European Union (Referendum) Bill

Debate between Lord Hague of Richmond and Baroness Jowell

Friday 5th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. That may well be necessary given that Opposition Members, despite being opposed to the Bill, have not decided how they will vote. They have a few hours to decide.

[Dame Tessa Jowell (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Hague]

I will get through a few more paragraphs, but then I will give way to the right hon. Lady.

I do not need to remind the House that it is almost 40 years since the British people last had a vote on what was then the European Economic Community. Since then, there have been major treaties—four in the last quarter of a century—all of which would have required a referendum had the 2011 Act been in force at the time. Through those treaties, the EEC has become the European Community and now the European Union, and not once has there been a referendum on any of it. Some of us campaigned for referendums on the treaties of Amsterdam, Nice and Lisbon. Everyone can concede of Maastricht, Amsterdam and Nice that the party in government had said that it would ratify them in the general election campaign.

The Lisbon treaty is in a special category, in that there was no mandate in a general election or a referendum from the people of this country. Persisting with the Lisbon treaty with no mandate from either a general election or a referendum—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas) asks where I was when Maastricht took place. Is he not aware that there was a general election in 1992? There was no mandate for the Lisbon treaty from a general election or a referendum, and the Labour party deeply undermined the democratic legitimacy of the European Union when it took that decision.

[Dame Tessa Jowell]

May I press the Foreign Secretary on the question put by my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon North (Mr Reed)? In the forthcoming referendum that the Foreign Secretary is advocating, which way will he vote? The Prime Minister has indicated that he will vote to stay in the EU. How will the Foreign Secretary vote?