Oral evidence: Lessons Learned from the EU Referendum, HC 496

Oral evidence, 1 November 2016.

Witnesses

Dr Alan Renwick and Dr Simon Usherwood.

Chair

Can I welcome our two witnesses to this session on lessons learned from the EU Referendum? Could I ask each of you to identify yourself for the record, please?

Dr Renwick

I am Alan Renwick from the UCL Constitution Unit.

Dr Usherwood

I am Simon Usherwood from the University of Surrey and also the UK in a Changing Europe programme.

Chair

We have microphones but it would help if you were to speak clearly and raise your voices. Thank you very much. We will also endeavour to ask short questions and if we ask too long questions we will pull each other up, but if we could have short and crisp answers it will help us get through our questions.

Ronnie Cowan

Good morning. The first question is very open: how complementary are referendums to representative democracy?

Dr Renwick

It is clearly possible to have referendums in a democracy that is predominantly a representative democracy. The UK has now had referendums since the 1970s. Most democracies hold referendums and there is no evidence to suggest that the existence of referendums undermines the broader representative democratic process in any significant way. I would not be worried about trying to combine elements of direct democracy with representative democracy.

Dr Usherwood

The only other thing to add on that would be that it is the manner in which the referendums are managed and run that is the key question. That is really what we are talking about here, that there is nothing that is an intrinsic incompatibility. It is about the way in which the two elements are integrated at the political level.

Ronnie Cowan

Dr Usherwood, the UK in a Changing Europe’s written evidence to our inquiry suggested that a referendum was probably not a suitable mechanism for an issue of this magnitude, so on what issues would a referendum be appropriate?

Dr Usherwood

The issue in this particular case was the size of the issue, the dimensions and the effects of what was involved in the decision. The knock-on consequences were very hard to map out for public debate and also for voters to get a reasonable grasp about the consequences, particularly because there was not a clear articulation of what either option looked like in detail, or even in sketch form. Where a referendum can be useful is in something that is more defined as an issue, so thinking for example of the Good Friday Agreement as a way of building public support, integration and acceptance of a process that is going on, where there is a document, something that is much clearer for the voter, so that they know what it is that they are voting for or against.

Ronnie Cowan

In a general election, a party can put together a manifesto that would then be voted on, which would be many complicated issues but we are asking the people in a referendum to primarily vote on one issue. Are you saying that it should be documented in advance, rather than what we had, which was an EU referendum that was all rhetoric and emotion and, at the end of the day, nobody knew what they were voting on?

Dr Usherwood

As we noted in the written submission, at one level the question for the referendum was very simple: should we leave or should we remain? The consequences, though, as we are seeing are multiple and manifold and we are still in the process of identifying what the consequences are, let alone where we head to and how we head to a particular destination. It is a very different logic from a general election, not least because winning a vote in a referendum does not then give you the levers of power in Government. Again there is a question about whether there is a need to articulate what each option looks like in a more precise form.

Ronnie Cowan

The onus is on the people running the referendum, rather than on the electorate?

Dr Usherwood

To a certain extent, yes, there has to be part of that. The point that Alan or I would both make would be that it is about a need for a public debate. What we did not have in this referendum was a debate about why we should leave and why we should remain, what kind of society we were trying to head for, what kind of position in the world. There were elements of that, but why people voted the way they did is something that is still being debated and contested, and people are trying to give different interpretations and meanings at this stage after the vote.

Ronnie Cowan

What guiding principles should be used in referendums?

Dr Renwick

We should be thinking about the nature of the democracy that we want and—building on the comments that Simon has just made—we should be seeking a democracy that satisfies three principles: it should be thoughtful, it should be inclusive, and it should be legitimate. By “thoughtful” I mean that there should be informed discussion and people should have the opportunity to think carefully about the options that are available. By “inclusive” I mean that everyone should be able to take part and all of the perspectives that are out there in society be heard and be listened to carefully, and by “legitimate” I mean that people should broadly agree that this is a democratic, fair and reasonable process. It should be clear that advancing those principles often is best done through the institutions of representative democracy. We have great evidence that it is not the case that the public want to be deeply involved in every decision. We know that if you have too many referendums then turnout goes down, participation goes down, which means that you do not have decisions that reflect the concerns of the community as a whole, and you do not have representative decisions. Given those principles, we should think that referendums are to be used sparingly for matters that do engage public interest and that will engage a lively campaign. We should probably think that referendums are particularly appropriate on those issues where the representative institutions will struggle more to produce inclusive decision-making processes, which I think above all means constitutional issues, because those are issues that clearly those in public office are most deeply and pressingly affected by, therefore there is a danger that in those issues the interests of the broader community are not freely reflected. A relatively limited role for referendums on issues of genuine public interest, particularly but perhaps not exclusively on constitutional matters, is appropriate.

Chair

That is quite a long answer, forgive me.

Dr Renwick

Sorry.

Paul Flynn

Can I ask a very short question? Do you think the alternative vote referendum was determined by the public on the deep understanding of the democratic principle involved, or was it determined by the hyperbole of propagandists?

Dr Renwick

I certainly think there was not deep public understanding of that issue, and that seems to me a case where there was not sufficient public interest for there to be well-informed public debate.

Chair

Can I declare an interest? I was a board director of Vote Leave. Coming back to this very first question about how we reconcile representative democracy with referendums, what needs to be done in order to ensure that this clash between direct democracy and representative democracy is better resolved in our own arrangements?

Dr Renwick

What do you mean by the “clash”? I do not see a clash as such.

Chair

Our system is used to a process of elections deciding the future of the country by changing or maintaining the present Government. They are not used to making decisions by popular vote that change the nature of the Government but don’t change the people carrying out the Government. Dr Usherwood, you referred to the fact that there would be no change of personnel and there was no direct consequence for the Government in losing the referendum. How should this be better dealt with? It seems that our system is very adapted to changes of Government, and the relationship between Ministers and the Civil Service has adapted to elections, but it seems the system is not so well adapted to dealing with big issues being dealt with by referendum. What should we do to improve that?

Dr Renwick

I would certainly build on the comments that Simon made earlier. It seems to me that the main issue is how to encourage a thoughtful campaign during a referendum. When we think about the decision-making processes of representative democracy, there is a detailed framework within Parliament for ensuring that factors are thought about very carefully and there are multiple stages of decision-making in Parliament that are gone through. For referendums we do not have any of that. We have not thought about how to construct a campaign in order to aid people towards making an informed decision. I would emphasise that.

Ronnie Cowan

In the Scottish referendum, the “Yes” campaign, put forward a very thoughtful and quite large document that explained exactly what an independent Scotland’s future would be like.

Dr Renwick

Yes. What we don’t have is an overall legislative framework within which that kind of intervention can be located, and we don’t have an established practice for how the arguments of each side can be put.

Chair

That is the question, isn’t it: what should be the established practice?

Dr Usherwood

Yes, to go back to the first part of the question, at the moment referendums are seen in a somewhat opportunistic way—that they are used by political actors as an opportunity to secure a change that they would have difficulty securing otherwise through the representative process, through the governmental process that we talked about before. In terms of establishing a framework, we have to move to something where you have recognition that a referendum is part of a bigger process, that is part of a public debate, and whether you can legislate for that, I am not sure that you can. Public debate is something that emerges most strongly from a bottom-up kind of approach. So how much we can impose a public debate, even when we try—

Chair

I am asking a slightly different question. How should the machinery of Government be adapted better to deal with referendums and a change of policy imposed on the Government that the Government did not choose?

Dr Renwick

That is not a question about the campaign; that is really a question about what happens after the campaign.

Chair

We will leave that for the moment. Cheryl Gillan?

Mrs Cheryl Gillan

I want your thoughts. Do you think that a referendum really completely undermines the representatives in a representative democracy?

