European Union (Amendment) Bill

I shall come to that. When this House divided on whether there should be a referendum on Maastricht the votes in favour totalled 124 and the votes against totalled 363. When the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd), for whom I have great respect because he has been totally consistent on these issues for a long time, sought in this House to secure a referendum, one Tory Minister said that"““every time we have such a referendum it is, in a sense, an abdication of responsibility by the House and the Government of the day.””" That was said by a member of the Government of whom people on the Conservative Front Bench were members. That Minister continued:"““This Government intend to make no such abdication of their responsibilities; nor do they intend to invite the House to abdicate from its responsibility…The treaty that we have…will require the approval of the House as a necessary pre-condition of ratification by the Government…the House will express the will of the British people in the matter. That will be expressed by freely elected Members of the House in the way that British democracy has traditionally settled these matters, whether they be large or small.””—[Official Report, 21 February 1992; Vol. 204, c. 627-30.]"