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European Union (Amendment) Bill

My right hon. Friend may not have heard some remarks I made during the last debate about the mandate which—as he knows very well, because he is a fellow member of the European Scrutiny Committee—was brought in through the back door, in deceitful circumstances, on 20 June last year. Does he agree that it had the effect not only of replacing the word ““Community”” with the word ““Union””—with, as he said, a single legal personality replacing and succeeding the Community—but of collapsing many of the pillars that he mentioned earlier, thus undermining the whole constitutional basis on which the original arrangements were made? That fundamental change is the reason why we should now have a referendum.