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European Union (Amendment) Bill

The right hon. and learned Member for Kensington and Chelsea (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) defined the debate perfectly, when he said it was about not only whether we support the Lisbon treaty but whether we should have a referendum on that question. Those are the two issues before us, and the referendum is of much more importance than the Lisbon treaty, because more than 600 right hon. and hon. Members stood in the last election on manifestos promising to hold a referendum. I fully recognise that a small number of Members, such as the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke), have made their views robustly clear to the electorate. I absolve the right hon. and learned Gentleman of any commitment to vote for a referendum, because he was honest with the people who elected him. If we do not hold a referendum, however, there are more than 600 right hon. and hon. Members to whom the same does not apply. We must remember that debate on what was then called the constitutional treaty was expunged from the 2005 general election campaign, because every party said that it would hold the debate when there was a referendum. I cannot remember a single major discussion on the television about the subject. That is the most important issue, because it is about honesty and integrity, and about democracy in the House. In the time I am allowed, I shall quickly go through the issues. My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary said that this was a change treaty, but he is more or less on his own in saying so. If one met most of the Presidents and Prime Ministers of European states, the people who drafted the constitution, or Select Committee members, one would find that they all said that there was no real difference between the Lisbon treaty and the original proposals in the constitution. I would even ask the Whips, because they tried to persuade me to vote in support of Second Reading on the basis that such a measure appeared in our manifesto. The only treaty in the manifesto was the constitutional treaty, which, wearing another hat, they say has changed. The Government are confused on the issue, as are the Opposition. Some of the analogies used to justify the measure are bizarre. The hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey) knows as little about genetics as he does about politics. Just because there is only a 1 per cent. difference between our DNA and that of a chimpanzee or a bonobo, that does not mean that there is a 3 or 4 per cent. change between the constitutional treaty and the Lisbon treaty and thus a difference between the two measures. The difference is that bonobos do not write treaties or compose music. The fact is that what is left in the Lisbon treaty does almost exactly what the original constitutional treaty would have done.