European Union (Amendment) Bill

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for attempting to answer my concerns. I say to my noble friend Lord Tebbit that I do not accept that this is a wrecking amendment, although I agree with him that requiring the European Parliament to prove its whiteness is almost impossible. I suppose that it may be a wrecking amendment to that extent. The noble Baroness did not answer my serious points about the alleged criminality of not just a few but a large number of Members of the European Parliament. It remains to be seen what OLAF will do about that and how many, if any, of them will be prosecuted. Will OLAF investigate its own lies to the European Court of First Instance? We do not know that. As in a lot of these debates, we have rather skated over the germane point that the European Parliament—by the admission of some of its members, particularly the Liberal Democrat MEP, Chris Davies—is riddled with irregularities and possible embezzlement. Although I now give an opportunity to the Liberal Democrat Front Bench to support Chris Davies in his initiative to expose this nest of irregularities in the European Parliament, it is obvious that I shall not get any answer from them in spite of the bravery of their colleague. However, I do not see much point in pursuing this matter in view of the remarks of my noble friend Lord Tebbit. For the moment at least, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. [Amendment No. 13 had been withdrawn from the Marshalled List.]