There have been many articulate and clever speeches during this debate. I exclude the last speech from that.
It seems to me a straightforward matter. This House, by signing various treaties, has taken away from the British people the right to throw out the rascals who are making their laws. It is time, after those treaties, that the people were given a chance to have that say in a referendum. My party’s position on a referendum can, I hope, be improved. We can have no principled objections to a referendum: it was the Labour party that first gave the people the chance to vote on the then EEC. We said in our 2005 manifesto that people would have a vote on the European constitution. Unfortunately, when the name of that constitution was changed to the Lisbon treaty, the vote was denied them. That was a huge mistake and is one of the reasons why the people of this country have lost trust.
In the argument against those who say we do not need a referendum, three or four reasons have been given for why we need a referendum. One is uncertainty. That is the most perverse reason. There is uncertainty because 80% of the British people want a referendum and they are surprised that we cannot come to a conclusion about when that referendum should be and what the question should be. The debate would not go away and the uncertainty would not decrease if we opposed the Bill today.
The second reason given, which is related to the uncertainty argument, is that British business is opposed to a referendum and jobs would go. That would be a more compelling case if I had not heard exactly those arguments about joining the euro—all the car factories would go if we did not join the euro.