My Lords, this has been quite a debate. We have seen Mitterrand reincarnated and the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell, buried. I am bound to say that, like the proverbial Irishman, I would not have started from here, but there is a very serious issue to address and I will seek to do so in a moment. Let me just make it plain that I am one of those who have for many years—indeed, since the Maastricht treaty ground its way through another place when my noble friend Lord Spicer and I were in opposite corners—advocated an “in or out” referendum to lance the boil and have made it quite plain at the same time that in any such referendum I would campaign, as I did alongside Labour parliamentarians in 1975, for this country to remain within the European Union. That is my position.
I am somewhat tempted by the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong of Ilminster, to recount a story. I was standing outside this House, before I entered it, talking in Prince’s Chamber to the late Lord Carter, the Labour Chief Whip, much loved by many people in both Houses. One of his colleagues came up to him and said, “They’re going on in there. It’s all been said”. “Yes”, said Lord Carter, “but not by everybody”. One is reminded of that in this debate.
I want to address the most serious subject to arise: the position of this House as a revising Chamber. I do not think that anyone in this House could reasonably accuse me of not being devoted to it or of not being prepared—as indeed I did on Wednesday this week—to vote against the Government of the day if I felt that the legislation before us could be improved, but we are dealing with something rather special here. We are dealing with a Bill that had a fair amount of time in the other place and was never seriously opposed by either the Official Opposition or our partners in the coalition. If noble Lords need to be reminded of that, all they need to do is look at the figures and the Division lists. In other words, this Bill has come to us with the other place having had the time to revise and amend it but having decided, for a variety of reasons, not to do so.
In a sense, what the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats have said to us is, “Let the House of Lords do our dirty work for us. Let them be the ones to defeat this Bill by making it run out of time”. I believe that any constitutional arguments have to be measured against that. The noble Lord, Lord Richard, may be
shaking his head, but he cannot deny the figures or the fact that this Bill was not properly scrutinised, even though there was an opportunity for it to be scrutinised, in the other place.