A bid to have a referendum on assisted dying proposals may have been defeated, but an MHK is still keen to see the Island's referendum laws updated.
Douglas Central member Chris Thomas has been granted permission to work on a Private Members' Bill which would introduce new referendum laws.
He told Manx Radio's Sian Cowper why:
Hi, I'm Sean, one of the news editors at Monks Radio and the word referendum has been in the news quite a lot in recent weeks, so just what are the island's referendum laws and why does one MHK think they need to be updated? Douglas central MHK, Chris Thomas has been given leave to introduce a private members bill that would bring in new referendum laws on the Isle of Man. I asked him why. Referendum law has been needing updating for decades and 2016 to 2019-20. We engaged a consultant from Cabinet office in my time. I organised that. We thought we were going to update referendum law as part of the elections act before the last general election. It was decided somewhere above my pay grade not to do so. I've worked with the Cabinet office, Minister of the Attorney General's chambers, the officers and the Crown election staff in the last couple of months and hope now can come back with a bill to begin its passage in the House of Keys in November, so the law won't have changed by November but I hope over the summer to use the drafting instructions that were left to us by the consultant to actually put together a bill which will put out for consultation over the summer. I haven't had my first meeting yet with the drafter but I'm hoping it's possible. Well the Isle of Man hasn't had a national referendum before. Why is this such a priority? Well eventually somebody will get a referendum through and it might even be in the context of assisted dying legislation because there's a long way to go with that. The first person to move through referendum was Mr Delaney back in 1980. I was the most recent back in June 2016 for profound reform of the legislative council. I got eight votes. He got ten votes. Eventually somebody will get the magic number of votes to have a referendum because the people are sensible. The people make the right choices. The assisted dying legislation has been done so badly. In its process it should never have been a private members bill. Dr Anderson was obsessed with it being a private members bill I think or somebody in government made the wrong decision. The committee didn't look at the issues in a wide enough way and so therefore eventually sometimes the referendum becomes necessary. As Mrs Thatcher put it back in the 1970s when she agreed to work with Harold Wilson despite the failings, potential failings of referendum to rescue a bad situation and that's where we probably are now with assisted dying. Well you touched on there perhaps referendum not quite being done with assisted dying. Do you think it is something that could come up again? I do think so yes conceivably somebody would even walk up on Tim Woodhill this Friday of bringing a petition later on in the year to do it because that's how we got referendum legislation originally. It was a mother's union walking up to Tim Woodhill saying they didn't agree with the people in the House of Keys and Tim Wood on something and they wanted their say the whole point is we are only the representatives of people referendum are divisive they're difficult they're hard to encapsulate but that to work despite their constraints is something that we need to have legislation for and I'm delighted that the House of Keys has given me leave to introduce some changes so that we can tackle the problems that were identified very clearly by Mr Turner five years ago now. We heard lots of talk yesterday about this issue of who would set the question how would the wording of that whose job it would be is that something you'll be looking at with this? So it's about the holding and conduct of referendum and the holding part is perhaps making the electoral commission be there in place of the Deansters because the Deansters head incidents for it. I'm very frustrated that that issue wasn't raised earlier with the chief minister. Mr Glover had a go but he was denied permission to delay the clause wrongly by 13 votes to 11 and it could have gone that was just bad a form so that issue is still kicking around. There are also issues about campaign financing there are also issues about how the question is set. Basically there are general issues about referendum which my bill can do with and then there are specific issues about the assisted dying referendum yesterday and they should have been dealt with and they still could be dealt with in the legislative council or through another means. And one of the MHKs who spoke during the debate yesterday was the Cabinet office minister who said that there there are plans essentially to update some laws in this area and she offered to work with you instead of going down the private members bill route. Why wasn't that an option for you? It wasn't an option for me I would have worked with them and they will work with me so before I talked to the Cabinet office minister I'd already been talking with officers and legal drafters for some time and then we agreed we'd share it with the Cabinet office minister and this needs to be done however it's done it needs to be done. People need to remember that the assisted dying legislation that's before us is not costed there's no service this is going to be years away from introduction it would have been great to have a referendum process about that just so that there's more information out there about before people start believing things about the assisted dying service that are really not there. When you touched on a few moments ago about the idea that there will be a public consultation we've heard you're looking to get this before the branches later this year what exactly is the timeline and the process from here? Well I'll have to meet with Cabinet office with the attorney generals chambers to find what's realistic from their point of view but I'll be pushing to have it back in the branches before Christmas, November time and the consultation wouldn't be on the principles we've already established the drafting instructions with the previous public consultation back in 2017-18-19 this will be actually on I hope a draft bill or questions around finalising the bill so that's it really it's however long it takes me to produce the covering stuff and the and the lawyers to produce the law the draft law. Thank you for making it to the end of the Manx already a newscast you are obviously someone with exquisite taste may I politely suggest you might want to subscribe to this and a wide range of Manx radio podcasts at your favourite podcast provider so our best bits will magically appear on your smartphone thank you you (gentle music) [BLANK_AUDIO]
