European Union (Amendment) Bill

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis, for bringing us back to the question at the heart of this amendment; that is, whether it should be in the Bill, as the noble Lord, Lord Tomlinson, asked. The noble Lord, Lord Brittan, perhaps rather mischievously, provoked noble Lords into the wider debate about referendums. It may be of interest, since I am never going to write my memoirs, that I was there in 1975—in fact, I was there two or three years before 1975—when Mr Anthony Wedgwood Benn, as he then was, proposed to the National Executive of the Labour Party a referendum on Europe as a way of healing the party’s divisions. He could not find a seconder to that proposal in the National Executive, because its members, like most parliamentarians, at that time saw a referendum as basically undermining the sovereignty and authority of Parliament. The noble Lord, Lord Kinnock, is absolutely right: the more often that parliamentarians reach for the referendum as a convenient fig-leaf at a moment of difficulty, the more diminished is the authority of this Parliament. It is strange how at one point during this debate we are made to be concerned about the sovereignty of Parliament and then, at another, urged to use the referendum as a kind of opt-out. It is always interesting to listen to the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth. I am reminded of those lines from Kipling’s ““If”” which say, "““If you can bear to hear the truths you’ve spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools””." He is very good at interpreting Liberal Democrat policy for his own ends. Let me make it absolutely clear, before it appears in blogs tomorrow, that we will not be supporting this amendment but that does not mean that I am announcing a change in Liberal Democrat policy. It is simply, as the noble Lord has said, that this has been hung on the Bill like a bauble on a Christmas tree. It is not unusual for that to happen. I think I have done it myself once or twice. However, let us recognise a bauble when we see one and not necessarily go into this. Basically, we have been presented with the old ““When are you going to stop beating your wife?”” question. It is irrelevant to this Bill. It is in the wrong place and for that reason we will not be supporting it. Finally, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Tomlinson, that we are, at last, reaching a breathtaking consensus. We are about to see the noble Lords, Lord Blackwell and Lord Hunt, marching shoulder to shoulder on the same amendment. That is consensus indeed.