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National Referendum on the European Union

I will have to proceed again. We are under this time constraint. That is the Government's policy towards the EU, and that is why we cannot treat this motion, as some have suggested, in a casual way. To do so would not do justice either to the importance of the issues or to the significance of motions presented in this House. The Prime Minister and I, as he said earlier, want many of the same things as some of the motion's supporters, but we clearly do not advocate leaving the European Union, and I say as someone who has called for referendums on European matters—on Amsterdam, Nice, Lisbon and the euro—and consumed vast acres of newsprint over the years, criticising the euro and setting out a different vision of Europe's future, that the proposition for a referendum before the House today is the wrong proposition at the wrong time. Building on what the Prime Minister said earlier, I want in the 15 minutes remaining to me to give the House six reasons—[Interruption]—some of them are very brief, do not worry—why that is the case.