Dr Renwick

I don’t think there is evidence of that.

Mrs Cheryl Gillan

Let me give you an example, which is what happened to many people on this Committee. My constituency voted to remain, and I quite openly said that I was voting for leave, so consequently I then got a lot of e-mails challenging my position and saying I must represent their views in Parliament when it comes to any votes. Surely that undermines the whole principle of a representative democracy and my position or other people’s position as MPs, because that is not the case and that is not what is expected of a Member of Parliament.

Dr Renwick

Yes. I suppose some people will think that and presumably, even without referendums, some people think that it is the role of an MP simply to represent the constituency’s views; in a very simplistic sense, to represent the constituency’s view rather than think carefully about the issue.

Mrs Cheryl Gillan

Doesn’t that undermine it?

Dr Usherwood

Again, with all due respect to all of you, you represent your constituencies and the primary way that you are selected is through the election mechanism. You do not have the support of every single member of your constituency, so already you represent people who did not vote for you. There is nothing that is intrinsically different about this. A referendum is much more present and visible but there is nothing that suddenly means you no longer represent your constituency. It means that, on that issue, you don’t. Then the way that is corrected—if there is a need for correction by your electorate—is that at the next election they say, “Well, we disagreed with you on that. We now want to choose somebody with whom we do agree.” The system has that capacity in it and I do not think it causes a rupture.

Mrs Cheryl Gillan

But does it not distort it, because it is one issue that suddenly gets extremely loudly highlighted among people in the country? It is a distorting factor in itself having a referendum, because undue emphasis goes on one element of the work of a representative Member of Parliament.

Dr Usherwood

That will depend very much on the question in hand. Much time has been devoted to the European issue. That is not the main issue for the voters.

Kate Hoey

To follow up on something you said earlier, Dr Usherwood, your report for the UK in a Changing Europe, I presume, would have said exactly the same whoever won the referendum, so it would have been exactly the same if remain had won?

Dr Usherwood

Yes.

Kate Hoey

You said that the public were not engaged. I wonder where you spent the referendum time, because I certainly found the public very engaged with this issue.

Dr Usherwood

The programme was designed to help provide impartial advice to voters with a lot of public engagement, so, in terms of the level of public engagement, yes, there was substantial engagement but it wasn’t to the extent that I think addresses the kinds of issues we are talking about here, which is about being aware of the ramifications of different choices, the dimensions of different choices.

Chair

Can I just press you on this? What is it about the referendum question that you think the voters did not understand?

Dr Usherwood

I think there wasn’t good sight of the consequences of either choice. Again, to come back to your point, it would be the same whatever the outcome of this vote was. Both choices had consequences that I think were hard to put together and to integrate.

Kate Hoey

Isn’t that a rather patronising view of the public? You are almost implying that anyone who voted—whichever way—did not really understand what they were voting for. Are you really saying that?

Dr Usherwood

No, I don’t think it is about being patronising. It is recognition that this is a complicated and complex issue.

Chair

When we have a general election, what depth of understanding do you think voters have about the issues facing the country in a general election compared to a referendum?

Dr Usherwood

Again, the difference in a general election is that there is a programme in a manifesto. There is then a progressive adaption of that as the Government that is selected goes through its term in office, so that at the point that you make specific decisions within that programme, on pieces of legislation, there is specific debate and scrutiny that leads to an adaptation, in the way that a referendum is a decision that then does not articulate what happens afterwards unless it is specified in legislation.

Chair

You seem to place great faith in party manifestos. How do you think Permanent Secretaries feel when they are trying to translate manifesto promises into real policy? Do you think they feel that it has all been worked out and that the electorate understands everything that has been in the manifesto?

Dr Usherwood

No, I think there is a process of negotiation and—

Chair

What is the distinction you are trying to make between a choice between manifestos in political parties in a general election and a very clear choice about a single issue in a referendum? What is the distinction you are trying to make and the voters’ understanding of that?

Dr Usherwood

Beyond the choice itself—leave or remain in this case—the detail of what that meant was not something that can be held to in—

Chair

What kind of questions should be asked in referendums, then, where that problem would not exist?

Dr Usherwood

One option would be that you require the presentation of a plan of what an option would look like, so that this might be a way forward.

Kate Hoey

Sorry, with the greatest respect, you mentioned the Good Friday Agreement as being something that you did think was the right area for a referendum.

Dr Usherwood

Because that is part of a bigger process.

Kate Hoey

Do you think that the ramifications on that have worked out? That people understand the ramifications of that? Did they understand the ramifications of that?

Dr Usherwood

Did they understand the ramifications of each element of that agreement? Probably not but, in terms of the package that was presented to people, a specific text, something that was material, I think that was a much clearer choice.

Chair

You do not think people understood the difference between being in the European Union and not being in the European Union to the same extent that they understood approving the Good Friday Agreement or not approving the Good Friday Agreement? I don’t understand the distinction you are making, because they both seem to be very complicated issues to me, with very fundamental principles behind them that people were capable of holding a view on.

Dr Usherwood

One is about a capstone of a long process that says, “This is where we, as”—

Chair

So 43 years of membership of the European Union has not been a long process?

Dr Usherwood

That is a long process but that does not lead to a capstone of, “Here is an agreement about where we think we should be.”

Chair

The Government’s proposal was that we should remain in the process. The alternative was that we should leave the process.

Paul Flynn

Can I come in?

Chair

Sure. Please do.

Paul Flynn

I feel this has been excessively partisan. During the referendum I said—and I said it here and I said it in Parliament—that the winner would be the one side who tell the most convincing lie, which has happened, and the most convincing lie was that there was going to be £350 million extra per week for the National Health Service, and many people voted on that basis. Do you think there should be a third question on the referendum saying, “I will trust this decision to my elected representative”? Because, while I love my constituents, I would not trust them on a vote on capital punishment because I think they would vote to bring it back and that the country would, and I think most of our elected members would feel the same.

Chair

Okay. What is the question?

Paul Flynn

The question is: should there be a third question on the referendum saying, “I trust this decision to my elected representative”? Because that is the Government position in 2010, and Parliament decides.

Dr Usherwood

My view on that would be that there is a difficulty in that, in that Parliament would be setting forward a decision to have a referendum that then would include an option to return it back to Parliament, where presumably Parliament, if it felt that it could make the decision itself—

Paul Flynn

Second thoughts are usually better than first thoughts.

Dr Poulter

In a referendum you say you prefer a binary question, which has a "Yes" or a "No" answer and the status quo is usually one of those actions, so there is an understanding from the public about what the status quo means. With the other option, which was voted for in this case—to leave the European Union—people will have different understandings of what adoption may potentially mean. I wonder, as this process plays out, how that debate and perhaps people’s expectations of that vote not being fulfilled may interact with the integrity of the referendum process.

Dr Renwick

To the extent that people feel over time that they have voted on the basis of claims that they subsequently think were not accurate claims, then that would damage the integrity of the process. There was uncertainty about both options in this particular referendum, so it is not that there is a clear status quo versus a very unclear alternative. There was a lack of clarity as to what both of the options meant in the referendum. The line of questioning that was being put to Simon a moment ago, in terms of the nature of the questions that can reasonably be asked of people, focuses on slightly the wrong thing. The important thing is sometimes, for whatever reason, we are going to have referendums on issues and we need to think about how we can have the most effective debate in the course of that referendum, in order partly that, subsequently, people can be confident in the decision that has been made. What that requires is that we allow people to participate actively, which they did—I think you are right in that—but also that they participate thoughtfully and that they are able to hear the variety of arguments clearly. I do not think that was the case in this referendum and we have overwhelming evidence that that was not the case.

Chair

We are going to touch on a related topic to this later on, unless there is anything that you want to add immediately, Dr Usherwood. Cheryl, very quickly.

