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Section 5 of the European Communities (Amendment) Act 1993

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend on both those points: first, this is a complete waste of time, and secondly, we certainly ought to have a referendum. That is not, of course, the matter before us tonight, however. Instead, this is the question under discussion tonight: what is the point of sending this document to Brussels? The Minister admits that we pay no attention to what Brussels says to us, and that we govern our own affairs, so what is the point of producing this document? We should be honest with the people in Brussels and say, ““Look, we're not going to listen to you anyway. We're independent in these matters, and we're going to stop sending you this document every year.”” It is a complete waste of time to send it this year—and I would be very interested to know what happened to last year's document.