European Union Bill

My Lords, I warmly support the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Triesman and which has been spoken to so eloquently by my noble friend Lord Liddle. Occasionally, the peoples of small countries can give those of larger countries some salutary advice. Yesterday I had the pleasure of a meeting and a long discussion with the president of the Slovenian upper Chamber. We were discussing very openly the current political malaise in Slovenia—it is doing very well economically but there is political malaise there—and the fact that the people of Slovenia were completely turned off by the political class, both the Government and the Parliament. We were told that one of the major reasons for this was that they are fed up with having referendums. They are saying to the Parliament, ““We elected you to take decisions and to govern, and a Government is there to govern, so why can you do nothing without first asking the people in referendums? We elected you to take those decisions””. I think that they have a point. This is a country that, not so long ago, had no democratic institutions at all. It had no means by which people could express their opinions; they have them now. What is their reaction to the massive referendums to which they are subjected? They say, ““That is not the way we want to be governed. We did not give up the yoke of communism to be governed in this way””. Perhaps occasionally it is a good idea to listen to small countries.