Business of the House (Lisbon Treaty) (No. 8)

I am grateful for the gentle wave. I am not accustomed to that from the hon. Lady, but I will take it in the spirit in which it was offered. The truth is that this whole process has been rigged from the outset. First, we were promised a referendum on the treaty, and then that promise was broken. Then we were promised 20 days of debate, and that promise was broken too. We have been given only 14 days, which today's motion does not extend and which, according to the Library, represents less than half of the 29 days' debate in the Commons allocated to the treaty of Maastricht. That is why the Minister talks about Nice and Amsterdam but never makes the comparison with Maastricht. We were then promised an opportunity for line-by-line scrutiny of the treaty itself, and even that promise was broken, because the Government came up with a totally new way to debate treaties specifically designed to curtail the detailed scrutiny of the document that they tell the country they are so proud of.