Mr HOWELL (United Kingdom)
First, I should like to apologise on behalf of my colleague, Dame Cheryl Gillan, the rapporteur for this issue, who is unable to be present today because of a family illness. I thank the Secretariat and the Chair of the Committee on Political Affairs and Democracy for their invaluable assistance.
I shall not speak for too long. The Venice Commission will follow and it will go into detail. There are also a lot of people who want to speak in this debate and I want to make time for them. I just point out that we have not prepared a commentary on the Brexit referendum in the UK, the independence referendum in Scotland, the referendum in Catalonia, the various Irish referendums or any others. Rather, the report helps set out a framework in which a referendum can take place.
Referendums have increasingly been used to resolve issues in democracies around the world. The greatest number concern constitutional matters, but they can cover questions of self-determination, international agreements, moral issues, other policy issues and one-off decisions. Increasingly, challenges to referendum processes and their fairness have been raised in several countries. They have covered a range of issues, including the framing of the questions, the franchise, finance, thresholds, the accuracy of accompanying information and even the legality of holding a referendum itself. These are discussed in more detail in the report.
The Council of Europe's expert body on constitutional matters, the European Commission for Democracy through Law, is commonly known as the Venice Commission. Its code of good practice on referendums was adopted in 2007, and this Assembly called on member States to comply with it in November 2008. That was followed by an endorsement from the Committee of Ministers. Since that date, there has been an increase in the use of referendums and in technological evelopments that have dramatically changed the democratic landscape, through the explosion of social media and the increased access to information for voters. The code could therefore benefit from some revision and updating to reflect those changes, so that it can continue to provide modernised guidelines for all our member States.
Following revision of the code, the report suggests that member States should ensure improved adherence to the code to enhance any referendum process. In addition, we are actively encouraging information exchanges between countries to enable gains from sharing good practice and we propose greater citizen participation, including through the possible use of citizen assemblies. The report reinforces the good working relationship between the Council of Europe and the Venice Commission, and makes a positive contribution to the continuing development of our democracies. It has been prepared with the knowledge and co-operation of the Venice Commission, and it combined the research resources of the Council of Europe and the Venice Commission. We have also been expertly advised by Dr Alan Renwick of the constitution unit of University College London and Professor Nikos Alivizatos of the faculty of law of the University of Athens. On behalf of the rapporteur and the whole Committee on Political Affairs and Democracy, I would like to offer my grateful thanks to them all.
We are also grateful that we have with us today the President of the Venice Commission, Mr Gianni Buquicchio and that he will make what I am sure will be an excellent presentation - he shared it with us in advance, and it will cover all the main issues raised by the report and the draft resolution. With that, I will sit down and allow Professor Buquicchio to take the floor.
***
Mr HOWELL (United Kingdom) –
This has been a good debate and I thank all the participants who have contributed. I have been struck by the kindness of the comments and by the cross-party agreement to the report. It has been particularly good that participants from Switzerland have commented on it. When Gianni Buquicchio began, he said that the Venice Commission had been critical of most referendums, and we have heard from speakers who have been equally critical of most referendums. I hope that my United Kingdom colleagues will forgive me for not rising to the challenge of trying to solve the problem of Brexit in one go at this sitting. I was also struck by the comments about the dangers of referendums, which I take to heart.
One of the biggest challenges we face is fake news. We need to make the information available more reliable and more neutral so that people can take reliable decisions, and we need to challenge the use of social media in this regard. I was struck by the comment that we need to make referendums respectful of the way that parliamentary democracy continues, and the remarks about enhancing parliamentary democracy. I will stop on that note because there is other business to come. I thank all participants who have contributed to the debate.
