Clause 10 - Legal Proceedings
Regional Assemblies (Preparations) Bill
5:00 pm
Mr Christopher Leslie (Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office; Shipley, Labour)
Opposition Members raise the question of precedent, and query whether the Government should cite examples of precedent in defence of the clause when all of them were legislated for under a Labour Government. It is true that many of the examples of precedent that exist for this clause, which is a simple repetition of what is contained in other legislation, were made under a Labour Administration. As far as I am aware, it is only under Labour Administrations that we have had referendums. I do not remember a Conservative Administration testing the views of the public. Even on larger constitutional questions, they did not test people's views on a specific question, but turned their face against the whole concept of referendums. That is a political debate, but it is an interesting one that has been highlighted by Opposition Members.
The hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge said that we detailed many of the issues when we discussed amendments to clause 5. I would not want to repeat that debate in full, but I must say that the purpose of clause 10 is to prevent any challenges other than serious challenges—I emphasise that they must be serious—to certification of the number of votes or ballots made by a chief counting officer or counting officer. The aim is to ensure that the Government can respond quickly to the result of a referendum without {**?11**}being caught up in legal challenges that are not serious. If there were such challenges, it would be difficult to move on with legislation to establish assemblies until they were concluded. The purpose of the clause is to ensure finality and certainty for the advisory referendum. It follows the precedent set in other referendum legislation.