European Union (Amendment) Bill

I have given way already, and I promise that I will give way later, but first I want to make a little more progress. I have been focusing on the difference in the nature of the treaties for a very good reason. We Liberal Democrats believe that referendums should be used not willy-nilly, but with care and sparingly, for issues of constitutional significance. Even for issues of constitutional significance, it is not always clear to me that we need a referendum. I do not think that anyone in any party argued for a referendum when this House passed the Human Rights Act—or, indeed, back in 1950, when the European convention on human rights was signed. We rarely, if at all, hear arguments that there should be a referendum on reform of the House of Lords or the Freedom of Information Act, so there are many constitutional issues on which people do not think there should be a referendum. We believe that such analysis is directly relevant when one comes to make the judgment about whether a European treaty deserves a referendum. Treaties that make modest institutional reforms to make the European Union more efficient for enlargement, such as Lisbon, simply do not have the constitutional impact that some Members wish to ascribe to them.