Yes, indeed it was, but we are discussing the 28-day purdah period at the moment. It has been suggested to me by a knowledgeable European that President Barroso, as he then was, harboured ambitions to be the Secretary-General of NATO and was hoping for support from Ministers—perhaps not those in the Chamber tonight, but those who are none the less not too far from us. Who knows why President Barroso made those interventions, but they were not made during the 28-day purdah period.
The cautionary aspect of this tale is that that purdah period, enacted in legislation, bound the Scottish Government and their agencies and public bodies in Scotland but it did not bind the United Kingdom Government. The UK Government were bound not by statute but by the Edinburgh agreement of 15 October 2012. That was what we used to call a gentleman’s agreement; it had no statutory basis. Paragraph 29 of that agreement stated:
“The Scottish Government will set out details of restricted behaviour for Scottish Ministers and devolved public bodies in the Referendum Bill to be introduced into the Scottish Parliament. These details will be based on the restrictions set out in PPERA. The UK Government has committed to act according to the same PPERA-based rules during the 28-day period.”
Now, I do not think that they did that. I do not think that most reasonable Members of this House believe that that is what was done. I will give two examples from among the many that I could use.
The first is, I admit, arguable, but it has already been raised on the Conservative Back Benches. It relates to the production of the vow when there were 10 days of campaigning left. The vow was described by the Chancellor of the Exchequer on “The Andrew Marr Show” on 7 September 2014 in this way:
“You will see in the next few days a plan of action to give more powers to Scotland, more tax powers, more spending powers, more powers over the welfare state.”
One of the arguments in favour of purdah is that the arguments should be laid out and set before the campaign period, and that during the campaign the politicians can debate them and the people can participate in the debate—as they did in huge numbers in Scotland—and
make up their minds. It is not meant to be a period during which politicians can say, “Here’s a fresh initiative that we forgot to mention earlier.”
A comparison could be made with the European referendum if, for example, what used to be called the no side were to take the lead, unexpectedly perhaps, with 10 days to go and the German Chancellor or the President of the Republic of France were to suspend Question Time in the Bundestag or the National Assembly, get on a plane and rush across to say that the Prime Minister’s renegotiations of our position had suddenly found more favour with them than had previously been the case.
I accept that this point is arguable. Others could argue that the vow was not really a Government announcement from the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and that he was just speaking off his own bat as a politician. I am not sure that that is a good argument, but it is certainly a cautionary tale.