European Union (Amendment) Bill

No, my Lords, I wish to finish this point. Those who are treating this as a matter which could be easily decided by the public one way or the other are overlooking how this action is perceived in other European countries today. There is, for the European Union as for this country, a growing danger of marginalising ourselves in the debates of the Union, and there is a growing danger that as the world becomes more fragile, more vociferous and less mindful of what lead to the setting up of the Union, through our navel gazing we will cease to play the part we ought to play—the influential role. When we take actions of the kind being proposed here, in the circumstances of the day, when so much has changed in the European Union and the treaty over the past two or three years, it is a kind of self-indulgence and an abnegation of our responsibility to use our judgment about what is appropriate in fulfilling our role as Members of this Parliament.