I recognise, and share, the frustration of most British people at the way powers have been sucked away from our own Parliament to Brussels over the years. I recognise the sincerity of my Parliamentary colleagues who supported the motion, a number of whom are good personal friends, but I concluded that I could not support them.
Put simply, I believe that this was the wrong motion at the wrong time.
The wrong motion because a three-way question as proposed would be unlikely to produce a decisive result & because the necessary legislation & the campaign itself would seriously distract from our paramount & critical objective of paying off the massive deficit which we inherited from the last Government and re-building Britain's economy.
The wrong time because the eurozone crisis already has the potential to de-stabilize the economies of what is still currently our biggest group of trading partners ( half of the foreign direct investment into the UK comes from, and half our exports go to, the rest of the EU). The additional uncertainty of a referendum on leaving the EU would make that worse & I do not believe that this would be in our national interest.
I do believe that it is in our national interest to stop the passage of further powers to the EU, to require, by law, a referendum on any future movement of power & to bring back to Westminster some of the powers which have already gone to Brussels. That is what I committed to in my election manifesto.
The first two objectives have been achieved: no more powers have been ceded, indeed the bail-out power has actually been returned, & the referendum lock is now on the Statute book.
Ironically, the crisis of the eurozone, gives us more, not less, opportunity to achieve the third. Fundamental questions are being asked about not just the euro, but the future shape of the EU itself. That is likely to lead to an Intergovernmental conference & potential changes to the EU treaties. Those changes will require unanimity, so we have the chance to be in a stronger bargaining position than we have been before. The Prime Minister spelt this out clearly in his statement to the House on Monday.
Because of the new law that this government has put in place, any new Treaty would require the consent of the British people in a Referendum, so my third reason for not supporting the motion is that it was premature.
I want to fundamental reform & a re-fashioning of our membership of the EU to better serve our nation's interests. I believe that, with determination & a little patience, the route I set out above is the best means of achieving that objective.