Business of the House (Lisbon Treaty)

That would certainly be a way forward. Unless there had been agreement that the new system was better than the old system, it would probably have been better to keep the tried-and-tested system. I do not belong to the dinosaur tendency, which says that we never change our procedures. Indeed, I welcomed the Minister’s suggestion that we try to be thematic. That seemed a welcome initiative and I do not resist it just because it is a new idea—if we did that, we would never make any changes to the procedure in this place at all. However, it might be better to go back. Indeed, if we defeat the Government’s motion tonight, that is certainly where we will be, with the normal procedures. That is a better starting place than the proposal that has turned out to be totally inadequate to the task ahead of us, even though it might have been attempted in good faith. I want to deal with some of the specific subjects that have already been identified as having been missed from the provisions on the allocation of time. We can have lots of inter-party knockabout on these matters, but, to be fair, all parties agree that there is a common interest in debating certain sections of the treaty for roughly the same length of time. However, the Opposition are making an extra bid for certain other sections to be included, and everyone has spotted the fact that the Government are trying to rush things through far more quickly than is justified. I shall come back to that issue, which I hope deals with the point raised by the hon. Member for Stone (Mr. Cash). Certain matters are not provided for in the timetable, and are perhaps not commonly agreed to be valid subjects for debate. They are not the central issues, but they relate to the economy, social services and public services. Adoption rights and aspects of family law, for example, are not unimportant to people, and we ought to have an opportunity to debate them. There certainly ought to be an opportunity to discuss the role and legal status of EU institutions. The Conservatives get themselves wound up about that and misrepresent the case. It is not the great monster that they pretend it is, and I shall be happy to take them on in that regard. Many organisations have legal status. The Universal Postal Union, for example, has legal status. The treaty is bringing the situation up to date by proposing that certain new structures should have legal status. So this issue is not a monster, but we should still debate it properly. There is also a good debate to be had on the distribution of competencies between the EU, as it will be, and the national Parliaments. The treaty actually gives national Parliaments more say, not less, in that regard, although one would not think so if one listened to the Tory party. For the first time, the treaty explicitly provides a right to leave the European Union as opposed to staying in it. I would be happy to debate that, because it shows the merit of the treaty—