It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Derby North (Chris Williamson) and the contributions from my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North East (Mr Bain), my right hon. Friend the Member for Neath (Mr Hain), and my hon. Friends the Members for Ilford South (Mike Gapes) and for Sedgefield (Phil Wilson), and to have had the chance to
listen to the contributions from the hon. Member for Windsor (Adam Afriyie) and more recently the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron).
I shall come to amendment 68, the lead amendment, in due course, but I begin with amendment 3 in the name of the hon. Member for Windsor. I pay tribute to him. Despite considerable pressure to present a façade of party unity, he has stuck to his guns and followed through on his determination to press for a referendum next year. I can immediately see three tempting reasons why the House might want to support the hon. Gentleman’s amendment. First, as the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay reminded us, the whole House knows that the Prime Minister and many in the Conservative party are obviously on different pages with regard to Europe. Amendment 3 therefore offers us the chance to underline once again just how divided the Conservative party is on that great European obsession of theirs.
The second tempting reason to support the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Windsor is that if one believed that the Prime Minister will not or cannot repatriate sufficient powers and competences from the European Union to Britain, which I think is the view of the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash), through the treaty change that he believes is coming, and by the entirely arbitrary deadline that the Bill establishes, one might be tempted to think, “Well, let’s just crack on with a referendum next year.” The third tempting reason is that the pragmatist in all of us in the House today can recognise that the British and the European calendars are likely to be so busy in the run-up to the end of 2017 that the best time for a referendum might be next year.