Debate on the Address

Indeed, but at what cost? To use a simile, we are in the same position as the leaseholders of a small block of flats who think that they have a share of the freehold as well as being leaseholders but suddenly discover that, by whatever legal device or trickery, they do not have the freehold and the freeholder is about to sell the building. In that case, we might go to all sorts of lengths to announce our determination to buy back the freehold when we have the means, but that would depend on the freehold being for sale, which we cannot guarantee. We cannot guarantee that we can reverse the provisions in the treaty, because it will require the unanimous agreement of the other members of the European Union. It is all very well saying, ““There is a nuclear option. You can go,”” but the British people might not want to go—they might want the status quo ante, which is an option that should be offered to them and which was pledged to them in a referendum. We had a debate earlier in the evening, when there were rather more of us. As an aside, a number of hon. Members looked across at the expanse of green leather on the Government Benches and said how shocking and awful it was that there was no one there to speak on the Queen's Speech, but then they went on at such great length that it might explain the expanse of green leather on the Government Benches. Leaving that aside, when we debated the referendum the hon. Member for Thurrock (Andrew Mackinlay) agreed with the Liberal Democrat position and said that the matter should be properly addressed, not by the promised referendum on the treaty but by a referendum to reaffirm our commitment to and membership of the European Union. The argument was put that the decision to join was taken a generation ago and that no one who is currently under 50 had that opportunity. I recall having that opportunity—it was my first electoral experience—and campaigning and voting in the referendum. As it happens, I campaigned and voted to withdraw from what was then the Common Market, but I accepted the decision entirely. My son is now 18, and it is perfectly possible that he wants to reaffirm those arrangements—we cannot bind generations that follow us—but I have not detected any great enthusiasm on his part or that of his generation to reopen that question. I receive a considerable number of letters demanding that the issue be reopened, but they do not tend to come from my son's generation—they come from rather older people who claim that they were robbed and that the whole thing has turned out to be something other than what was described. I am in the fortunate position of being able to reply that it has turned out pretty well as we said it would during that campaign. A referendum on the whole European question poses a danger, because it takes the heat off this particular issue. We were promised a referendum on this treaty, and a referendum in which people are invited to reaffirm their commitment to the entire European enterprise is a very different thing. That presents a danger, because a vote for the European Union in such a referendum, which is the likely outcome, would be used to railroad all sorts of additional changes to European Union structures in the direction of ever greater union and the ever greater federalism of the European model that has developed in the past 30 years. I suggest that a much healthier check on that process would be to have a referendum on any new treaty and any increment to the arrangements. Let us briefly examine the history of the referendum commitment that we were given. Until mid-2004, the Government insisted that the treaty was of such little consequence—only of administrative concern—that no referendum was required. Notwithstanding that, they had already negotiated the red lines; there is nothing new about the red lines. Abruptly, the Government changed their opinion, and I have no doubt that that was to take account of the likelihood of a general election in 2005 and to deny Opposition parties a campaign on the issue of the referendum. So it was that we were promised a referendum. Of course, given the votes in the Netherlands and France, it became unnecessary because the whole process was, apparently, dead. Of course, it has turned out not to have been as dead as we had expected. Now the referendum pledge has been withdrawn because the new treaty is, apparently, so different from the previous one. We all know what Giscard d'Estaing and almost every European leader has said about the identity of the two treaties, but the Government argue that we do not need a referendum because the treaty is different for us and we have our red lines. However, the Government had their red lines when they offered us a referendum in the first place—they insisted then that the issues were not of great consequence and that they had guarantees in the form of red lines, but said that we could have a referendum anyway. The arguments do not hold. The people of this country were promised a referendum at the last general election; now that the treaty has been negotiated, there should be a referendum Bill in the Queen's Speech. That there is not is a gross betrayal of trust.