European Union (Amendment) Bill

My Lords, it may help to clarify the position from these Benches, as the three-year look at this was my idea. It would be exactly as the noble Viscount, Lord Bledisloe, just said. I am sure the Minister will confirm that. It seemed likely that people would like to see exactly where we were going. I am a strong supporter of looking at what we have done as well as what we want to do. Like the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, I would like to put this in context. I will not go all the way back to 1973, although it is sometimes a little hard from these Benches to be accused of inconsistency on these matters. As the noble Lord rightly says, both individuals and parties here represented have been solidly consistent about the European issue during those years. Our approach to this Bill has been that, compared with both the original Act and the amendments to the treaty, it goes further than any other in the direction of strengthening parliamentary accountability. It did so even as it set off, which won favour on our Benches. Along with that commitment to Europe has been an equally strong, consistent support for greater accountability, as my honourable friend David Heath indicated in the other place. What has impressed us is how the parliamentary process has worked in this Bill—the House should congratulate itself on that. We sought at an early stage bilateral meetings with the Lord President. We expressed a real and serious problem with parliamentary accountability, particularly in this area, and sought movement. At the same time, as the House has heard, she carried out negotiations with both the Constitution Committee and the European Union Committee. Looking at those discussions, again the process has worked. We are not being asked to accept either a pig in a poke or a done deal. We have been able to influence and develop the issue as the Bill has progressed. Like the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, my approach on this has been to ask how we maximise parliamentary accountability and at the same time maximise the opportunity for European co-operation on real issues that affect real people: crime, people trafficking, drugs and the rest. There is a danger in wanting to belt and brace the parliamentary accountability. A number of noble Lords who have intervened have long experience in government of how we get the parliamentary accountability while Ministers who have responsibilities to make decisions at that moment are able to do so in a reasonable way. It strikes me that because of what has happened during the passage of the Bill and the approach of the noble Baroness the Lord President, we have reached a point where Parliament now has within its grasp a greater opportunity for accountability on European matters. Of course, there will always be those who say that this does not go far enough and who want more guarantees—indeed, for a humble solicitor, the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, is always silky in his approach to these matters—but if we are looking for a practical advance in parliamentary accountability, along with the flexibility that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, advocated, this goes a long way and should satisfy Parliament.