European Union Bill

I cannot recall without advice whether the Committee had just been appointed but had not met, or whether it had not yet been constituted, but the lesson that I draw from that episode—and the Government were far from happy with the fact that we had to take a decision at the end of the three-month period without a formal scrutiny process—is that we have, in the forthcoming discussions, to find a way to address the real difficulty that arises during a dissolution of Parliament and the period after that before the scrutiny Committees are fully reconstituted. What the new Government found on coming into office was that the EU's legislative timetable on justice and home affairs had not stopped and there was an accumulation of measures, each with a non-extendable three-month timetable, at the end of which we had to decide whether to make the initial opt-in. A large chunk of that time had already been devoured by the period of dissolution, and there were no scrutiny Committees in place to do the job that we would want and expect Parliament to do.