What discussions he has had with his EU counterparts on planned referendums on the treaty of Lisbon in other EU countries.

My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary and I have regular contact with our EU counterparts on numerous issues, including the Lisbon treaty.

May I quote from a piece in Saturday's edition of the Financial Times on the European Parliament and its legislation? The author writes:

"If we intervene as voters, we get spat on...I realised how cross I felt about the inter-governmental plot—there is no other word—to deny everyone a say on the new Lisbon Treaty, the rebranded version of the failed constitution killed off by French and Dutch referendums...The underlying assumption is that we're far too stupid to understand."

Does the Minister think the British people are too stupid to have the referendum that he promised them in his manifesto in 2005?

Far from it. The fact is that only one country across the EU is having a referendum: our good friends in Ireland. The hon. Gentleman quotes from Saturday's Financial Times. I thought he was going to quote his colleague, MEP Caroline Jackson, in yesterday's Financial Times, who described his party's policy as "a hopeless quest" and said that the party was developing

"a bad reputation...for crass and offensive behaviour", and she went on to describe his party's European policy as a "patch of poisonous fungus". The truth is that the Conservative party is more obsessed about, and isolated on, Europe now than at any time in modern history.

How many EU countries that are not having referendums are led by governing parties that promised a referendum before an election and then broke that promise after the election, or is the UK unique in that respect?

The right hon. Gentleman knows all about these issues, of course— [Interruption.]

Order. Allow the Minister to answer.

The right hon. Gentleman knows all about them from having been deputy Chief Whip during the Maastricht debacle. The fact is that nine countries—nine separate sovereign states—promised a referendum on the old constitution. Only Ireland intends to hold a referendum, on the basis that it is in adherence with its domestic 1937 constitution, which originates from the constitution of the Irish Free State of 1922 and a High Court ruling of 1987. Opposition Members should recognise that we have an entirely different domestic constitutional arrangement from that of our good friends in the Republic of Ireland.

The Minister will know that I had the pleasure of visiting East Renfrewshire last week in support of the "I Want a Referendum" campaign, which is running a referendum in his Constituency. I must tell him that a lot of his own constituents do not agree with him on this issue. He and his Government might continue to deny the British people the referendum that they were so clearly promised in Labour's manifesto, but what will the Minister for Europe do if even his own constituents, who sent him to this place, vote against him on the issue?

At the start of our debates and proceedings on the Lisbon treaty, I joked that I was looking forward to spending more time with the hon. Gentleman than with my own wife. He popped into my house last Friday to visit my wife —[Laughter.] I was not at home. Inexplicably, she had sent me out for the day. The constituent who lives with me, and I, have both decided to bin the ballot, and I believe that most of my constituents and those across the other nine areas where these local referendums are being held will do so too. They will recognise this as an expensive, ineffective publicity stunt by the Conservative party.