My Lords, I put my name to the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Newby, when it was Amendment 181. I would have put my name to his amendment today but I did not have the opportunity to do so over the weekend.
In my speech at Second Reading I agreed with others that this is not an appropriate vehicle to require a further referendum on our leaving the European Union. However, I said that I would support any amendments necessary to ensure that a further referendum would be among the options in Parliament’s meaningful vote at the conclusion of the negotiations. The amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Newby, is such an amendment.
I have feared throughout that the choice the Government intend to give Parliament at the conclusion of the negotiations is, “this agreement or no agreement”. I am sorry to say that what the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, said in our debate last Wednesday confirmed that this is indeed the Government’s intention. I hope that he will tell me I am wrong, but I think it was clear from what he said last week that that is what the Government propose to do. Of course, we must all hope that the agreement that emerges from the negotiations will be good for the UK—but the Prime Minister has famously said that no agreement would be better than a bad agreement. It would be entirely wrong if the only choice given to Parliament at the end of the negotiations was between an agreement, however bad, or no agreement at all. I know that the Prime Minister and the Government feel that they have an instruction from the people to take Britain out of the EU—but I cannot believe that a bad agreement is a correct interpretation of the wishes of a majority of the people as expressed in the referendum. If Parliament judges the outcome of the negotiations to be bad, a better alternative must be to think again before we drive the nation over a cliff.
Like the noble Lord, Lord Newby, I cannot get out of my mind my noble friend Lord Lisvane’s aunts, whom he described so graphically at Second Reading. If, having voted to go to cinema, they find that the two films available are ones they do not want to see, the only sensible course must be to think again about
going to the cinema at all. If that is true for my noble friend’s aunts on a Saturday evening, I suggest that it is certainly true for the nation as a whole in one of the most important decisions that we will have to make in our generation.