I share my hon. Friend’s preference for not legislating in that respect. In fact, one can go wider. There are good reasons why, over a very long historical evolution, the House of Commons has always resisted legislation that governs its own proceedings. A number of authorities on our constitution have written that the nearest approximation to the constitution of
the United Kingdom are the Standing Orders of the House of Commons. That is not a frivolous remark by those authorities; it is true.
Such a situation has arisen because we have resisted having legislation that governs the House of Commons in order to avoid the judges becoming the judges of what should happen in the House of Commons. We have invented, over a very long period, the principle of comity—that the judges do not intervene in the legislature, and the legislature does not intervene in the decisions of the judiciary. To legislate for how the House of Commons proceeds would move over a dangerous line. I am therefore with my hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) in hoping that we will not accept new clause 1. I am just saying that if we were tempted at all to introduce any piece of new legislation at any stage, it should certainly look like new clause 1, not new clauses 99 and 110. Those new clauses would subvert the referendum, and we cannot allow that.