Localism Bill

I would not support the amendment for the reasons my hon. Friend just mentioned, because if someone wants to have a referendum that is binding on any subject, they leave themselves open to several problems. My hon. Friend's amendment contains provisions that he feels would deal with that. However, in this place, we must be very careful about the legislation we introduce and the language we use. We may try to foresee the instances that may occur and try to stop some unsavoury referendums taking place, but once the legislation saying that it is binding is in place, someone somewhere will find a way around it. We live in heightened times of tension. That is inevitable in an economic downturn. We go through periods when there is a blame culture and it is easy to pick on the weakest person. If the House will indulge me, I would like to refer to ““The Simpsons””. I am sure I am not alone when I say that I am huge fan of ““The Simpsons””. Some of the episodes can be particularly cutting. I remember one episode when some of the characters woke up to find a bear in the front garden and decided that they wanted to introduce a bear tax to keep the bears out. The mayor had a meeting and said, ““I want to bring in a bear tax.”” Everybody said, ““We're not paying any more tax””, to which the mayor said, ““All right. Well, I blame the immigrants.”” Everybody cheered and the mayor said, ““We'll have a referendum on it.”” As the episode goes on, they have a referendum to kick out the immigrants because they are unhappy about having to pay more tax and there was not enough tax to sort out the bears. Later, the episode highlights the fact that people in their communities, their friends and so on have an immigrant past and are fully integrated. There is a road to Damascus moment for Homer who goes around saying, ““This is a terrible referendum. We can't vote on this.”” The result comes in, and there is a 96% vote to get rid of all the immigrants because nobody listens.