Mrs Cheryl Gillan

Could you apply that same critique to the last Welsh referendum about primary powers? Would you say that people did not understand what they were voting on there?

Dr Renwick

I did not follow that referendum very closely. I do not feel I should comment on that one, to be honest.

Paul Flynn

What is fascinating about the Welsh referendum is the fact that it has gone from 26% support to 64%. I don’t think people understood the detail of it, but they understood the kind of set-up we have and they are voting for devolution of the nations of the country. It was an instinctive thing rather than a detailed operation.

Chair

Rather like the European operation.

Mr Andrew Turner

How effective is the current regulatory framework for referendums?

Dr Renwick

There are two key aspects of the framework. One is ensuring that there is a balanced discussion, and the other is ensuring that there is a quality and informed discussion. The current framework does a lot in terms of ensuring balance and does very little indeed in terms of ensuring quality informed discussion. On balance, I think we have the best system in the world for setting the question. The role of the Electoral Commission in that is very effective. We have spending caps to ensure—to a reasonable degree at least—that neither side can vastly outgun the other. We have the restrictions on broadcasters. We have the Section 128 restrictions on purdah, which might well be extended. It might well be too limited, but at least it does something in order to limit the role of Government. We have a great deal of focus on that. There are certainly issues there where we could improve balance, but I think the main issues for me relate to enabling people to find information that is balanced, that is independent, and that is not spun in order to encourage a particular outcome. In contrast to many other places that hold referendums, we have done no thinking about how to promote that.

Dr Usherwood

To echo that, the process side of things is very well handled; there is an efficient and effective mechanism. The substantive support of debate is something that is much less present.

Mr Andrew Turner

What, if any, regulatory issues arose that you feel were permitted?

Dr Renwick

We saw a great deal of misinformation during the campaign from both sides, and there was no adequate mechanism for people to call that out. In other countries either there are systems whereby there are authoritative bodies that can say, “That claim is false. Please stop making it,” and those systems are respected—we see that in a number of countries, such as Ireland, New Zealand and parts of the United States—or there are systems in which, alongside all the information that is being produced by the campaigns, there is also provision for balanced, impartial information, so people have alternative sources of information.

Mr Andrew Turner

Are people not capable of deciding those things for themselves?

Dr Renwick

We saw again and again from polling evidence during and after the campaign that people were very dissatisfied with the quality of the information that they received.

Mr Andrew Turner

Having voted, they were very dissatisfied, are you saying?

Dr Renwick

Many people were very dissatisfied with the quality of the information that was available to them during the campaign.

Mr Andrew Turner

Of course, one builds up a bigger and bigger locus of things that we may have asked but we know that, when it is a general election, you turn up at the polling station, you put your cross in the box and you walk away. How is a referendum different?

Dr Renwick

I would not say that a referendum is substantially different. We have problems with elections as well and we can improve the way that elections—

Chair

It is a problem not confined just to referendums, yes.

Dr Renwick

Yes, but we are talking here about referendums.

Chair

Dr Usherwood, anything on this?

Dr Usherwood

No, I think it has already been said, thank you.

Mr Andrew Turner

In their 2016 joint report, the Law Commission suggested that it would be desirable to produce a set of generic referendum conduct rules that could simply be applied to future referendums. Do you support this?

Dr Renwick

I strongly support that and I think—

Chair

That will do. Dr Usherwood?

Dr Usherwood

Yes, I also support it.

Chair

Thank you. Can we talk about thresholds briefly? How appropriate do you think it is to have a referendum, like the EU referendum, without thresholds?

Dr Usherwood

I will start. This is exactly one of the areas where more of a framework would be very useful indeed. If you try to make a decision about thresholds at the point of having a decision about a specific referendum, then it will become a politicised issue and there will be accusations of trying to gain the result one way or the other. If you have a framework around thresholds then that can be something that is depoliticised and removed from what we are talking about.

Chair

How effectively do you think the referendum that was won by the devolutionists in Scotland in 1978 but did not meet the threshold test—how depoliticised did that issue become as a consequence of that?

Dr Usherwood

In that case, it demonstrated that the threshold was useful as a device for ascertaining the breadth of the support that there was for this proposal. Yes, it did have political consequences, but the contestation of the threshold was not the main thrust of the problem or the politicisation of it. It was part of a bigger, longer-term process.

Ronnie Cowan

You are saying the threshold should or should not have been there?

Dr Usherwood

I was thinking it should be there.

Ronnie Cowan

It should be. 52% of the people who voted in that referendum said they wanted the Scottish Assembly set up, so is that not enough to carry the day? It is enough to carry the day in the EU referendum.

Dr Usherwood

If I think about the EU referendum, I think a threshold requirement would also have been a useful device to have there as well. In terms of issues that have—

Ronnie Cowan

Among the citizens of this family of nations—those of you who bothered to engage, those of you who bothered to vote—the majority of you said you wanted this to happen, but it is not going to happen because so many people did not bother to engage in the first place.

Dr Renwick

I think you are both making good points. I think the UK is almost unique in the ease with which it is possible to pass major constitutional change. The idea that it is possible to have such a major change as leaving the EU on a simple 50% plus one vote would in most countries be thought utterly bizarre. There is a very good reason for saying that we ought to have higher bars to pass, but you are raising the important issue of the democratic legitimacy of that result if the majority seems not to be getting its way. That is a serious issue, particularly in the UK, given that we do not have a tradition of having entrenchment thresholds. One way of getting around that would be to say that, if you have a referendum that does not pass some higher threshold requirement, then you have to have a second referendum in order to confirm the decision. That way you are making the process a little bit harder but you are not ultimately denying the will of the majority.

Ronnie Cowan

Does the threshold depend on the percentage of people who voted in the first place?

Dr Renwick

There are various types of thresholds that you can have. You can have the one as in Scotland in 1979, where you have a threshold that is a percentage of the eligible electorate, or you can have a super majority threshold—

Ronnie Cowan

But does that eligible electorate include people who are dead?

Dr Renwick

There is that danger with that particular way of doing it.

Ronnie Cowan

We have had the situation where people have not been taken off the electoral register yet and are seen as not voting. That election was lost, even with that threshold in there; it was lost by something like 0.05%. I suppose it is because some of those dead people could not get out to vote on that day.

Dr Renwick

Sure. If you are going to have a threshold like that then, clearly, it is important to work on the electoral register, given that that becomes more salient.

Chair

Can I just press on this subject? Dr Usherwood, given that there was a referendum in 1975 to join the Common Market, but there has been no referendum on any of the subsequent treaties, which represented a very substantial change in the way this country was run, which side should the threshold have been on? Given that this was an endorsement of decades of change, shouldn’t the threshold have been on the side of the change rather than the remain side? The threshold should have been on the remain side, not on the leave side, because it is remain that represented the accumulated constitutional change to the United Kingdom.

Dr Usherwood

That is certainly an option that one could consider. Again, if you are thinking about the framework of thresholds, then there is going to be a difference between whether a particular referendum is a proposal for change or a confirmation of the status quo and whether you have some kind of differentiation on the basis of that.

Chair

What do you think of the proposal endorsed by millions of people in a petition that there should have been a threshold on both sides of the referendum question?

Dr Renwick

Then you have a zone of non-decision, which in practice merely means you maintain the status quo. In practice, it is impossible to have such a system. You have a threshold for change away from the status quo.

Chair

How much does that just underline that thresholds can be as political as the question or the context of the question?

Dr Renwick

That is why Simon’s point is so important that you need to have thresholds embedded in a system of standing legislation rather than just deciding the thresholds on any particular issue.

Mr Andrew Turner

That does not solve the problem. You are assuming that because it says you remain, nothing is going to change, whereas many of us thought the opposite was true.

