European Union (Amendment) Bill

I must complete this point, but I will give way to the right hon. Gentleman in due course. A comparative analysis is, however, beyond the capabilities of the Foreign Office, it seems. Throughout last autumn, the initial answers to the written questions that I had tabled to the Foreign Secretary asking for a comparative, clause-by-clause analysis were simply delaying replies, as Ministers worked out how to avoid publishing something so deeply inconvenient to their argument. In the end, the Foreign Secretary just refused to do so, relying on the discredited mantra that the constitutional concept had been abandoned, which was not conducive to open debate. From a Government who are supposedly committed to freedom of information and transparency, that should not be acceptable to Parliament. As a result, it has been left to others to perform the comparative analysis with intellectual rigour and honesty. The European Scrutiny Committee has published a table showing that the overwhelming majority of the constitution’s provisions are replicated in the Lisbon treaty. We always say that we will try not to get the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk, who is reading at the moment, into too much trouble, but the Minister for Europe has told us that the hon. Gentleman is in so much trouble as it is that that does not matter any more. The hon. Gentleman said that"““every provision of the constitutional treaty, apart from the flags, mottos and anthems, is to be found in the reform treaty. We think that they are fundamentally the same, and the Government have not produced a table to contradict our position.””—[Official Report, 11 December 2007; Vol. 469, c. 211.]" Another analysis showed that of the 250 main provisions in the constitution, 240 are replicated in the Lisbon treaty. Every cross-party analysis of the treaty has reached the same conclusion. The Foreign Affairs Committee concluded that"““there is no material difference between the provisions on foreign affairs in the Constitutional Treaty which the Government made subject to approval in a referendum and those in the Lisbon Treaty on which a referendum is being denied.””"