European Union Bill

My Lords, I brought a similar amendment to this in Committee which did not find favour with the Government. That was in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon, and my noble friend Lord Pearson of Rannoch. I listened to the arguments then that the five-year gap that we proposed was perhaps too long, so this amendment proposes simply a mandatory three-year gap between referendums. When he replied to that similar amendment on 23 May, the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, went off on a rather bizarre tangent about the European Gendarmerie Force, which I had not even mentioned in my speech. I do not know quite what that was all about. However, in reply to my amendment he went on to say: "““If the Government were defeated in a referendum, it would be tantamount to a defeat of the Government””," and they would have to reconsider the matter. He went on to say: "““It would be unusual for the Government then to consider asking the public the same question in short order, having failed to convince them””,—[Official Report, 23/5/11; col. 1623-24.]" at the time to change their minds the second time around. The point of my amendment is that this is what has happened in the EU in the past. It is exactly what happened on the Maastricht treaty and in Ireland with the Nice treaty. It happened on the constitutional treaty. When the French and the Dutch voted that down, it was brought back under the cloak of the Lisbon treaty with a rather unsavoury démarche which allowed the then Government to pretend that it was not the same thing at all as the constitutional treaty. Yet a stinkweed by any other name still smells as foul. This constant backsliding, weaving, dodging and bobbing and ducking are what have given the European Union a bad name. Several speakers made the same point on the amendments that we discussed this afternoon: that there is a very prevalent distrust of the EU in this country, and not only in this country but throughout the European Union now. In many of his remarks during both Committee and Report, the noble Lord, Lord Howell, has repeatedly underlined that the purpose of this Bill is to reduce the distrust of the British people in the institutions of the EU and in the way that the Government deal with EU matters and directives which have, so far, gone through without any influence by the people of this country. The amendment really should be there to reassure those people that if they vote in a referendum under this Bill, it will not be interfered with again by a Government, who may be more manipulative than this one, for at least three years. That is helpful to the Government and I hope that they will take it in that spirit. I beg to move.