Ed Davey: why we want a referendum on EU membership

5.50.22pm UTC (GMT +0000) Tue 22nd Jan 2008

[European Union (Amendment) Bill, Jan 21] Edward Davey (Kingston & Surbiton, Liberal Democrat): ' . . Having made the case for the treaty and for the EU, let me come to the issue of referendums. Do we support a referendum on the Lisbon treaty? As my immediate predecessor as foreign and commonwealth affairs spokesman, my hon. Friend the Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (Mr. Moore), said in this House:

"In our judgment, the changes made to create this amending treaty have altered its constitutional significance, so we should not hold a referendum on it."-[ Official Report, 12 November 2007; Vol. 467, c. 430.]

I share his view. Instead, we argue for a different referendum-a referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union. Let us face it: a referendum on any EU treaty would become a referendum on the UK's continued membership. Let us not have that debate by proxy on a treaty referendum. Let us have a debate that people want by asking a straightforward, in or out question.

Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston, Labour) If the hon. Gentleman believes that the treaty is so good and so incredibly defensible-at one stage he would have put it to the people, but he now feels it should be an in or out question-why does he not take up the offer made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) and agree to a referendum with two questions? One would be on the treaty, and the other on continued membership.

Edward Davey: Because, unlike the hon. Lady, I think that the constitutional treaty is rather more significant than the reform treaty, and that there are differences between the two. There are significant differences between the two treaties in terms of content. Lisbon is not a constitutional treaty; it is an amending treaty, which has profound implications.

Bernard Jenkin (North Essex, Conservative) I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. We all know why the Liberal Democrats have adopted this position. It is because they want to be able to say in their manifesto at the next election that they voted for a referendum at some juncture, when in fact they are denying themselves the opportunity of voting for the only realistic referendum on offer. That is a mean, grubby, typical Liberal Democrat trick.

Edward Davey: If the hon. Gentleman had had the guts to vote with his colleagues for our amendment in the debate on the Loyal Address, we might have been able to get the referendum that the British people actually want. I was talking about the differences between the two treaties.

Ian Davidson (Glasgow South West, Labour) Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Edward Davey: The biggest difference of detail-

Hon. Members: Give way!

Sylvia Heal (Halesowen & Rowley Regis, Deputy-Speaker) Order. The hon. Gentleman clearly is not prepared to give way at this moment.

Edward Davey: The biggest difference in content undoubtedly concerns justice and home affairs. By securing an opt-in provision in relation to EU co-operation on policing and criminal justice, the Government significantly changed the force of the treaty as it applies to the UK. That ought to be accepted by all parties. I also believe that there is a real difference in how the charter of fundamental rights now applies to the UK, which the protocol, declaration and other treaty amendments have achieved. I know that that is contentious, but I am sure that we will debate it at length in the Committee of the whole House.

The most significant differences between the two treaties lie in the constitutional terms of those treaties. While Lisbon is just another amending treaty making a number of important, if modest, reforms, the constitutional treaty was something quite different. It abolished all past treaties, to replace them with one document: a new constitution. I believe that people have passed over that point and failed to grasp its significance. The Labour Member of the European Parliament, Richard Corbett, has it right when he points out that the DNA of mice and human beings is 90 per cent. the same-it is just that the remaining 10 per cent. is quite important. It is the same with the difference in nature between Lisbon and the constitutional treaty: the 10 per cent. difference moves one from a mouse of an amending treaty through to a fully evolved constitution.

A referendum on the constitutional treaty would therefore effectively have been a referendum on the whole of the EU-Rome, the Single European Act, Maastricht, Nice and Amsterdam. It would have been about the complete constitution.

David Heathcoat-Amory (Wells, Conservative) Surely treaties should be judged by their practical and legal effect. That is why two Select Committees of this House, which included Liberal Democrat among its members, concluded that in practical and legal substance, the two treaties are the same. Why does the hon. Gentleman not accept that?

Edward Davey: The right hon. Gentleman failed to deal with my point that the constitutional treaty would have created a completely new constitution. The reform treaty is an amending treaty. If he cannot understand that, I really despair. I shall quote the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks who said, when talking about the constitutional treaty, in 2006: "the fact that it was a constitution, not simply a treaty-would have revolutionised the EU."

For once, he was right. That is why he ought to recognise that what the Liberal Democrats are saying now, in our proposal for a referendum on EU membership, is far closer to a referendum on the constitutional treaty than the Conservatives' paltry offering. We believe that the British people have been denied a say on Europe for too long-on all the treaties and on the cumulative effects of all the changes. Unlike the Conservatives, who denied them a vote on Maastricht, we think that the people should speak. As a party that is strongly committed to the European Union, we want to offer the people the referendum that they really want. I hope that the House will allow a substantive amendment to the Bill to that effect so that we can begin to settle the European question and to draw the poison of anti-European feeling from the British body politic for a generation.' [http://tinyurl.com/393qcu]