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THE PARLIAMENTARY REVIEW Highlighting best practice 56 | REVIEW OF PARLIAMENT The final act of the referendum Bill drama came after two long Fridays of detailed debate in the House of Lords, conducted at a snail's pace. It was not a direct vote against the Bill but an implicit one, in which peers voted to close down their committee-stage debate rather than continue it into the small hours of Saturday morning. By the time the Labour peer Lord Lipsey moved his motion to end the day's debate, it was clear that there was no prospect of peers dealing with all the amendments before them. There were 76 amendments in all, mostly from opponents of a referendum, on subjects varying from requiring a minimum percentage of the electorate – 25%, 40% or 50% – to vote in order to make the result binding, to allowing British expats in EU countries to vote, to requiring an all-postal ballot. The Bill was being put through the Lords by the Conservative peer and thriller writer Michael Dobbs. His frustration with the orchestrated go-slow tactics deployed by opponents had become increasingly evident as the committee stage inched along: 'My Lords, another hour, another group of amendments. We have 15 groups of amendments to get through today if we are to reach the end of Committee stage.' Mr Wharton accused the Lib Dems of 'changing their position as the wind blows'. Shadow foreign secretary Douglas Alexander dismissed the Bill as a stunt prompted by the electoral threat of UKIP and an internal threat to David Cameron's leadership. It would threaten jobs by raising a question about the UK's EU membership. But he was mocked by the foreign secretary William Hague, who noted that Mr Alexander had spoken for half an hour without saying how Labour would vote. 'Rarely in this house has a speech accusing others of causing uncertainty been so totally shrouded in uncertainty itself,' he added. The Bill was given its second reading by 304 votes to none – and later survived two and a half gruelling days of report-stage debate unscathed. But its slow passage meant that the Bill was always likely to run out of time in the Lords, where a posse of determined pro-EU peers lay in wait. The referendum bill runs aground in the Lords In the end, the demise of the Bill came down to time