I am grateful to the Speaker and to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for selecting amendment 72, which concerns the crucial issue of the wording of the proposed referendum question, as do amendments 35 to 40, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes). I also hope to speak to amendment 71, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North East (Mr Bain). My amendment 72 seeks to ensure a consultation about what the question appearing on the ballot paper will actually say.
If there were any doubt about whether this Bill was anything other than a party political stunt, we had the spectacle of the Conservative party chairman attacking the Electoral Commission when its statement about the question came out. He attacked it for raising concerns about the wording of the question to be put in any referendum. As I understand it, the Conservative party backed the establishment of the Electoral Commission as an independent force in British politics to help to enforce proper standards in the way that elections and, crucially, referendums take place. Now, because the Electoral Commission’s work produces some inconvenient truths, the Conservatives seek to rubbish it.
One would have thought that the whole House would recognise that if we are to have a referendum, we need to present a clear, impartial question that favours neither one side of an argument nor the other, in order to allow the British people a genuine choice. The great deficiency of this Bill is the lack of consultation with anybody before it emerged from Lynton Crosby’s office. The problems that the Electoral Commission has identified could have been ironed out before now if there had been a proper consultation. It is clear from the Electoral Commission’s work so far that we do not have clarity about what, in its view, the question should be, that the wording in the Bill as it stands is not appropriate and that further work by the commission to test the most appropriate options is necessary.