European Union (Amendment) Bill

The Minister will know that in the White Paper leading up to the 2003 negotiation, the Government vehemently opposed the extension of qualified majority voting, because they said it would undermine the role of national Parliaments. So that we can scrutinise how much name changing will happen, will the Minister tell us why he thinks the Union is so keen to have qualified majority voting on, for example, foreign affairs? Under those provisions, apart from what we might do ourselves, such matters would not come before the national Parliaments of member states. Why is the Union so keen to move to qualified majority voting that it has a special—