European Union (Amendment) Bill

I think not. As the noble Lord will understand, Switzerland has grown up as a special kind of entity. Indeed, all nations have grown up organically over the centuries in completely different ways. I admire enormously the Swiss and their genuine and deep democracy. One reason why they always find it difficult to join the European Union which surrounds them is that it would totally contradict the deepest aspects of their type of democracy. But I think that we should be careful about copying other people’s patterns too precisely. We should develop our own organic system of how we govern, and we have done so very well for the last 1,000 years or so. I was going to say, finally, that—we must be frank—the reason why our views do not meet with each other is that there are much deeper feelings behind all this. The noble Lord, Lord Lea of Crondall, always teases us, the Conservatives, by saying that we do not have any views about Europe. As a matter of fact, over the past 10 years of opposition my party has toiled away with all sorts of ideas and developments. I have written here that ““my filing cabinet is full of plans for exactly how we are going to deal with the European question””, but I had better cut that bit out because my door does not lock properly and I do not want these ideas pinched too soon. The Liberal Democrats may laugh. They can keep their doors open because there is nothing inside that anyone would want to steal. The answer is that we have an enormous range of ideas. Obviously, they are not finalised to the precise moment because, as far as I know, unless the Prime Minister decides, we are not about to have an election, alas. After the Maastricht treaty we did have an election, and an offer for a referendum on the euro as well. If the offer now is to have an election, then our pressures for a referendum probably would greatly reduce. But that is not on offer as far as I know. We would be very happy to have that, but I do not think that that is what is proposed. I suspect that we are not going to see an election for another two years or so. Instead, we say that the people should have their say. That is what was promised. That would uphold the dignity of Parliament, and perhaps restore the trust in Parliament as a whole as well as possibly the trust in the Government’s position, which does not look terribly healthy at the moment. That is why we have put forward this amendment. Many questions remain unanswered. Of course we are going to return to these issues in far more detail, because there are fundamental questions of transfers of power here of a constitutional nature. Everyone knows that in their hearts, even if they do not write it in their reports or say it in their speeches. We believe that, and that is why we will return to this matter more, I am afraid, than once in the future. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. [Amendments Nos. 163 to 167 not moved.]