European Union (Amendment) Bill

I hesitate to intervene, but I feel I should come to the defence of the committee and, particularly, its membership. One important consequence of the committee’s work on the Lisbon treaty was to produce what, by any standards, is a thoroughly objective impact assessment. The noble Lord shakes his head, but I assure your Lordships that having sat in the chair for many long days while working on this report, there was an absolute consensus in that committee that we would thrash out the issues around the table, but that what we wrote would be an objective impact analysis of the treaty and what changes it would bring about. So I have some reservations about and feel rather hurt by the implication that this was somehow a political exercise dressed up as something entirely objective. It was not.