Dr Usherwood

As Alan has already said, on both sides there was uncertainty about what it meant—that the remain side was not the status quo.

Chair

I do not feel there was any uncertainty. That is a simplistic judgment in itself.

Dr Usherwood

In the particular case of the EU referendum, it would have meant the introduction of the renegotiation that the Prime Minister had secured in the spring, so it would have meant a change—

Chair

What is uncertain about whether we should make our own laws or whether those laws should be made by institutions in the European Union? What is the uncertainty about that?

Dr Usherwood

There is an uncertainty about how one then disengages from the EU and what that leads to in terms of a future relationship, whether leaving means that there is a complete rupture of all previous or current commitments, or whether there is a willingness and/or ability to maintain some of those linkages.

Chair

Any further questions on this point?

Paul Flynn

In the referendum there were three members of this Committee who took a very leading role on one side and most of us did not take a leading role, but I think we should look to our impartiality as a Committee. On 13 September 2010, the Government set out their policy and I will read what they said. They said, “Under the UK’s constitutional arrangements, Parliament must be responsible for deciding whether or not to take action in response to a referendum result.” That is a clear statement of Government policy and isn’t that what should be before us now: to look at the result of that referendum, to consider the consequences and for Government to take—Government informed by Parliament—a decision on whether we go ahead with a snapshot of public opinion on 23 June?

Dr Renwick

I do not have a problem with the idea that this referendum result is politically binding, even though it is not legally binding, but it is politically binding in the sense that there is a decision to leave the European Union. Therefore, it seems to me that, even if Parliament is involved in the triggering of Article 50, Parliament ought to feel bound by the referendum result to accept that trigger. Then there is the negotiation process and there is enormous uncertainty over what the result of the negotiation process might be. You cannot claim that there is not uncertainty. That is a clearly partisan statement, to say there is not uncertainty as to the nature of the UK’s departure from the EU. Given that the referendum did not give a steer on the nature of the UK’s departure from the EU, there clearly ought to be a strong role for Parliament, or some other process—potentially a second referendum, but probably Parliament—in deciding the nature of that process.

Dr Poulter

Picking up a bit on a question I raised earlier, you say there needs to be a strong role for Parliament but, given that there may be different interpretations among the majority who voted to leave the European Union as to what that means, how does the interpretation of Parliament of what “leave” is to be interplay with the integrity of the referendum process and with the feeling—or not—that democratic representatives are genuinely listening to the will of the people?

Dr Renwick

The referendum result has not given Parliament a clear steer as to exactly the form of Brexit, and Parliament comprises our elected representatives and, therefore, primarily it is up to Parliament to make that decision. As the process develops, if there is a widespread perception that Parliament is doing this in a way that does not carry public support, and that people feel that Parliament is not reflecting the implicit will that underpinned people’s vote in the referendum, then there might well be pressure for the public to be involved in some further way, whether that would involve another referendum on some kind of deal or whether it would involve other innovative mechanisms of engaging the public.

Chair

How effective do you think the purdah regime was in this referendum?

Dr Renwick

There are clearly issues that the purdah rules. The Section 125 rules, as we are supposed to call them, lasted for four weeks. The intensive campaign clearly lasted for more than four weeks and, therefore, the Government was able to be involved in April and May.

Chair

Yes. How satisfactory was this?

Dr Renwick

That was not satisfactory. The principle of purdah is to maintain equality and to ensure that the Government does not skew the debate, and the Government did clearly try to skew the debate. I don’t think it was effective, so Governments may well learn the lesson that doing this is counterproductive. In that sense, I am not sure if it is an issue that we need to be terribly worried about.

Dr Usherwood

I would agree. The purdah period felt rather short in the context of the long campaign that effectively started at the general election last May. Again, extending purdah would be another—

Chair

How long should purdah be?

Dr Renwick

If I remember, the official referendum campaign was 10 weeks. That was effectively the period of intense campaigning, so something like that might be appropriate. In doing that, you need—as several people in their written evidence have emphasised—to make clear that you do not thereby prevent interventions from organisations, such as the UK Statistics Authority that played an important role in trying to—

Chair

What are the other recommendations? Funnily enough, the Electoral Commission has retreated from their original support for a longer purdah period. What do you observe about that retreat?

Dr Usherwood

The difficulty for the Electoral Commission is that, during purdah, they become the lead point of arbitrating issues. At points in the referendum, where the Electoral Commission found difficulty was being asked to pronounce on questions that they felt were politicised and that a decision would have a particular advancement—

Chair

What particular example do you have in mind?

Dr Usherwood

I think where they were being asked to pronounce about the validity of certain claims by either side and where they had been asked to make a statement about—

Chair

But that is not an issue of purdah, is it?

Dr Usherwood

It is not an issue of purdah but—

Chair

What about the advice of the Electoral Commission being asked by the Bank of England as to whether purdah provisions covered the Bank of England? Was that an appropriate thing for the Electoral Commission to be giving an opinion on?

Dr Renwick

The Electoral Commission’s point on this I think is valid. There need to be clearer rules on purdah. If there were clearer rules, then I would have thought it would be possible to have a longer period that would not create great difficulties with potential de-legitimising problems for the Electoral Commission.

Kate Hoey

Can either of you highlight any problems there were with the administration of the referendum?

Dr Renwick

In terms of the detailed administration, it was conducted well, so far as I can tell. We have talked about the things that are not administered that I think should be but, in terms of what was done, I think the Electoral Commission did a very good job.

Dr Usherwood

I would agree.

Kate Hoey

You have no criticisms at all of the way the Electoral Commission handled the administration or oversaw the whole thing?

Dr Renwick

I would specifically praise the Electoral Commission for doing a good job.

Kate Hoey

Is there any need to make it a more effective regulator or do you think it is fine at the moment?

Dr Renwick

It has concerns certainly over the lack of penalties around Section 125 on purdah, and they are the experts on that. I don’t have a strong view.

Kate Hoey

Is it possible to be the regulator and the key deliverer and not have a conflict there at all?

Dr Usherwood

I think it is. They have managed to do a good job on this referendum and on other previous—

Chair

That was not the question. The question is—

Kate Hoey

Is it appropriate?

Chair

There is a mixture of delivery and regulation; does that sit well with the Electoral Commission? Does that make their job more difficult?

Dr Usherwood

No, I am not sure that it does. I think there is an awareness that they are involved in these different roles, have acted appropriately and that they have the mechanisms in place.

Kate Hoey

Neither of you would give them any additional powers.

Dr Renwick

No. I have talked about the desirability of having greater information provision during the campaign. The Electoral Commission has always taken the view that it should not have that role, and I think it is right to take the view because there could be potential conflict there. In terms of—

Chair

Conflict? What would there be conflict about?

Dr Renwick

The Electoral Commission is concerned that if it had a strong role in providing information, offering views on whether claims being made are correct or not, then that could create the impression that it might be favouring one side or the other.

Chair

What about the enforcement of purdah? We have these rules on purdah but no enforcement mechanism. In other countries electoral commissions have enforcement powers on the question of purdah. Should the Electoral Commission have those powers?

Dr Renwick

The Electoral Commission has certainly indicated that such powers should be looked into, and I would agree with that. I don’t have a strong view on what those enforcement provisions should be.

Chair

Okay. Can I take Ronnie first?

Ronnie Cowan

We have mentioned we want more thoughtful campaigns and we are talking about impartiality. I wonder what role the media have to play in this. Very often we could accuse the media of running roughshod through this.

Dr Renwick

It would be nice if we had newspapers that were not campaign sheets and that saw their role as being to encourage high-quality public debate, without hiding their own views, but that did not just become campaign platforms, but we don’t and we cannot regulate to get newspapers like that so we have to live with what we have.

