Issue link: https://htpgraphics.uberflip.com/i/464860
AGRICULTURE EDITION 55 REVIEW OF PARLIAMENT | The sequel to the unprecedented Queen's Speech amendment was the intricate battle over James Wharton's private members' Bill. Its immediate effect was to provide a strategy around which Conservative MPs could unify, which was popular with party members and provided a counter to UKIP. Its Achilles heel was that the Bill lacked the procedural protection enjoyed by government legislation. There was no guillotine on debate, and no time limits for speeches – making it vulnerable to delaying tactics, which could use up the available debating time and so defeat the Bill without an open vote. Until he topped the private members' Bill ballot, James Wharton had been a low-profile figure in the Commons, but he launched his Bill with aplomb: He said the EU was a very different institution from the Common Market Britain had joined: 'No one knows where it will be in a few years. It is the right approach that, rather than rush headlong now to make a decision, we should negotiate to get the right deal and to understand what future membership of the European Union would mean. Whatever the result of that process … ultimately it must be put to the British people so that they can choose whether to renew their consent to membership or to withdraw it.' A couple of interventions gave a flavour of events to come. Labour procedure expert Thomas Docherty asked whether citizens in Gibraltar would have a vote, but Mr Wharton sensed a trap, warning that the larger and more complex the Bill became, the greater were the opportunities for opponents to wreck it. Another theme was the coalition's yawning Euro-divide. Many of the Conservative MPs wore badges showing a Lib Dem election leaflet featuring Nick Clegg promising an in–out referendum. When the senior Lib Dem Simon Hughes reminded MPs that the coalition has already legislated for a referendum on the next major treaty change, he was jeered. Simon Hughes MP Conservatives legislate for an EU referendum Prime Minister David Cameron with James Wharton MP ballot – a sort of raffle – for the right to bring in a private members' Bill. Within the hour he announced he would bring in a referendum Bill – and the EU issue reverberated through the rest of the year.