European Union Bill

It would be helpful if, by way of introduction, I gave a brief explanation of our approach to how the referendum provisions in the Bill would work—the referendum mechanics, in other words. I stress that provision for the conduct of UK referendums on all issues, including those in the Bill, is set out in the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000. That statute covers the overall regulatory framework applying to referendums and sets conditions in relation to the referendum period, the date of the poll, the wording of questions, the role of the Electoral Commission in commenting on the intelligibility of those questions to ensure that questions are ““clear, simple and neutral””, and the conditions to be set in relation to the registration of campaign organisations and for financial and other assistance to be given to designated individuals or organisations. For this purpose, the Act allows the Electoral Commission to designate one individual or organisation for each possible outcome of a particular referendum, which could include political parties, and to award them a public grant of up to £600,000 and other benefits. In addition, the provisions of the PPERA impose financial controls on the expenditure and income of campaigning individuals or organisations that are not political parties. They place controls on referendum publications by Government and others, and make provision for enabling secondary legislation to be made for the conduct of referendum polls. Those provisions in the PPERA would apply to any referendum conducted under the terms of the Bill and, as the Committee knows, the referendum proposed in the Bill on the parliamentary voting system. Similarly, any amendment to, or replacement of, the PPERA in the future would correspondingly apply to any referendums held under the Bill. The PPERA, however, does not cover matters that are inherently specific to a particular referendum. Those include the precise wording of the question, the date of the referendum, its franchise, or the precise length of what is termed the referendum period, which is that period during which campaign expenditure is regulated. The Act does not cover how challenges to the referendum result are to be handled, the payment of counting officers, or the conduct of the referendum—for example, decisions on locations, opening hours of polling stations, permitted size of posters and any electoral offences related to the holding of a referendum. When considering how many of these specific issues to address in the Bill and how many to leave for a specific Bill at the time of a particular referendum, the Government took account of our commitment in the coalition agreement that there would be no further transfer of competence or power from the United Kingdom to the EU over the course of this Parliament. Logically, therefore, there will be no referendums about the transfer of competence or power until 2015 at the earliest, as there would be no such transfers on which the British people should be asked to opine. But as I made clear in earlier debates on the Bill, any proposed treaty change even during this Parliament would none the less be subject to the rigours of this legislation—a statement would have to be laid before Parliament setting out the Government's analysis on competence and whether any transfers of power would result, and that treaty change would still require Parliament's clear approval through primary legislation.