European Union (Amendment) Bill

In a moment. Just in case any Members of the House have not had the opportunity to read through all 291 pages of the English version of the Lisbon treaty, let me summarise briefly how that has been achieved. Article 1 of the Lisbon treaty carries forward large elements of the constitution and inserts them directly into the treaty of Maastricht. Article 2 of the Lisbon treaty does exactly the same for the other remaining key powers in the constitution by inserting them into a renamed treaty of Rome. The format might have been modified, but the substance is almost exactly the same. That is why the Labour-led European Scrutiny Committee, whose Chairman made a powerful contribution this evening, conducted a detailed comparison of the two texts and concluded that they are ““substantially equivalent””, and that to argue otherwise is ““misleading””. Only this weekend, another Labour-led Committee, the Foreign Affairs Committee, which also undertook a detailed examination of the foreign policy aspects of the two documents, concluded:"““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.””" I will now give way to the hon. Member for Preston (Mr. Hendrick), who also promised electors in his constituency a referendum on the constitution.