European Union Bill

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I hear the plea of my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Claire Perry), but I believe that there is a constant danger of us succumbing to wishful thinking. The problem is that this is not the ““thus far and no further”” Bill; it is the ““locking the stable door after the horse has bolted”” Bill. What is more, whatever other horses there may be in the stable, there are sufficient holes in the door for those horses to squeeze through, if it is convenient for the Executive to allow it to happen. That is what we will see with the treaty coming down the track for EU fiscal union. The Bill will not increase the happiness of the British people about our present terms of EU membership. The Bill fails to address those terms, but they will have to be addressed at some stage in the future. I refuse to sign a referendum pledge, as I was recently asked to do, saying, ““Let's have an in-or-out referendum””. That is not the way to conduct this debate; the way to conduct it is for the Government to lay down their national interests and negotiate robustly for them in the European Union, rather than to continue appeasing the system to avoid a row. I even accept that we may need to do that for a period, while we are in such a difficult fiscal position, but the moment that the EU is asking for treaty changes for which it needs our consent is the moment we should be asking for concessions in return. We certainly should not carry on transferring competencies to the EU without a referendum, as is provided for in the Bill.