European Union (Amendment) Bill

moved Amendment No. 2: 2: Clause 1, page 1, line 4, at end insert ““which amends and alters constitutional arrangements between the European Union and the United Kingdom”” The noble Lord said: The amendment stands in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Hunt of Wirral. We now begin what I fear will be a fairly long process in a complex and very important Bill. I shall make one or two preliminary remarks about the future landscape. A lot of disagreement is ahead—we have to face that. We are here to disagree, I hope constructively and amiably, with each other. However, I hope that we are all agreed on one thing—that line-by-line scrutiny of this Bill is required urgently and, indeed, it is our duty to see how it can be improved. That is our job, and what we are here for. To be a little pedantic, it is not quite correct to say that the Government gave 11 full days in Committee in the other place, as was observed the other day. To put that at its kindest, I regard that as a somewhat digital enhancement of the facts. The truth is that with the themed debates in the other place, each day’s Committee stage was squeezed down to three and a half hours or less, sometimes 90 minutes. As a result, rafts of amendments were never debated, and several very important subjects were never reached at all, such as defence, asylum and immigration, all of which led one commentator to describe the handling in another place as a scandal. I hope that we will not hear any more of that. We have an important job to do—to fill in for what has not been done. The first amendment is concerned with what could be described as honest labelling or consumer protection-type legislation—namely, presenting the treaty for what it really is. We believe that in the end it pays to be honest with voters and the public. If one tries to get round that it usually comes back to hit one in the face. I looked in vain—I suppose this was naïve of me—for a Liberal Democrat amendment on this issue. I am glad to see that Liberal Democrats are here. However, I have looked for their amendments but cannot see one to any part of this Bill at all. I am amazed that they have not put down a single amendment. They seem to have given up on their proper duty of scrutiny and improvement in this Chamber. I thought that was what they were here for. Therefore, I presume that they will vote with the Government on everything. I hope that I am wrong but it looks as if that is what will happen. It is very puzzling. These days our Liberal Democrat colleagues on my right seem to have become sort of punk Europhiles. They make Gordon Brown’s dithering over signing the treaty and everything else look positively dynamic. I wondered why they abstained and walked out of the Commons. Frankly, I now wonder why they have even bothered to walk into the Lords today if they are not going to play any part in the Bill except to tick the Brussels boxes. Enough of that because it is disappointing but I suppose we—