Indeed; the measure was clearly designed to try to bring the Conservative party together for a general election campaign. The hon. Member for Cleethorpes also asked why we would want to settle for a worse deal than the one we have. That is exactly what we will do as a result of his Government’s actions.

I welcome the Bill introduced by the hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies), who is not in his place. A vote on the deal is Liberal Democrat policy. There will be an opportunity to test the House on day eight of the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill, when amendment 120 will be voted on. On 20 December, I hope that many Members of Parliament from all parties who are in the Chamber today will support that and enable that further vote to happen.

The issue of young people and the fact that they voted heavily to remain has been rather set aside by Government Members. Although I would not support the idea of weighting for votes, disregarding those concerns and not accepting that there is a difference between the impact on young people and the impact on the older section of the population who voted to leave is a concern.

The issues that were raised about the impact on Wales are a concern, too. If farmers in Wales are expecting to get the same level of subsidy that they do now, they need to rethink things, because frankly, they will not. Farmers are certainly very worried by the prospect of no deal, so a positive thing about Friday was that the possibility of no deal has receded a bit. I met a farmer last week who potentially faced tariffs of 40% on lamb if we fall back on World Trade Organisation rules. If anyone thinks that a single hill farmer will continue to operate in Wales or Scotland with 40% tariffs on lamb, if we fall back on WTO rules, they need to think again.

The hon. Member for Swansea West said that there was no one who has experience of doing trade deals. When I asked the question, I got one name—Crawford Falconer—so at least the Government have one person. It is a pity, however, that Mr Falconer came from the Legatum Institute, which, frankly, has adopted a rather biased position on Brexit and is very much pushing a hard Brexit agenda.

The hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Paul Masterton) referred to the value of trade. He said that he supported remain because he recognised the value to trade and business of being in the European Union and because we were so integrated. Yet he is now fully endorsing something that he knows will cause damage to trade and business. That is why I find it difficult to understand the position that Conservative remain-voting Members of Parliament are now adopting, with their wholesale endorsement of something that they know will cause damage. Yet they are willing to proceed with it; the will of the people dictated it, so we are going over the cliff edge, come what may. They know that it will cause damage but they are endorsing it.

The hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) was right to say that the referendum was at a point in time. She said that she found hope in the statement on Friday, as did I, but my little bit of hope was somewhat reduced within 24 hours, when the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said that if people do not like the deal, they can tear it up at the next general election and have another one. I am not sure what message it sends to the European Union about our negotiations with it, or indeed, to the Irish about the certainty they can have about what our Government agree, if a very senior Cabinet Member says, “Actually, if you don’t like it, we’ll give you another one. We’ll give you the real hard Brexit that I support, as Secretary of State for DEFRA”—or as the spokesman for foreign affairs. I do not have confidence that this will stick for very long. Members are waiting in the wings and keeping remarkably quiet at the moment, and I wonder how long, for instance, the hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) and the right hon. Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) will do so.

I would like to comment on many other things, but I am aware that we need to move on to the Front Benchers’ contributions soon. The hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Lee Rowley) should not be surprised that this has not been an academic debate on the benefits of referendums versus parliamentary democracy. He has strong views on this debate, as do I and many other Members of the House. We on the Opposition side have strong views because we believe that this will be the single most damaging, dangerous thing that the UK has embarked on in the past 50 years. I am afraid that we are not going to have an academic debate about the merits of referendums; we are actually going to focus on what we think will cause major damage to the United Kingdom.

If people do not believe that, I recommend that they talk to foreign diplomats, from the European Union and outside it, about what their perception of the United Kingdom is now. That is not just down to who we have as our Foreign Secretary, but because they believe that we are isolating ourselves and taking a step backwards. We are far from being the global Britain that the Government talk about. Our friends believe the opposite. That is not me saying that; it is what I hear from my contact with diplomats, who are conveying that message to our Government. They do not understand. We used to have a Government who were pragmatic and well organised in negotiations and who played a central role in the European Union; now we have a Government who are disorganised, do not know where we stand and have not even yet had significant Cabinet debates about what the future of our relationship with the European Union should look like.

