European Union (Amendment) Bill

My Lords, your Lordships would do well to think on it. The heart of our democracy is that the people elect and dismiss those who make their laws. They no longer do. I do not pretend that our democracy would be restored if the British people voted down the Lisbon treaty in a referendum, but at least we would stay where we are—at the treaty of Nice—and the referendum campaign would, at last, produce the full and open national debate which has not taken place since the referendum of 1975. That means that no one under 50 has had a chance to vote on this great issue of how they are governed. Of course, there would be disappointment in Brussels because the treaty could not be ratified. They would be in the same sort of position they were in after the Dutch and French people rejected the original constitution. However, the project would continue, just as it did then. Some noble Lords may not be aware that the pace of European legislation has increased by 25 per cent since the constitution failed, so the suggestion that the EU would fall apart without it has turned out to be unfounded. Likewise, the City of London has thrived, despite our not joining the euro. The hope must be that a rejection of the Lisbon treaty by the British people would lead to a fundamental reappraisal of the project in Brussels, and that we might go back to the EU’s Laeken declaration—it wanted to bring the project closer to the people but was frustrated by the constitution, which went in the opposite direction. Those who accuse the Conservatives of wanting a referendum on the Lisbon treaty because they really want to leave the EU altogether are quite simply, and to me regrettably, wrong. I would not have joined the UK Independence Party if I had thought, after speaking to many influential Conservative friends, that there was a chance of that being so under its present leadership. We support the amendment because we see it as giving rise to an informed national debate and to the failure of the Lisbon treaty. To us, that is a worthy aim in itself and one which we share with the Conservative Party. However, we shall continue to believe that the United Kingdom would be much better off out of the project entirely, both constitutionally and economically, as I have tried to show on many previous occasions, and indeed from the point of view of our influence on the world stage. We will never accept that we have to surrender our right to govern ourselves in order to collaborate with our friends in Europe or with friends anywhere else on the planet.