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European Union (Amendment) Bill

I am in favour of the ratification of the treaty of Lisbon, so I shall be supporting the Second Reading of the Bill tonight. I am also totally opposed to the whole idea of having a referendum on this or similar treaties. Referendums are not part of our British constitution, and I regret the fact that they are in constant danger of becoming such. My views should come as no surprise to anybody—I am sure that they do not—as I spoke and voted accordingly on the 2004 treaty that was originally put forward. I am astonished to find, three years later, that we are having such an agitated debate. As we have had a general election since, I am one of the few Members of the House who fought the last election on the basis that I am now putting forward. It is true that my party's manifesto said differently, but no person who follows politics in my constituency can conceivably have imagined that I supported that part of the manifesto. Indeed, I was quite clear about that to the very few people who bothered to raise the subject with me—I have received six or seven letters on the subject in the past five years. I therefore feel no sense of a lack of democratic legitimacy in putting forward my view.