European Union (Amendment) Bill

That is certainly my state of mind at the moment. The Minister has not yet spoken or given us a wonderful reason why making the issue clearer is not a good idea. I look forward to hearing him and seeing whether he can convince me; he will certainly have to work hard. Amendment No. 18, which was tabled by the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague), does not seem so sensible. According to my reading, to leave out the option of parliamentary approval for all the areas listed would effectively ban any future moves to qualified majority voting, any use of the passerelle and any move to ordinary legislative procedure—at all, in any circumstances, ever. That does not seem sensible; it is symptomatic of the blinkered and isolationist view on Europe that today's Conservative party seems to take. It is unable to conceive of any future circumstances in which any of those things might be in the UK's interests. Let us bear in mind that we cannot predict the future. Clause 6(1)(f) is about measures on the environment; if, at some future point—to help tackle climate change and after approval by this House—it was in our interests to ease the possibilities for moves in Europe to protect the environment, doing so would be a good idea. Amendment No. 18 cannot be taken seriously. I have sympathy with amendments Nos. 42 to 46, which, again, would increase parliamentary scrutiny on a variety of issues—moves to qualified majority voting on criminal procedures and on the list of crimes covered. The current list of crimes in the Lisbon treaty seems pretty comprehensive: terrorism; trafficking in human beings and sexual exploitation of women and children; illegal drug trafficking; illicit arms trafficking; money laundering; corruption; counterfeiting of means of payment; computer crime; and organised crime. It is not easy to predict what we might want to add to that. However, 20 years ago we probably could not have predicted cybercrime; it would make sense for the House to have the final say if in future we wanted to add a crime to the list. Like the other parties, the Liberal Democrats are not in favour of a European public prosecutor. However, again, having the safeguard of the House deciding whether the situation would change in future seems eminently sensible. Amendment No. 46 relates to common EU defence; it brought to mind the fact that we have not had the opportunity to debate that subject properly, which is very much to be regretted. If we were to move to QMV on that issue, it would be a sufficiently big decision to require parliamentary approval. I would certainly be minded to support any of amendments Nos. 42 to 46 if they were pressed to a Division. I was tempted by amendment No. 49, which would require parliamentary approval for various aspects of the opt-in to justice and home affairs. My issue is about the practicalities, given the short window of six weeks that we might have for opting into some of the provisions. It might be difficult to include such approval in parliamentary timetabling, so I am less convinced by the amendment, although I welcome its spirit.