Thank you for that ruling, Madam Deputy Speaker.
There is an even stronger parallel to be drawn between the amendment and the Scottish referendum. The Government claimed rightly in January 2012 that setting an arbitrary date four years in the future for a referendum on a plan for Scotland to separate from the United Kingdom would create unnecessary uncertainty for inward investment and business. How can the Government believe that it is appropriate to have four years of uncertainty before a referendum on the United Kingdom’s membership of the European Union? Surely the same argument applies, particularly given that the EU referendum, unlike its Scottish counterpart, would be conducted on the basis of a pre-negotiated treaty to alter the conditions of membership, which the Prime Minister may not even be able to achieve.
Let us not forget that the Prime Minister hopes to pull off the coup of negotiating such a treaty at a time when the UK will hold the presidency of the EU and ought to be prioritising the completion of the single market and boosting growth, jobs and trade; when there will just have been a French presidential election; and in the run-up to the next German federal elections. The window for getting the type of treaty that the Prime Minister believes is possible will be very small.
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Where is the intellectual consistency between the arguments that the Prime Minister made in relation to Scotland, which were addressed in the Edinburgh agreement, and the case that the Bill’s promoter and the Minister have made today about the terms that they seek for 2017? We need business, unions such as the National Farmers Union and the voluntary sector to be consulted about their views on the timing of any referendum and the implications of leaving the EU.
If political circumstances necessitated a broader referendum, Members would consider them. However, the Bill in its current form would defeat the national interest, not serve it, and weaken, not strengthen our ability to build the alliances in the EU that we need now. We need to strengthen the Bill, so I urge the House to support amendments 68 and 70 and new schedule 2.