European Union (Amendment) Bill

I agree and I hope that my hon. Friend catches your eye, Sir Alan. The problem is that there is a conflict. I have enormous respect for my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer) and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe, as they know. They have constantly and rightly made the argument about the principles of the House and we have debated them many times, yet they may offer a basis for a referendum. Both have complained—rightly—about the way in which the Bill has been railroaded through the House. Debate has been curtailed in the appalling nature of the Second Reading debate instead of the line-by-line discussion we were promised. As I said the other night, who would ever have thought that when the Prime Minister said line by line he actually meant only the top two lines of the treaty with no discussion of the rest. There has been next to no debate, so the argument that should stand—that the House is supreme so it should make the decisions—falls in this case, because we have had no opportunity to make any mark on the treaty or to debate it properly. That process shames the Government, but it leaves us with one question. If we are unable to make the debate work, if we cannot question the Government properly and have no real opportunities to discuss the amendments, the only option open to us is to go to the country, because our process is not working.