Ronnie Cowan

But that might well extend to broadcast media as well?

Dr Renwick

There is a big question in broadcast media over the interpretation of due impartiality in this context, and the degree to which due impartiality requires a very simple notion of balance and the degree to which, within that, it is possible for the broadcasters to call out campaigners on both sides, when they are making claims that are not sustainable. My view is that the broadcasters could do rather more on that front than they did in this referendum.

Ronnie Cowan

Would the BBC be a good place to start, seeing as it is paid for by the taxpayer?

Dr Renwick

Yes. We have the same rules that apply across all broadcasters but, clearly, the BBC is the most important.

Chair

Can I ask a question about that? The BBC was more or less reduced to reporting the competing claims of the two campaigns. This led to some complaints that the BBC was not evaluating claims. There were some exceptional programmes, like “More or Less?” on the “PM” programme but, where they were doing this, this became very disputed by the two campaigns about the validity of the claims they were making. Is the BBC better off just reporting the competing claims, or to what extent should we put the head of the BBC into the noose of making a judgment about the competing claims?

Dr Renwick

There needs to be some evaluation. At times there was a conflation of balance and impartiality, where we simply present the two sides and we don’t give a commentary on it. There were points of evaluation but it was very limited. Again, the difficulty is that modern news values make it hard to carve out the space in which to have the kinds of debates that explore issues in the round in a way that I think gets to the different kinds of perspectives. Often one of the challenges in a referendum is that campaigners will be coming from fundamentally different starting points, which makes it hard to evaluate or integrate issues, which means that necessarily you have to build up quite a scattered—

Chair

To place an obligation on the BBC, or another public body, to try to evaluate these claims would be putting that body into an extremely difficult place. The only body that really was in that position was the UK Statistics Authority. How good a job did they do?

Dr Renwick

They did some job but we have to think much more carefully about how to design a body that can do that job well. Just having a bunch of experts getting together, and arbitrating on what is true or false, would be very problematic in the context of referendum campaigns. One way of doing this, for example, is that you have a group of experts but they are closely engaged throughout their work with some form of citizens’ panel. The citizens’ panel—a group of randomly selected citizens—works with those experts in order to explore what claims are regarded as being plausible and reasonable.

Chair

Is it also necessary for general elections?

Dr Renwick

We could introduce these sorts of things in general elections, yes.

Dr Usherwood

If you create a standing mechanism, then yes.

Chair

I will take Cheryl first and I will get back to you.

Mrs Cheryl Gillan

Were there any lessons to be learned from the timing of the referendum? Obviously, the consequences and the fallout from the result of the referendum, after the Prime Minister attached himself to one side of the debate, were enormous. Are there any pros and cons about, say, holding a referendum alongside a general election? Would that be a preferable time to hold referenda?

Dr Renwick

There are both pros and cons. The advantage of holding something at the same time as a general election is—

Chair

Or indeed local elections. There was a great row as to whether this referendum might be held on the same day as the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland elections and that caused a great deal of controversy.

Dr Renwick

Absolutely. The advantage of holding a referendum at the same time is that you increase turnout. The disadvantage is that you do not have the opportunity to focus on the issues in the referendum or in the election; one or the other swamps the other.

Mrs Cheryl Gillan

Surely people are capable of concentrating on both.

Dr Usherwood

Even if they are—

Dr Renwick

I think they can be. There is an issue about whether one set of issues rephrases the other set of issues; that you start making decisions on a basis of: if I am thinking about the other vote I am casting that might have an impact. There is also a practical point that often the issues that we are considering in a referendum don’t sit comfortably within the timeframes that we have for other referenda. Again, can we align a referendum timescale when it might be uncertain at what point a decision is possible?

Mrs Cheryl Gillan

What would be the advantages? You said there were pros and cons. What are the pros?

Dr Renwick

Of which side?

Dr Usherwood

Of having them at the same time.

Dr Renwick

Concurrent?

Mrs Cheryl Gillan

Of having them concurrent, yes.

Dr Renwick

The advantage of having them at the same time is primarily that you increase turnout.

Mrs Cheryl Gillan

That is it?

Dr Renwick

You make it a bit cheaper, I guess, as well.

Chair

How do broadcasters ensure balance between yes and no in the referendum, when for example, as we had in this referendum, most political parties who might be taking part in the elections are on one side of the referendum?

Dr Renwick

You make a good point.

Paul Flynn

Could we have a look at that good point? The broadcasters are under a duty of balance—it says so in their charters. We talk about the BBC having its head in a noose, but compare it to the saintly impartiality of the editors of The Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mail, and the Daily Express, who throughout the campaign were propaganda sheets. The broadcasters do a very difficult job and we owe a great debt, particularly to the BBC, for that impartiality.

Chair

Your question is?

Paul Flynn

My question is: why are you being so biased and abusing your position as Chair to carry on with your campaign? You should take an impartial view yourself on this. Certainly, if you look at bias in the referendum, it was the newspapers and the propagandists and the people who went round in a red bus with a lie on the side of it.

Chair

I think the questions are for the witnesses.

Paul Flynn

Yes. The question for the witnesses is where—

Chair

Can I just take in Kelvin for a moment?

Paul Flynn

Okay.

Kelvin Hopkins

My friend, Mr Flynn, has just suggested that there was propaganda, but surely there were newspapers on both sides of the argument; that in a sense was balanced in the media. Would our witnesses not accept that sometimes people can be biased without realising they are being biased because they think, “Well, this is common sense, isn’t it?”, and it is not common sense; it is a political position?

Dr Renwick

Absolutely, and that is why you have to be very careful, when you are designing the sort of thing I am describing, about trying to build impartial information into the process. I am not suggesting for a moment that it is easy to do this—something like the BBC or the UK Statistics Authority is not set up to perform these very difficult functions—but there are lessons to be learned from around the world, as to how to do these things better, and we should be trying to learn those lessons.

Kelvin Hopkins

The great John Maynard Keynes said we are all entitled to our own opinions, not to our own facts. It is very important to use facts in an argument.

Dr Renwick

Yes. In most aspects of life we have forums of adjudication with what is true or false; we don’t in politics. That is something of an anomaly.

Paul Flynn

This Committee has been greatly exercised by the role of Government, partly because of the strong views of members of the Committee. As someone who never read the bulk of the Government leaflets anyway—like the vast majority of the country—do you think the Government’s information was influential compared with seeing what happened on the 6 o’clock news every night with the lie on the red bus and what happened in the daily papers? What determined and influenced opinion? Was it the Government’s role or was it something outside of that?

Dr Renwick

It is very difficult to say. If we look at the media coverage of the campaign, then it is certainly the case that in the newspapers the media was skewed towards leave, overall. If you look at the public opinion polling that has been done, there is a lot of evidence that people were unhappy with the role that the Government played. Given these things, it is certainly plausible to think that the Government’s interventions might well have been counterproductive from their point of view and people resented the fact that the Government was getting involved in that way. However, we do not have good enough evidence to be sure that that was the case.

Paul Flynn

The other question that came up again, and occupied a lot of time in this Committee, was the impartiality of the Civil Service. What do you think of the intervention by Nicholas Macpherson, wherein he published a document in his own name, which was advice to the Government—a big, rare event for a civil servant to publish his own advice—as a blatant interference in the Scottish referendum? Does that strike you as an inappropriate way for civil servants to behave?

Dr Renwick

If we are having a referendum campaign, then the Government should be impartial in that campaign and any intervention that takes away from that is problematic. The Scottish referendum was an unusual one, because there were two Governments on the two sides and it was reasonably fair for the two of them to argue. However, in most referenda that is not the case and the Government should remain impartial.

Paul Flynn

This Committee took the view that the intervention by Nicholas Macpherson was an improper one; that was the view of this Committee. Do you think there were similar interventions by civil servants in the last one that were also improper?