Finally, I was wondering whether there was anyone who was perhaps more pessimistic about Brexit than me, but I have found in the hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) someone who feels as strongly—indeed more strongly than I do. I also support entirely the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), who I think is in the same place as me. She rightly highlighted the very legitimate concerns that the people who voted leave had during the course of that campaign. I challenge the Government to say what they have done about some of those most significant concerns.

On housing, we need 300,000 new homes. How many of those will the Government build? How many will they build when many of those construction workers who work in London do not return after Christmas because they prefer to stay in their countries in the European Union? So that is not going to happen. On the skills agenda, the number of people doing apprenticeships, which are about giving people the skills to take the jobs here so that we do not have to rely on people from the EU, has halved. The Government are simply not addressing those concerns.

On 20 December, I hope that people will support amendment 120. Other Members have referred to the Survation poll and I agree that we cannot claim that everything has changed on the basis of one poll. However, a number of polls—not just the Survation poll—point to a shift. Peter Kellner has pointed to the same thing: a shift, for instance, from working-class voters on this issue. Other Members quoted the figure of those responding to the Survation question—

“When the UK Government’s negotiations over the terms of Britain’s exit from the EU are complete, would you…support holding a referendum?”—

which is just under 50%, whereas 34% oppose such a referendum.

When I was quoting those figures, I saw the Minister shaking his head. I am not sure whether he disagrees with Survation’s methodology—perhaps he does and would like to set that out—but those are the figures that it provided, and I am sure its poll was decent and well researched. The main argument deployed against having a vote on the deal is that the will of the people was expressed on 23 June 2016, so job done; we proceed. Well, people around the world are considering with increasing concern whether there was, for instance, significant Russian interference in the US elections. Will they be happy and confident in future years simply to go along with the result, knowing that the Russians might have played a significant role in perverting the outcome of the election?

The hon. Member for Newport West referred to the debate that will take place next Wednesday, on 20 December, about Russian interference in UK politics and society. There is evidence of organised Twitter activity by the Russians, seeking to influence the outcome of the EU referendum. Why did they do that? Because it is in their interests to split up the European Union, and they know that the UK played a significant role in ensuring that sanctions were applied to Russia. There is evidence. I ask Conservative leave supporters what level of interference from abroad or lies peddled at home—I will not cover the ground about the £350 million a week for the NHS, as it has been mentioned frequently in this debate—would make them feel that maybe the result was not quite so convincing after all. It was only 52% to 48%.

I have before me a selection of leaflets—I will not go through them, because I know that we need to get to the Front-Bench speeches—containing what the leave campaign said during the EU referendum period. They say that we will get lots of money back after leaving the European Union, but they do not mention all the additional costs, including duplicating agencies and the settlement bill, which we now know is a down payment, not the final payment. We might have to pay for access to the single market and the customs union, when we know that we will have a smaller economy. Again, the Minister shook his head when the figure of £65 billion in shrinkage was mentioned; that was actually the Chancellor’s figure, so I am not sure what he was disagreeing with.

We know that the NHS is spending more money on visas for nurses, because nurses are not coming from Spain, Portugal and Italy anymore. In fact, I have been told that the recruitment fairs that the NHS used to hold have stopped, and nurses are coming instead from Thailand and India. The difference is that the Government—the hospital trust—must pay £1,000 per visa to secure those nurses, whereas when they came from Spain, Portugal and Italy, it cost NHS trusts nothing at all.

I do not have time to go through all the things that were said by the leave campaign in its leaflets, none of which, I argue, has been delivered. Another Member referred to the Citizens’ Assembly on Brexit, which I certainly recommend. It is an example of the will of the people being expressed through a deliberative and constructive process that takes people through the arguments. It is the debate that we should have had before the EU referendum, but did not. The outcome, hon. Members will be interested to know, was that on migration, people wanted to

“retain free movement of labour, but with the UK Government exercising all available controls to prevent abuse”

of the system. Incidentally, the UK Government could have done that, but chose not to.