European Union (Amendment) Bill

I support my noble friend Lord Blackwell. I am sorry that my noble friend Lord Brittan is not in his place. I disagreed with much of what he said but one thing he said, which was very true and revealing, was that people’s attitude towards referenda is usually coloured by their view of the result. I am sure that one of the reasons that the Liberals and the Labour Party have reneged on their promise in their manifesto to provide a referendum on the treaty is because they know what the result would be—the people would reject it. That is the most reprehensible aspect of this debate. To suggest that my noble friend’s amendment means that we are moving towards a kind of Swiss canton system with regular referendums is ridiculous. Surely there is a clear principle here. It is not what my noble friend suggested—that Parliament is always sovereign and that supporting referendums somehow contradicts the belief of its sovereignty, which is a view I share. It is, rather, that it is not for Parliament to give away the powers which have been entrusted to it by the people without the people’s consent. There is no question that the treaty achieves that and, were we to join the euro, there would be a massive transfer of power in an irreversible direction which could not be put right by a Government at subsequent general elections. That requires the consent of the people. So my noble friend is right to insist that this is included in the legislation. This new-found concern to have purity in legislation is very touching. I have sat in this House and watched this Government use almost every criminal justice Bill as a Christmas tree on which to hang all kinds of bits and pieces only for them to argue that somehow we now have to have purity. This amendment is in order. It is certainly consistent with the Government’s declared policy. It is consistent—at least it was this morning—with the Liberal Democrats’ declared policy and it is consistent with Conservative policy. I see no reason at all why it should not be included in the Bill, unless we suspect that maybe yet another promise could be reneged on at a future date, which would be a grave disservice to our country. I reflect on where we would be today if Britain had joined the euro. Our economic difficulties are considerable now, thanks to the mismanagement of the Government. But I shudder to think how much worse our position would be had we joined the euro. I very much support my noble friend in his amendment and I would have thought that the Government would embrace it with enthusiasm, if for no other reason than to give the Prime Minister something to hang on to. He seems to find it very hard to hang on to his declared policy from week to week.