Dr Renwick

The documents that were published, particularly by the Treasury, should not have been published. They contained claims that were clearly not justifiable. Even if they had contained only claims that were justifiable, the fact that they were being made by the Government and, particularly, where money was being spent on sending that pamphlet out to all households, I think was inappropriate.

Paul Flynn

There is clear evidence of many people being disillusioned about the results of the referendum and changing their minds since. Quite rightly, the public are asking us, “Who do we trust?” Do we need someone like the National Statistics body to adjudicate on this, or someone that can be trusted not to repeat the lies of the propagandists on both sides but to give clear, impartial, objective guidance on what the truth is?

Dr Renwick

That is the most important lesson that we ought to be drawing from this referendum, that, irrespective of the side that you were on in that referendum, it ought to be clear that the quality of this campaign was very low; a lot of misinformation was put out by both sides; many voters felt they did not have access to balanced, reasoned information and I think that is very problematic.

Paul Flynn

A final question: during the AV referendum, when I crossed Vauxhall Bridge every morning, there was an advertisement there saying, “Those in favour of AV are in favour of cutting money for our soldiers in Afghanistan and for helping babies in special units in hospitals.” It was not entirely what the issue at stake was. Wasn’t that an example of a referendum that took place where the public voted in deep ignorance of the issue and both sides, again, used propaganda, and the result was one that was nothing at all to do with the issue of democracy involved?

Dr Renwick

Absolutely. In the same year, New Zealand had a referendum on the electoral system in which there were five options available for voters to choose from. There was an impartial information campaign in which a group of experts were brought together to provide information on these options, on the criteria that people might use to judge among these options, and on how people might judge the options relative to those criteria. That provided a very solid basis of information. No one criticised the impartiality of that information. There were no complaints at all. It encouraged a campaign that was much more thoughtful, much more engaged with the actual issues. Whether we could do that in the UK, given the different circumstances, is far from certain but we could certainly learn important lessons from that case.

Paul Flynn

Thank you very much. I am very grateful to you.

Chair

Anything to add, Dr Usherwood?

Dr Usherwood

Nothing, no.

Chair

Thank you very much indeed. Can I ask one final thing, which is coming back to this question about the conflict between representative and direct democracy? One of the proposals that we are entertaining is whether the non-Government campaign in a referendum should be required to brief the Civil Service on what they expect to happen in the event of a vote against the Government’s position, so that the Government is better prepared to deal with the eventualities rather than the Government banning civil servants from giving any thought to the alternative that the Government does not want. What is your thought about that?

Dr Usherwood

There is merit in that suggestion. Two issues strike me immediately. One is: is that advice also connected to what that campaign would be sharing publicly, that people would know that then this is what is envisaged. The second, bigger issue is that, again, a referendum is not an election and so there will not necessarily be a change of personnel in the event that that non-Government campaign wins that vote. So, will they be in a position to then require or oblige the Government—which will presumably have lost in this situation—to follow that advice? Therefore, again, there is a question about how much commitment is built into that. There is always value in planning and thinking about what the consequences are. I think we have seen that in this referendum, where we have gone from a relatively standing start, which has then created an additional period of—

Chair

As Mr Cowan alluded to in his earlier question, in the Scottish independence referendum there was a very clear, 600-page document produced by the SNP in Scotland.

Ronnie Cowan

The White Paper was 670 pages and addressed 651 different questions based on the premise that you vote "Yes" and you return an SNP Government, and that way people knew what they were voting for.

Chair

Whatever the quality of that document, which was disputed, at least the Government in Westminster had some idea of what was going to happen, at least of what they were intending to happen. Should both sides of the campaign be required to produce such comprehensive papers, which can be evaluated by the Civil Service and used as preparation for either eventuality?

Dr Renwick

As Simon said, planning is clearly appropriate. The difficulty is that Vote Leave was not going to form a Government and, therefore, the status of that document is different. I agree that the campaigns should have done as much as possible to clarify what they wanted to happen after the result that they wanted, if it did happen. But it was not in the power of Vote Leave to decide that. There is difficulty—

Chair

You are certainly capturing the understanding that we had at Vote Leave, where we found it very difficult to communicate with the Government about those things. Are there any further questions? Thank you very much to both of you. It has been very informative. Examination of witnesses

Witnesses

Will Straw and Paul Comer.

Chair

We will endeavour to ask swift questions. If you will give us swift answers, that will be very helpful. Please could you identify yourselves for the record?

Will Straw

Will Straw, former Executive Director of Britain Stronger in Europe.

Paul Comer

Paul Comer, the former Compliance Director.

Mr Andrew Turner

As one of the two designated campaigns in the referendum, how effective did you find the existing regulatory framework for referenda?

Will Straw

Can I start by thanking Mr Chairman and the Committee for inviting us to give evidence here this morning? Whatever side of the debate you were on, this is a really important inquiry that we want to contribute to and help the Committee with their findings. Also, a personal thanks to Ms Hoey. Ms Hoey has been my MP for the majority of my life so it is a great pleasure to be here this morning.

Chair

She never misses a vote.

Will Straw

Indeed. Our view was that the administration of the regulation in the main worked well. We had a good relationship with the Electoral Commission; we were in touch with them on a regular basis, had regular catch ups and were able to talk through with them some of the concerns we had. In our submission we touched on a couple of issues where we felt, potentially, there was some room for improvement of the law and of the administration. One is around the working-together arrangements, which were at times confusing to some of the campaigns on the remain side and where we believe there could be room for greater clarity from the Electoral Commission about what constituted working together and what did not. As we outlined in our submission—and have heard from others, including the previous witnesses, and from some of the other submissions sent to the Committee, including from Full Fact—we also had some concerns around whether there could be an improvement in the way that claims made by both campaigns could be tested and examined by an independent body, possibly the Electoral Commission. I would be delighted to elaborate on either of those.

Chair

Mr Comer?

Paul Comer

All I would add is that there are some minor areas where the rules that are applied to referenda have been pretty much taken straight across from existing law on elections and where looking to adapt those slightly for referenda, going forward, may benefit things. For example, simply on the periods to make payments after a campaign has finished, they are the same as they are for elections, 30 and 60 days, whereas, when you are running a national campaign, often your suppliers are very large and have longer billing periods and 60 and 90 days might make more sense. So, just some very minor suggestions where the rules from elections I think could benefit from looking to see whether they are fully appropriate for referenda.

Mr Andrew Turner

How could the existing regulatory system for referenda be improved?

Will Straw

With regard to the working-together arrangements, it is more a question of clarity from the Electoral Commission. In some instances, when we asked for greater clarity, they said, “It is for you to interpret whether you are working together with another organisation and, if you are, to sign a formal working-together arrangement and, therefore, account for their expenditure as part of your £7 million regulated spending limit.” That does not necessarily give you the guidance that you need. One area of concern was around the extent to which in a local town centre or village where we had a Stronger In stall and another remain campaign—perhaps a political party’s remain campaign had their own stall—we could put the two tables together and hand out each other’s literature. It was not clear from the guidance whether that would constitute working together or not. In the end, because the sums of money were relatively trivial for the paper being handed out, we suggested that, so long as the tables were kept independently branded, there was no harm in terms of the volunteers—who often were a member of a political party and had signed up to be in our campaign—acting together. However, some clarity on some of those practical considerations would be a help. In terms of the veracity of claims, we obviously have followed some of the criticism of both campaigns. Unless members want us to, I don’t want to rehearse the arguments about whether our claims were better than their claims but it was our intention, at every point, to inform the public. On the literature we produced we always sourced the claims we were making, so that voters could go and look at that source and find out whether they wanted more information or not. We would have had no problem at all in submitting our literature to an independent body, perhaps the Electoral Commission, for them to decide whether what we were saying was accurate or not. We certainly felt that where taxpayers’ money was being spent—for example with the election addresses, which were mailed to every elector in the country for the referendum campaign broadcast, which took primetime spots on national television, and indeed the Electoral Commission’s own address, which included statements from both of the lead campaigns—we would have been very happy to have submitted information, and perhaps that could have improved the public’s views of the claims being made in the campaign.

