I rise to speak to new clauses 28, 54 and 99, standing in my name and those of other right hon. and hon. Members. New clause 28 deals with the sequencing of votes on the final terms—the issue on which we have had a concession this afternoon from the Minister; new clause 54 is about how to secure extra time if we need it in our negotiations with the EU; and new clause 99 embeds parliamentary sovereignty in the process.
I am pleased to follow the right hon. Member for Wokingham (John Redwood), but I am disappointed that he has not come clean to the Committee on the fact that he has identified an alternative process he hopes to use to secure the kind of Brexit he wants. He did not refer to another blog he wrote recently, in which he said:
“Being in the EU is a bit like being a student in a College. All the time you belong to the College you have to pay fees... When you depart you have no further financial obligations”.
This is a somewhat outmoded view of the way student finances work, but putting that to one side, he evidently has not read the excellent paper by Alex Barker of the Financial Times pointing out that the obligations on us will fall into three categories: legally binding budget commitments; pension promises to EU officials; and contingent liabilities, which indeed are arguable.