European Union (Amendment) Bill

I shall give way when I have put some specific quotes on to the record. The Committee’s report stated:"““The same simplified procedure may be used to amend all or part of the provisions of Part Three of the Treaty on the Functioning of the Union””." Our concern was that there was no intention to have an IGC to do that, so it would just be done by arrangements with Governments. We said that we were"““concerned that these provisions could allow substantial changes to be made without convening an IGC and so lead to even less transparency in the way the EU is governed, and less accountability of governments to their national parliaments. We ask the Government to outline what safeguards they would put in place to prevent this further erosion of transparency and accountability.””" As a result of that conclusion and our interrogating the Minister and the Foreign Secretary, they secured a series of agreements in the protocols on how this Government, and perhaps the Polish and Irish Governments, would have the right to opt-in after a matter was transposed and a clear procedure whereby if we did not like an amendment to something that had been agreed to—in other words, when we had already opted in—we would have the right to opt out or opt in to that amendment. There were consequences to that. There could have been financial penalties, because the countries that remained in the agreement could have decided that any costs incurred in pursuing an amendment that they had agreed should fall on the UK. We were assured by the Foreign Secretary and his officials that they could never see such a measure being enacted, but the European Scrutiny Committee was concerned that the decision to impose such penalties would be taken by qualified majority voting of the remaining countries, without the UK being allowed to participate. In other words, it would be a court at which we could not make our case. We summed up the situation as the law of unintended consequences. The Foreign Secretary—and his officials, whom I met separately—argued strongly that we had worked out the deal, that the amendments were to our advantage and that they would lay out a proper timetable for opting in and out. I have asked the Minister about the matter several times in the House. I know that he is burdened down with dealing with these debates, but I hope that someone in the Foreign Office is working on a set of procedures that show how the provisions will be enacted. If that does not happen, we will be taking a leap in the dark, although I believe that clause 3 should stand part of the Bill.