Mr Andrew Turner

Mr Comer?

Paul Comer

I don’t have anything to add.

Mr Andrew Turner

What were your impressions of the designation process and how could it be improved?

Paul Comer

Our only comment about the designation process is that really it was handled very well by the Electoral Commission. Obviously, where there is competition for the role of lead campaign they face a very difficult evaluation. In terms of the time length for it, in our submission we are simply saying that four weeks may be overly generous for campaigns to prepare their submissions to become a lead campaign because the reality is for a national campaign, if you are intending to do that you will have been preparing your submission a long time before that. That could possibly be shortened; however, the two weeks to determine who gets it seems perfectly appropriate and was necessary in this case. The Electoral Commission could benefit the process in the future by being clearer about what sort of criteria they use to evaluate between those campaigns contending to be lead. There was certainly some chatter. That wasn’t necessary for the remain side—we were the only application that went in—but for the leave side there was certainly a lot of chatter in online circles and blogs afterwards. The GO movement were saying they felt a bit robbed and that they were not clear why they had not got it, as opposed to Vote Leave. I would not question the judgment that was made by the EC on that, but just giving clarity to those bidders before they put their applications in may have helped those different campaigns be clearer in their applications.

Chair

Before I ask my question can I just declare formally that I was a board director of Vote Leave? How sufficient was the purdah period for the EU referendum?

Will Straw

We felt it was sufficient but as the lead campaign we would have worked with whatever rules Parliament set.

Chair

How effective do you think was the application of purdah?

Will Straw

We thought it was effective. We had no contact with Government civil servants and, during that four-week period, the Government did not produce any reports of the kind it had done beforehand. In the case of special advisers, who were actively engaged in the campaign, all of them that were engaged in the campaign were paid by the remain campaign during purdah for the proportion of their time that they were working on the campaign. For example, Craig Oliver, the No.10 Director of Communications, was spending the majority of his time on the campaign, although not all of it. We paid 80% of his salary during the four-week purdah period and the Government paid 20% so he could cover other Government business as it was taking place. We felt that worked well. It meant that there was a political operation that was playing an active role in the campaign but very much as part of the Stronger In campaign, whereas the impartiality of the Civil Service was not undermined in any way. That was important to me personally, having been a civil servant at the start of my career and having been a civil servant in the Treasury during the 2005 general election, when it was quite proper and important that there was a purdah period and that civil servants were not affected by it. We were quite clear on the campaign that there should not be any engagement with the Civil Service during that time.

Chair

What would be the consequences if the purdah period had been 10 weeks as opposed to four weeks?

Will Straw

From our point of view, I don’t think it would have been any different. During that period we would have extended the amount of time that the special advisers were in a sense partial employees of the campaign; we would have adjusted our communications grids accordingly and the activity would have been carried out by the campaign rather than the Government during the first six weeks of that period. That would have been unprecedented, if it had been 10 weeks, in relation to other referenda that we have had in the UK, and to general elections, but, as a matter of administration, it would have been absolutely fine from our point of view.

Chair

What were those special advisers doing for the campaign before they joined your campaign?

Will Straw

They were working on Government business but we would have regular meetings with them to share information. For example, we knew that the Treasury was producing its reports on different aspects of the debate. We knew what day it was going to be, but the special advisers in the Treasury, and indeed in No. 10, would work on that with their officials.

Chair

How much should I infer from your answers that, in fact, those special advisers were able to effectively work for the campaign as full-time special advisers up until the purdah period? Otherwise, you would not be telling us that you needed to employ them for the full 10-week period, if they were superfluous to your campaign.

Will Straw

No. When the Government was in purdah, those people who had very close relationships with the senior politicians in the Government, who were on the remain side, would have been completely muted if they had not been brought into the campaign, so it was appropriate—

Chair

That would imply that they were not muted before; they were campaigning—

Will Straw

They were campaigning for the Government.

Chair

While they were special advisers working for the Government before the purdah period. That is the implication of what you are saying.

Will Straw

They were certainly campaigning; they were campaigning for the Government in the period before purdah, because the Government had set out its position following the February European Council. During that period there was a clear delineation between the activities of the campaign and separately of the Government, both, of course, campaigning for a remain outcome, at least for those members of the Government that were on the remain side.

Chair

How appropriate do you think it is for special advisers to be proxy campaigners for one side of a referendum when they are being paid by the taxpayer to be civil servants?

Will Straw

I don’t think there is any difference in the pre-purdah period between what the special advisers were doing and what the whole of the Government was doing. The Government’s position was to support a remain outcome after the European Council. I read the evidence that Jeremy Heywood—

Chair

Can I ask about the overlap period when there were devolved elections taking place and the referendum campaigns were also underway? How did the proximity of other elections and the referendum date affect the way you operated?

Will Straw

Our view was that it was problematic. The decision of when the referendum should take place was a matter for the Government, but the campaign’s view was that it was problematic because of the overlap with the local and indeed national—

Chair

What are you recommending in respect of future referenda?

Will Straw

When I was asked my opinion I always said that I thought an autumn referendum would be preferable, because that would avoid the overlap with the local elections. I was concerned about students not being in their universities during the referendum. That was one of the concerns that the National Union of Students, and other organisations concerned with students’ engagement in the democratic process, made plain to us. I also felt that more time would be needed organisationally, because the remain campaign had formed in the summer of 2015 whereas the leave campaign, under the guise of Business for Britain, had been going for a number of years previously. However, it was not my decision when the referendum took place. That was a matter for the Government and for Parliament. We did feel that during those three weeks there were a couple of problems. First of all, the public, particularly in Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales and London, were poorly served because in those three weeks their politicians in the main, and their media, were focused on their important local or national elections rather than in the EU campaign, so in a sense they only had seven weeks of that regulated period, rather than 10. However, some political parties, whose main reason for being was to leave the European Union, campaigned very hard on Europe during the first three weeks of the regulated period. As a campaign, we did not register with the Electoral Commission to be an active participant in those elections. We thought it would be improper. Therefore, there wasn’t a countervailing story in those first three weeks about the European questions and we thought that was problematic.

Chair

I am still a bit confused about one aspect of your answers on these two topics. You clearly think the 10-week referendum period was very important for campaigning but you don’t think that any restrictions should apply to the Government until the last four weeks. Why is this?

Will Straw

My view is that it doesn’t matter what the length of the periods are. That is a matter for Parliament and the Government. As long as there is a level playing field the campaigns will move their plans accordingly. It would not have mattered to us whether the regulated period had been 14 weeks, 10 weeks or six weeks; that was the period where we had to focus our campaign and focus our £7 million regulated campaign budget. Our view was that, since the decision was taken that it was to be 10 weeks, there was a problem because the first three weeks overlapped with the local and national elections.

Chair

My question is going back to the purdah question. If the 10-week referendum campaign is so important in its entirety—and it clearly is according to the answer you have given to me about the overlap with other elections—why is it not important to have purdah for 10 weeks in order to create that level playing field, which you clearly think is very important?

Will Straw

It would not have mattered to the campaign how long the purdah period had been but there was a precedent in previous referenda, and indeed in general elections, to have a shorter period.

Chair

You would not object to a longer purdah period?

Will Straw

From my point of view, no, and I think from the campaign’s point of view, no, because we were working on the rules that were set.

