Clause 1 — Referendum on the united kingdom’s membership of the European Union

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:15 pm on 22 November 2013.

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Photo of Gareth Thomas Gareth Thomas Shadow Minister (Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs), Party Chair, Co-operative Party 12:15, 22 November 2013

For the avoidance of doubt, I should say that I took no offence. Anything that can be done to enlighten the Minister for Europe about what the Prime Minister’s question might be on the crucial issue of the powers and competences that he wants to repatriate to the UK can only be helpful.

I was focusing on the work of the Electoral Commission, which was established by the 2000 Act. It has the crucial statutory responsibility to report on the intelligibility of a question included in a referendum Bill, as soon as is practicable, once it has been laid before Parliament. What we are discussing is the Electoral Commission’s ninth such referendum question assessment report; it has done sterling work on a series of other referendums. It is worth our reflecting on those.

The Electoral Commission was asked to assess the intelligibility of questions for the 2011 referendum on the powers of the National Assembly for Wales; for the 2011 UK-wide referendum on the parliamentary voting system, on which I would rather not dwell; for a range of local government referendums that have been held in England since 2008; and, of course, for the forthcoming referendum on independence for Scotland. This is the first time the Electoral Commission has undertaken an assessment exercise for a question included in a private Member’s Bill. However, there can be no doubting the experience of the commission in judging accurately what the referendum question should be, given its extensive previous involvement in eight other referendums.

The provisions for the holding of a referendum to be included in a private Member’s Bill are extremely unusual.

The Electoral Commission is probably not the only organisation looking on in confusion at the strange road down which the Prime Minister and James Wharton have decided to travel.

The task facing the Electoral Commission began as soon as the Bill received its Second Reading on 5 July. It had to decide whether the question was intelligible, so it considered at length whether it was easy to understand and to the point and whether it could be construed in any way as ambiguous. Importantly, the commission also looked at whether the question was neutral, ensuring that it would not encourage voters to consider one response more favourably than another or mislead voters in any way.

The Electoral Commission’s report sets out in detail the standard question assessment process that it undertook. It has followed such a process eight times before. Part of the process included evidence gathering from the general public—focus groups, interviews and so on—on the intelligibility of the proposed referendum question. The market research company, GfK National Opinion Polls, was commissioned to carry out some of the research. On the whole, the report, of which the House should be rightly appreciative, found that the question passed muster on some critical tests, but not on others. The question was deemed to be sufficiently brief, straightforward and easy to understand. None the less, there are two key issues that my amendment addresses which are not addressed in the wording as it stands.

Amendment 35, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South, responds to the concerns of the Electoral Commission about the Bill’s question:

“Do you think that the United Kingdom should be a member of the European Union?”

It suggests removing the opening phrase “Do you think”. That would result in the question beginning with “Should”, and the remainder of the words being reordered appropriately.

The Electoral Commission’s research found that some people felt the phrase, “Do you think” was too informal for a referendum question. Others felt that the phrase sounded less concrete, and suggested, without prompting from the interviewers or being given the alternative option, that the question should be changed to begin with the word “Should” , as my hon. Friend has proposed. Some of the interviewees felt that a change to the wording would make the question on the referendum ballot paper shorter, more direct and, importantly, to the point.