European Union (Amendment) Bill

I reassure my hon. Friend that I always set out my own election address. The party tends to offer a format, which I have never adopted because I wish to express my personal views to my constituents. One thing that nobody in my constituency can complain about is that they are not aware of my views on or commitment to engagement in Europe. Of course, a great many people have made representations to me, and I hope that each of them believes that they received a substantive response to their points. I respect their arguments, as much as I ask them to respect my long-standing arguments. If I wished to be epigrammatic about it, I would say that I am a representative, not a delegate. If I wished to be a delegate, I would stand for the Congress of the Chinese Communist party in what is wittily called the Great Hall of the People. The argument whether this constitution is the same as the old one, or whether this treaty is the same as the old one, is totally barren. As it happens, I voted for the old constitution, so for me this matters rather less than it might do to most. One can quote Valéry Giscard d’Estaing till the cows come home, but the fact is that if one approved the old constitution, one will say that it is pretty well the same thing; if one did not, one will claim that it is something different. That is the simplest ABC of political technology, which we find in every single democratic country. For my money, of course it is the same document; for most countries, it is the same document. The argument in this Chamber has been to what extent the red lines and opt-outs have changed the nature of the obligations and commitment that Britain accepted. The United Kingdom’s relationship to the treaty is different from the one we had to the old constitution, but I accept that there is bound to be a huge amount of argument about the extent to which that is bankable. I have a fundamental objection to referendums. Of course I accept that there are occasions when a once-in-a-lifetime issue arises that we ought to refer to the country at large, but if one looks at the history of referendums, one finds that they are usually used to override democratic scrutiny and debate. That is the 19th-century history of referendums. They often seek a simplistic response to an often simplistic question, in which the consequences of the answer are never explored, and they usually take the form of a surrogate verdict on the Government themselves. The question and the answer are sometimes widely removed from each other.