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Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill

My reflection is as follows, since I was the Minister responsible for sponsoring the Jenkins review and for bringing it back to the House. The problem that we faced was that there was no consensus whatsoever—no consensus in my party and opposition from the Conservatives—for the proposals from Lord Jenkins and his colleagues. The judgment that we therefore made was that a referendum would be lost. I am not in any doubt that it would have been lost, because the whole of the Conservative party and most of the Labour party would have opposed those proposals. Do I have a regret about that? Frankly, I am slightly fed up with being told that we broke a referendum commitment—we did not, if the terms of the manifesto are read properly. In some respects I do have a regret, because if we had had a referendum it would have been lost overwhelmingly—that was absolutely clear—and we could have moved on and that would have stopped those on the Liberal Democrat Benches from whingeing. But it would probably have been quite an expensive way of doing that.