European Union (Amendment) Bill

That was a difference—something of which Liberal Democrats can only dream—but of course, for the purposes of this argument, the important difference now is that no political party in the 1992 election promised the people of this country a referendum on the Maastricht treaty; in this case, every political party promised the people a referendum. It is therefore a matter of trust in politics and of the honour of our politics that that referendum should be held. The European Foreign Minister has been renamed the high representative of the Union, but as the Foreign Affairs Committee explained in its report only yesterday,"““We conclude that there is no material difference between the provisions on foreign policy in the Constitutional Treaty which the Government made subject to approval in a referendum and those in the Lisbon Treaty on which a referendum is being denied.””"