European Union (Amendment) Bill

I am trying to explain why the manifesto referred to just the new constitutional treaty, and why we are not therefore breaking a promise. There is a different argument, which I will come to later, about the merit or otherwise of a referendum on a range of issues, and the constitutional reasons for that have been articulated very well over the years by the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke), who has explained why referendums are not the way forward in a representative democracy such as the UK. Let me go back to the debate about the manifesto commitment and to the point made by the hon. Member for Stone (Mr. Cash). Without going into the details of what happened over Easter 2004, who said what and the outcome, as a result of those discussions the then Prime Minister came to this House on 20 April 2004 and made a commitment that there would be a vote of the British people on the new constitutional treaty, which was subsequently reflected in our 2005 manifesto. The point that many hon. Members fail to recognise is that the manifesto was absolutely clear and referred specifically to the new constitutional treaty. We made a commitment to have a vote on the new constitutional treaty, and we definitely meant that constitutional treaty. When we put those words in the manifesto, there was no doubt that we were referring to the new constitutional treaty, which was what we had in mind when we included those words in our manifesto. We did not have in mind the Lisbon treaty.