Business of the House (Lisbon Treaty)

The Minister has so far not made an argument in favour of his new procedure. He has merely asserted what it is. He has gone on to say that it is what it is because of what he has been told were the deficiencies in previous Committees. I was involved in all four of the treaties that he described, and I do not recognise what he is saying. The Single European Act and the Amsterdam and Nice treaties were comparatively non-controversial and were therefore taken in quite a short time. Maastricht is the best comparison with this treaty. I took part in the Maastricht debates as a Minister, and the Minister’s description of the problem is a complete transformation of history. The problem for the Government was that the House, as a whole, would not allow us to waive the 10 o’clock rule. We could bring debates to an end only when we could get a closure, which was rarely. Only when everyone had spoken themselves into exhaustion could we get a timetable at all. That was inconvenient for the Government, which I suspect is what has weighed most heavily on the Minister’s mind. It meant that the subject matter was chosen by the Members of the House, who argued about it for as long as they decided. We moved on from subject to subject as the House allowed us. The votes were all the difficult ones on amendments—