Chair

Okay. Thank you very much. Moving on, what impact did individual electoral registration have on the campaign?

Will Straw

In the main it was a positive development but there were some teething difficulties, particularly for younger voters and for overseas voters. The issue for younger voters was in many instances being used to the head of household putting their name on the electoral register, and therefore having concerns that they had not been registered. I think that was mainly overcome by the strong public campaign from the Government, from the Electoral Commission, and from both the leave and remain campaigns to encourage people to vote. It was tougher for people who were overseas—Paul might elaborate on that in a moment—but our view was that it was not just the registration that was the issue; it was also registering for postal and proxy votes. The timing of the referendum, particularly for students, was problematic because they had been in residence at universities in the May local and national elections and in most universities had then left campus by the time of the June referendum, so merely registering to vote was not enough if they were not going to be at the address that they had stated on their return to the Electoral Commission. Indeed, had they been travelling or otherwise away from wherever their home was, they would need a postal vote or proxy vote as well. The system for applying for postal votes and proxy votes is rather more antiquated than the rather good system for registering to vote in the first instance.

Chair

Your clear message is: generally, if you are going to have a referendum, have it in the autumn and not following elections. That is a very strong point of view from you.

Will Straw

That was my view. You could have it earlier in the year as well, so you did not get into the cycle of the local and national elections, but I certainly think that there is an issue with having it in those summer months.

Chair

Thank you. Kate Hoey.

Kate Hoey

Before I ask my question, Dr Usherwood said earlier that, in his view and in the paper they produced to us, an issue of such magnitude as this should not have been subject to a referendum. Is that the view of your organisation?

Will Straw

No. We certainly respect the will of the people. On a question as significant as this there is a case for having a referendum in the first instance, so we have no concerns about that.

Kate Hoey

I presume you would not agree with him either when he said that the public did not really understand the issues.

Will Straw

I cannot claim to speak on behalf of the whole of the public. There were some people who were very engaged in the debate and took a lot of time and trouble to form their own judgments and, inevitably, with any political questions, there will be others who form their view based on just a few snatched conversations with friends or what they see on the TV or on social media. What I do think is that our campaign sought to inform the public and it is for others to judge whether we succeeded in doing it.

Kate Hoey

We have talked about the regulatory framework and so on, but, administratively, did you come up against any real problems with the administration of the referendum?

Will Straw

As I said in the answer to Mr Turner, generally we felt that the administration was good. Certainly, of the election itself, the administration of the polling stations, the postal-vote system and so on. We had no complaints at all. I don’t know if there is anything you want to elaborate on, Paul.

Paul Comer

Included in our submission were a couple of picky suggestions, one of which—and you may touch on this later—was about the role of the Electoral Commission as both provider and regulator. All we would simply observe is that, where we were posing regulatory questions of a possibly thorny nature to the Electoral Commission, clearly their chair was recusing them from any involvement in the determination of those because of their role as the Chief Accounting Officer. So, there is just a question as to whether in future referenda their role as chair of regulator should take precedence and someone else acts as Chief Accounting Officer, so that they can apply their judgment to those sorts of questions.

Chair

Was there any occasion where you were asking the Electoral Commission to do something, or to give a ruling on something, and they declined to do so?

Paul Comer

No. But just for example—and we touched on this in our submission—the question of whether some of the campaigns seeking to become permitted participants are fully independent from other campaigns or not, and whether they are linked or not, raised all sorts of questions about the working-together provisions, about whether they were properly constituted bodies and so on. Also, feeling that the chair was not there to help guide the senior staff at the Electoral Commission just raised the question as to whether it is more appropriate that they recuse themselves from those sorts of decisions to be the Chief Accounting Officer, or whether they should actually be applying their judgment to those issues instead and have someone else as Chief Accounting Officer. To us, in terms of the administration of the election, it seems they are very well run and there hasn’t been much contention about any elections for a long time.

Kate Hoey

I had better declare my interest, too, that I was involved in campaigning on the leave side. I am sure you all remember it, but what impact did the crash of the Government’s electoral registration website have on campaigning? What did you feel about that?

Will Straw

It was clearly unfortunate that it happened. It would be better if the Government servers had had more capacity to deal with the spike in demand that evening. However, I think the decision to extend by 48 hours meant that everybody who was trying to register on that evening got the chance to do so. I am sure that nobody involved in the referendum would dispute the right of people to register to vote.

Paul Comer

The only thing I would add about that is I certainly think it does flag a tangential issue. The overall impact was marginal in terms of the size of the electorate, but what it did flag is the number of multiple applications required to be on the electoral register. There were apocryphal comments from some electoral registration officers that two-thirds of the applications that they were getting were from people that were already on the electoral register, at a time when they were under pressure to get the register accurate for a vote. There must be some way of solving that better for the future, where people can check to see whether they are already on without having to go through a full application process.

Chair

How clear do you think the Electoral Commission’s communication inviting registration was to try to avoid that? Anecdotally, there were plenty of examples of people thinking they had to make a separate registration in order to be able to vote in this referendum. What did you think about their communication?

Paul Comer

I thought their communication in the round was pretty good. It is very simple in outline, but, as soon as you get into an individual case, if they are anything other than being in the place that they live for quite some time and are going to be there on polling day, then you start to get into all sorts of complexities about do they apply for postals or proxies and all the rest very quickly. It does need to be quite simple in headline. I thought their communication wasn’t bad around it, but I do think some simple method in the future where people can check, because at the moment many councils have moved to a system where if you e-mail them to say, “Can I confirm that I am on the electoral register?” you get a holding e-mail back saying, “Yes, we will respond to you within five days”, which is the normal response handling.

Chair

When you went to register, if it said, “Check: are you already registered?” and you put in the information to see if you are already registered, it would have been easy to prevent?

Paul Comer

It could have been. There might be issues about identifying yourself and not being able to discover whether other people are registered or not, but there must be some way around this. The example that I mentioned in the submission was that I have a little app on my phone that allows me to exchange between pounds and other currencies. That has to meet the financial regulations about money laundering, and I can do that simply by taking a photograph of my driver’s licence or my passport and it goes through and it is automatically identified. There are ways to validate who you are that do not require this, so there must be solutions to it.

Will Straw

I would encourage the Committee to look not just at the registration, but also at the postal votes and proxy votes. I think that was an issue and the administration there is some way behind in terms of postal registration.

Paul Comer

What I would flag on that, just very quickly, is that it is very easy to get yourself registered now through the online system, but if you want to put in a postal or proxy vote application—if you are an overseas voter, for example—then you have to be in the situation of printing out an actual form, signing it, scanning it back in and sending it. That is if you are not using the old system of putting it in the post and then you get into real time delay issues around that. Again, there must be a technological solution to validate people’s identities and allow them to apply for postal and proxy votes.

Ronnie Cowan

If that is to do with voting systems, you have come to the wrong place.

Chair

Is that a question?

Ronnie Cowan

No, I am just stating a fact.

Chair

Would you like to ask a question?

Ronnie Cowan

Yes. Talking about the machinery of Government, how appropriate was the role that the Government played during the EU referendum campaign?

Will Straw

Prior to the purdah period, I thought the Government had an important role to play, since it had a position on the outcome of the referendum. That was separate from the campaign. The way they conducted themselves is, in a sense, their business and for Jeremy Heywood and others to be accountable to, as I know they have before this Committee. But we had no concerns about the conduct of the Government in the referendum period.

Ronnie Cowan

There were issues that arose from documents being produced by the Government Departments, which may have been seen to have been briefing on the side of the remain campaign.

Will Straw

We did not have a concern with that. There is clear precedent in previous referendums, not least the Scottish referendum, where the UK Government produced documents on one side, the Scottish Government produced documents on the other, going back to the 1975 referendum, when the Government produced documents in favour of its position.