Business of the House (Lisbon Treaty)

The Minister mentioned energy. There is only one new article on energy in the treaty, which the Government opposed on the correct ground that there are powers in the existing treaties to liberalise the energy market. Why is this much-compressed timetable to include a whole day of debate on energy, and no debate on provisions relating to the powers of national Parliaments, which go to the root of the relationship between the House of Commons and the European Union? Is this not a further illustration of the fact that the whole timetable motion is more about the Government’s policy objectives than about the legal powers of the House and the country, which are what we should be debating?