We have dealt with the referendum. The referendum is extremely complicated. I do not know that there would be a clear answer.
The accusation is that the Government have negotiated extraordinarily badly. I will not defend the negotiations; I think we played a weak hand very badly. But at the end of the day, these negotiations go on with the EU. Before we could continue the negotiations, three totally bogus things were raised. One was that we had to agree on the Irish border. Hold on: the Irish border will be the only land border that we have with the EU when this is all over. How can we separate that from a trade deal that we do with the rest of the EU? It is absolutely ridiculous. How can you treat EU citizens living in this country separately from the immigration policies we will have with the EU when a final deal is done? Then there is the money. It was said that we must agree on the money before we agree anything else. I heard somebody say the other day that it was rather like walking into a restaurant and calling for the menu and for the waiter to come along and say that you had to pay for your dinner before you had even ordered it. The whole thing is ridiculous.
The bill for what we had to pay started at €100 billion. It has come down a bit, I am glad to say. But why are we being accused of being intransigent? The noble Lord, Lord Wilson, said that there was a great argument for not being hurried. Hold on: I have never stopped hearing from the EU that the clock is ticking and that we must get on—all these ridiculous elements have been raised that we must deal with before we can move on. As far as I can see, all the delay has come from the other side, not from the Government.
Then there is the constant argument that we do not know what we want. Yes we do: we want an ad hoc free-trade agreement with the EU so that we can carry on selling things to it and for it to sell more to us, as we have been doing so far.
I finish on the whole issue raised by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead. He asked a viable question about the powers taken under the Bill. I have campaigned for years to try to get powers back from Europe. Let us face it: those powers are massive, as the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, reminded us. The Henry VIII provisions were used to impose EU edicts on Parliament. I am not in the business of seeing the Executive taking all those powers. We should re-strengthen Parliament and take advantage of that at this stage. Maybe we should have a sunset clause so that these powers lapse after a period, but it is not our business to see the Executive strengthened as a result of the Bill.
6.16 pm