European Union (Amendment) Bill

My Lords, I assure my noble friend that the last thing in the world I wanted to do was to express anger towards him or arouse anger in him. He made a fair point. Of course, what the popular opinion is on this is relevant and important, but it is not decisive. Whether this treaty is different from the last one is arguable and has been argued and I do not propose to take the time of the House on it. Although I do not pound the streets of Richmond, as I used to when I was its Member of Parliament, all the evidence, whether in Richmond or elsewhere, suggests that although much is written about this in the press, it is not an issue about which the public feel very strongly; it is an issue about which the media feel strongly. There is a point to be made about the promises made by the parties. As I have said, I will not try to parse the treaty or say whether it is different from the previous one. The fact that political parties—rightly or wrongly; in my view wrongly—promised a referendum on the previous treaty should be decisive for the House in deciding whether or not to require a referendum to be introduced. We have to exercise our personal judgment and make a personal decision about whether it is in the interests of this country, in terms of the evolution of the constitution of this country—whether we want to have more referenda—and in terms of the impact of what we are doing on Europe. No reference has been made to the Salisbury convention in this debate, although it was discussed in previous debates. The Salisbury convention was a prudent, self-denying ordinance of the House not to use its legal power to frustrate the will clearly expressed by an incoming Government in their manifesto. It is quite a different matter for this House to say that it has the right not just to refrain from stopping a Government implementing their promises, but to force a Government to implement their promises. Whatever the considerable merits of your Lordships' House, which we all agree about, it is not an elected body, and it is peculiarly inappropriate to say, ““Not only should the Government keep their promise but we, of all people, are insisting that they do so by a particular form of populous democracy—that is, a referendum””. There is something faintly ironic, and beyond, in this House arrogating to itself the intention or the right to do that. It is for those reasons that I cannot go along with the proposal that there should be a referendum.