European Union (Amendment) Bill

My right hon. Friend has made an important point. Is he saying that the treaty, and clause 3 in particular, abolishes what was the European Community? Was it not precisely on the claim that the European constitution abolished the former structures and replaced them with a new one that the Government based their promise of a referendum? They said that this treaty did not do that, and that therefore we did not need a referendum. Now my right hon. Friend is saying that the treaty does do that—in which case, surely, the Government’s promise of a referendum would have to be reinstated even if we believed in their rather bogus excuse for getting out of it.