The EU Referendum Bill has been accompanied by almost unprecedented flip-flopping and ‘reverse ferreting’. I think we have to accept that it is quite right for the Liberals and Labour to have changed their minds. Or at any rate, for the voters to have changed their minds for them. Speaking, as I do at Westminster, for the only party in parliament that has been consistent on this matter, I am very glad that the referendum is finally almost upon us. As Bill Cash said earlier today in the Commons, this is the culmination of a twenty-year fight that started with Maastricht, and involved betrayals and evasions by both main parties. It’s very good news that other parties, not least the Conservative, have caught up with the wisdom of the DUP on the need for a referendum, but unfortunately there’s still much work to be done on this particular bill.
Let’s leave to one side the merits or otherwise of British membership of the EU and consider instead the problems currently in the Bill – problems that will have to be ironed out in either the Commons or the Lords. Take the timing of the referendum: surely it must make sense that with polls as important as the three devolved contests and the GLA elections due in 2016, there can be no question of the EU referendum being on the same day as them? Yet far from there being a commitment on this, the legislation specifically allows for the possibility. I can envisage no circumstances in which my party would support the EU referendum being held either before the devolved polls or on the same day as any other ballot. I hope that other opposition parties, in their haste to abandon their previous opposition to the referendum, don’t neglect their duty on this front and scrabble to agree to one which is tainted at source. That would fail to give clarity to this issue.
Then there are other matters, disguised to look technical, but actually so wrong, so misplaced, that they also risk vitiating the very point of this Bill – settling the matter of our membership of the EU one way or the other. I warned ministers openly in the chamber of the Commons today: there is no point in them rigging a referendum as all that will do is land them another one, and sooner than they think.
Next, take the spending caps: why on earth is the Foreign Secretary contemplating a regime which will potentially allow one side to so significantly outspend the other? Why not simply provide an equal spending cap? Why are foreign companies with offices registered in the UK suddenly allowed to participate in this poll? How can the government not see that polluting this poll at its source will risk poisoning its outcome?
In the Commons today I agreed with what ex-cabinet members like Liam Fox and Owen Paterson have already publicly said regarding their scepticism about the government’s intention not to observe Purdah over the referendum. Nor has it provided in the Bill any requirement on the European Commission, or its many arm’s length satellites, to likewise observe Purdah during the campaign. This just isn’t good enough.
Finally, we have the matter of the very wording of the referendum question, as chosen by the government. We in Ulster are not scared of saying ‘No’. It’s a proud and honourable tradition. It’s one, moreover, which has very little harmful effect on the result of referenda, certainly if you look at what happens in other Westminster model countries. Yet it didn’t have to be ‘Yes or No?’ It could have been ‘Leave or Stay?’ or ‘Remain or Depart’ or any number of other formulae. Ignoring the clear advice of the Electoral Commission against a bald ‘Yes or No?’ question was poor form by the government, and discouraging about its likely future behaviour in presiding over this poll.
I’m very keen that my words should not be misinterpreted so I’m going to be as blunt as I can be: the government is getting this bill wrong and it’s going to get the result wrong if it keeps behaving like this. We need to settle this for a generation. We will respect the will of the British people. But it needs to be given. It’s long past time that it was given.
Today is not the day to criticise the specifics of the Prime Minister’s negotiations, whatever they turn out to be. This is not a petty matter of party management. This should not dwindle into being a Maastricht-era set of shabby half-promises and fudged deals and risible spin. That way of conducting the referendum lies disaster, and not just for prime ministers. This is the fundamental matter of whether or not this country wants to stay in the EU. My party has consistently said the people must have their say. It is now the government’s duty to fairly give it to them. This Bill is so far some way from doing that.
Rt Hon Nigel Dodds, MP, is deputy leader of the DUP and leads the party at Westminster
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