I was amused to discover that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State was a little taken aback by the amendment I tabled late last night. I tabled it with his best interests at heart. Having spent last week understanding that he might imminently be joining me on the Back Benches and realising that Lords amendment 19, if endorsed by the Commons, might precipitate the same thing again, I thought I ought to do what I could to help him. That is why I tabled my amendment, in addition to the one he has tabled, in lieu of the Lords amendment.
I must tell the House that I really am worried: the irrationality of the debate on the detail of Brexit is truly chilling. A person opens their newspaper and discovers they are about to prevent Brexit, when what the House is doing is legitimately looking at the detail of one of the most complex legal and political exercises in which we have ever engaged in peacetime, and, as a result, our ability to have a rational debate entirely evaporates. If we continue in this way, we will make mistakes and not achieve the best possible outcome.
The House of Lords was not acting irrationally when it agreed amendment 19. It had picked up on something that ought to be of great concern to everybody in this House—namely, that although we can make provision for achieving a deal, if we do not achieve a deal at all, we will be facing an immense crisis. It might be that some of my colleagues on the Government Benches are excited at this prospect and think it a wonderful moment, but I am not; I think it will be catastrophic. The question, therefore, is: how do we take sensible steps, in anticipation of this, to try to ensure a coherent process for dealing with it? That is what this is about. It is not about obstructing Brexit.
If we want to obstruct Brexit, there are plenty of other ways to do it. We could replace the Government with one that would like to stop it, although, having already triggered article 50, we would still have to get
the consent of our EU partners. There is, then, a complete constitutional incoherence in imagining that the Bill and the way it is presented somehow leads to that dastardly outcome.