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European Union (Amendment) Bill

I happen to be one of the Members of this House who voted in favour of a referendum on the Maastricht treaty. If a sufficient number of my colleagues, in all parts of the House, had joined me and helped to carry the vote, we would not have had the Amsterdam or Nice treaties or now the Lisbon treaty. However, 400 of the people who failed to do that have since fled the premises, leaving me virtually alone, as the boy on the still burning deck. We hear a lot about the military covenant, but behind a military covenant is an even more important constitutional position, which is the social contract. That is what the Government have broken, by ignoring their pledge to the electorate to hold a referendum.