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National Referendum on the European Union

It is good to see the Foreign Secretary still in his place before he dashes off to this urgent, massively crucial and completely unavoidable meeting in Australia that he has to attend. I am sure that this has absolutely nothing to do with avoiding tonight's vote, and any suggestion that it has is scurrilous. He rightly spoke about scrutiny, but he may recall that when he was an MP under John Major's premiership the then Government removed European questions and the debates on European orders from the Floor of the House, thus reducing the scrutiny, because things were getting a bit lively at that point. If he will not agree to a referendum, perhaps he will agree to bring European questions and European orders back to the Floor of the House. Having got that small point over with, may I say that I have never been a great supporter of referendums? They can be divisive, they have to be treated with extreme caution and they have been used by dictatorial Governments in the past. The criterion for having a referendum is that a Government pass measures that seek to change the power of the ballot box—that is the time to seek a referendum and seek the consent of the British people. This should not be done at any time other than when a Government seek to change the power of the ballot box. Since the last referendum in 1975 which, as has been pointed out, was caused by the Wilson Government, we have had the Single European Act, the Maastricht and Amsterdam treaties, the growth and stability pact, and the Lisbon and Nice treaties. All those changed the power of the ballot box, most of them—not all—involving huge shifts of power from the democratically elected Governments of western Europe to Brussels and Strasbourg. The Single European Act gave up the veto, which we had been told at the time of the referendum in 1975 would remain permanently. Since then, many of the treaties have shifted perhaps 30 or 40 areas of responsibility from the veto to quality majority voting. For that reason alone, we need a referendum on future membership of the European Union. This is not an issue among the political elite of western Europe. There is a justifiable perception among a lot of voters, not only in this country but in other western European countries, that there is a tiny political elite at the apex of the European Union which says, ““This doesn't matter. We don't want people having their views on Europe tested. We don't want to have to go out to seek people's opinions.”” That was demonstrated when the Irish people voted against the Nice treaty, as within a day or two the western European Foreign Secretaries issued a communiqué saying, ““It's very nice of you to have made a decision; now go away and make another one. Keep trying until you get it right.”” The legislative process in Ireland was actually changed, by a Bill that took a day to get through all the stages in the Dail, in order to gut the process that led to that referendum. They were then able to rig the following referendum and change the view of the Irish people on the Nice treaty.