My hon. Friend is entirely right. It is important to set a precedent in this instance. I do not usually like new precedents; I think that they are rather dangerous. One always wants to find an historic precedent to which one can refer. On this occasion, however, it may be right to set the new precedent of securing the certainty that a country constitutes that smooth piece, with its corners just so, which can be inserted into the jigsaw that is the European Union.
It seems to me that a Government who are as good and as great as this Government—a coalition Government who see these matters in a broad and rounded way—will want to agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North, because surely it is very important that when Croatia joins, Croatia is ready to join. We have found before when we have let countries join early that it is much, much harder to solve the problems when they are in than it was before they were in. Once they are in, they benefit from all that comes from the European treaties. Before they are in, they are of course supplicants, and the power rests with the European Union to decide whether to admit them. It is unquestionably sound and prudent to follow the recommendation of my hon. Friend and to put this final brake on the process, so that it goes ahead only when we are comfortable that the Croatians have really got their act together.
It might be sensible to delegate consideration of this matter to the European Scrutiny Committee, so ably chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash), who would be able to bring all his knowledge and wisdom to the decision on whether Croatia had met the tests set by the European Union. Otherwise, we shall sow the wind and reap the whirlwind. We shall once again see a European Union that is fiddling its own rules to get what it wants. We shall say “Look what this European Union does: its sets down these rules, its sets down these conditions, its sets down these terms, but once they become inconvenient, it casts them aside and forgets them in order to be able to do what it wanted to do in the first place.”
It is the British Government and the British people who have the backbone and the strength of mind to ensure sure that the European Union is held properly to account, and to ensure that we have a chance to make it do what it says it is going to do, rather than wandering off on the path of allowing countries that are not fit to join to join early.