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National Referendum on the European Union

The global financial crisis that was suffered in 2007 is hardly news to anybody in the House. Indeed, it seems to me that there is a broadening consensus that international economic circumstances affect the performance of the British economy. We are increasingly hearing that line from the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The House has only recently debated the circumstances in which it judged it appropriate for a referendum to take place, and tried to formalise the process by which to decide what is significant and what is not. The current Government legislated for that in the European Union Act 2011.