Prime Minister David Cameron’s plan for Britons to vote on whether to leave the European Union faced its first hurdle in Parliament on Tuesday, with support from the main opposition but unrest within Conservative ranks.
lawmakers held their first debate on the referendum bill, which lays out the rules for a vote by 2017 on the question, “Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European UnionIJ”
Introducing the legislation, Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said expansion of the now 28-member bloc since Britain voted to join in 1975 “has eroded the democratic mandate for our membership to the point where it is wafer-thin and needs to be renewed.” “We need a fundamental change in the way the European Union operates,” he said, with more protections for Britain and other countries whose economies are not bound together by the euro single currency.