I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for intervening on me to tell the Minister for Europe what he wants, but the Minister shows no signs of getting up to intervene and tell the House what powers and competences the Prime Minister wants to get back and whether they will meet the Gentleman’s ambitions.
Thirdly, I suspect that the hon. Member for Windsor can make common cause with other Members who have tabled similar amendments to change the date of any referendum. My right hon. Friend the Member for Neath and my hon. Friends the Members for Ilford South, for Glasgow North East and for Derby North have suggested in amendment 77 that the period from July to December 2017, when Britain holds the presidency of the European Union, should be avoided. Surely that will be this country’s moment of maximum influence in Europe, when the Prime Minister of the day chairs the European Council and can set the agenda and force the rest of the European Union to consider Britain’s priorities. At that moment the Conservative party would have all
the machinery and influence of Government focused not on fighting Britain’s corner but on fighting Tory Eurosceptics. It is diplomatic nonsense. It is not worthy of a Foreign Secretary supposedly serious about fighting for our national interest.
As the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South, amendments 21 to 27, and his speech underlined, the complete lack of flexibility in the Bill over dates for a referendum is surprising. In Committee the hon. Member for Cheltenham set out the perfectly plausible possibility that negotiations on treaty change might be ongoing as the Bill’s arbitrary deadline approached. Indeed, in Committee the Minister half accepted that such negotiations, involving many countries and considerable complexity, could still be taking place, but he was not prepared to allow any flexibility in the legislation. Ministers could be in the middle of crucial negotiations, but rather than concentrating on completing them just when they are in their most sensitive stage, they would have to switch all their attention from fighting Britain’s corner to fighting a referendum campaign. How on earth could such a situation be in the national interest? Is not the truth that the fruitcakes are not in UKIP; they have just been gobbled up by Ministers.
Despite my sympathy for what I think are the motivations of the hon. Member for Windsor, I cannot recommend support for his amendment. Given that for 40 of the past 41 months since the Conservative party took power prices have risen faster than wages, as a country we should be spending the next year concentrating on improving living standards, increasing the number of well paid jobs and tackling energy bills. A referendum next year, or indeed in four years’ time, would make that task harder as a result of all the uncertainty it would bring.
Consultation with a wider field of national bodies and local government, as amendment 68, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North East, suggests, might have enabled the Prime Minister to withstand the pressure from the Tory right over timing. Why was a referendum later in the next Parliament ruled out? There does not appear to have been any input in that decision by any recognised national or local grouping, yet the Bill rules out such flexibility. Is not the truth that too many Conservative Members, because they do not trust the Prime Minister on matters European, are unwilling to trust him on the issue of a referendum beyond the halfway point of the next Parliament?
Let us consider the merits of amendment 68. When the Prime Minister decided to take the risk of allowing Britain to leave the European Union, at a potential average cost of £3,000 to the living standards of the British people, there was probably no one in the room who was not a member of the Conservative party, apart from Lynton Crosby. There was no one else to give the Prime Minister a view on whether a referendum might be in the national interest, or indeed, if a referendum were in the national interest, how it should be conducted and what information should be available when it took place.