by each House of Parliament. Let us suppose that the Electoral Commission produced a silly report, which the Secretary of State would be bound to bring to Parliament. We would then have an affirmative debate in both Houses on whether it should be ratified, and Parliament would reject it, in which case we would be back to square one. If Parliament rejects the regulations, there is a lacuna in the Bill.
David Cairns: My hon. Friend is right to interrupt my flight of fantasy and anchor me back to the real world, but he has also highlighted yet another flaw in the Bill. It does not say that the Electoral Commission shall produce a leaflet or present its report in some other limited form, nor that the Secretary of State shall reflect upon the commission's recommendations and bring forward the measures that he deems necessary for their implementation. The Bill says simply that the Electoral Commission shall produce a report, the Secretary of State shall bring that to Parliament, where it shall be implemented—or not, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon points out—by means of regulation.
Consider the impact on public opinion if the Bill were to receive Royal Assent after hundreds of MPs came in and voted for it because it reflects the will of Parliament—
Mr. Dismore: There are not many Tories here.
David Cairns:
To be frank, there are not many on our Benches either. Suppose, in all seriousness, that we sent the Electoral Commission to do the job of work. The Secretary of State—a profoundly serious person—
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would consider it, time would be spent preparing a report, which would then go to a statutory instrument Committee, where a handful of Members would decide its fate and the whole thing would grind to a shuddering halt. What would be the response not only of the rest of Parliament, which voted to set the whole train in motion, but of the people, who would see their long-promised referendum snatched away from them in a statutory instrument Committee sitting in Committee Room 13 on a wet Tuesday afternoon? Is that remotely the right way to approach the subject? Absolutely not. The Government's way is the right one—to argue for the treaty, secure the treaty, debate it on the Floor of the House, as such treaties are, and then move the debate out to the country.
Mr. Mike O'Brien: I am listening carefully to my hon. Friend's argument, but in view of the limited time, he needs to cut to the chase. I really want to hear his view on the fact that the Bill makes no reference to ensuring that Parliament can debate the substance of any constitutional treaty before it is put to the country. The Opposition want any debate to be based on the myths that they propagate, rather than on proper parliamentary scrutiny. Will my hon. Friend say where the Bill provides for full parliamentary scrutiny to enable the public to hold a proper discussion on the issues?
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