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European Union (Amendment) Bill

I shall deal with that point later. I believe that the European Union as currently constituted is unacceptable. That is not a new view of mine; I expressed it many times from the Dispatch Box when I was shadow Foreign Secretary. At the last election, I stood on a manifesto that called for renegotiation to create a more flexible Europe, and I still believe that that is what we should do. Refusing the British people a referendum will not diminish their doubts about the Europe that is being imposed on them, it will strengthen them and, paradoxically, it will increase Euroscepticism in the UK.