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European Union Bill

The noble Lord, Lord Richard, caught me as I was sitting down. I think he has misunderstood the point that I made at the beginning of my remarks about what the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Stamford, said—that the argument was that Parliament should effectively decide. I made the point to him that we had been required to have a referendum whereby the people in that referendum were taking a decision outwith Parliament. I was not suggesting for one moment that referenda would be held in Northern Ireland alone—in fact, the issues that the noble Lord, Lord Richard, listed are United Kingdom-wide. Tax harmonisation and the rest are very important matters but they are United Kingdom-wide not Northern Ireland-specific.