DISTRICT COUNCIL VOTES TO CALL FOR A REFERENDUM ON EU TREATY

At the full District Council meeting on 17th September the Council approved a motion proposed by Cllr Derek Tipp and seconded by Cllr Henry Forse that the Council should call on Gordon Brown to keep his party's manifesto promise and give the people a vote on the new Reform Treaty that he is due to sign up to on 18th October. The full text of the motion is set out below:

The "Reform Treaty", signed by Tony Blair on 23 June, is acknowledged publicly by the leaders of nearly all our EU partners to be virtually the same as the Constitution Treaty. The people of France and The Netherlands decisively rejected that Treaty. The "Reform Treaty" transfers yet more substantive powers from Britain to the EU and further erodes British laws and the British Constitution. It will reduce the rights and freedoms of the residents of the New Forest and of the whole nation.Therefore this Council calls on Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, to abide by the Government's promise to the electorate in the 2005 Labour Party Manifesto page 84, "We will put [the Constitution Treaty] to the British people in a referendum…. ."

After a short debate, during which the Leader of the Liberal Democrat group agreed to support the motion, a vote was taken and the motion was passed with no one voting against and only a few abstentions.