---

Business of the House (Lisbon Treaty)

There is a very simple answer to that question. The hon. Gentleman is right. At the last election, all three major parties said that they would give the British people a vote. His party said that it would do so within six months; the other two did not specify a time. At that stage, it was understood that the proposal was that there would be a totally new, all-encompassing, once-and-for-all document—a new constitution for Europe. In all the time that I have been here, I have always said that big constitutional matters should be the subject of a referendum. Subsequently, as the hon. Gentleman well knows, the proposal did not get through the referendums in France and the Netherlands. As a result, it went back to the drawing board. He can look at my copy of the treaty if he wants to—