European Union Bill
Debate between Nia Griffith and James Clappison(13 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Clappison
He has been friendly. He has been a model of charm and ministerial competence, but he has not yet produced any credible reason why we cannot have a vote in Parliament to decide whether something is significant enough to trigger a referendum, as opposed to leaving it simply to a Minister. What is wrong with trusting Parliament?
Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)
I rise to speak to the amendments standing in the names of my Labour Front-Bench colleagues. People elect their MP to speak up for them in Parliament and that is what they expect us to do. They expect us to speak up, to do business for them and to do certain work for them because they have put us here and they cannot spend every minute of every day looking at every detail that they want us to look at. They expect the party in government to tackle the problems of the day. When I say that the general public do not want numerous referendums on technical matters it is not because I doubt their ability to study the issues and make up their own minds—they could of course spend their time doing that. What people tend to say to me is, “Nia, it is your job. You’ve been elected to do this. We want you to look at these things and tell us the best ways forward.” That is not because they cannot do this themselves. They expect us to do the nitty-gritty work on the legislation.