I have always thought the Government Chief Whip was a very nice man. I do not think he was offering us lunch today but he was offering us time for lunch.
This is a short and, I hope, sweet amendment. It is about the cement between Amendment 1 and Amendment 3. Amendment 1 has been defeated and therefore we are not talking about a referendum at the end of negotiations, but Amendment 3, which I trust will be carried, is about putting the decision at the end to Parliament. Amendment 2 basically states that, in order to make that as good a way of moving forward as possible, we will need to have from the Government—not as a running commentary, or even as a walking commentary, but as a dialogue with Parliament—some feedback about how the negotiations are going.
This is not only about what we are offering as a Government, as a country, but also about what is happening on the other side. We think we will be negotiating with just one bloc—the European Union—but there are 27 countries on that side and there will be ups and downs, elections, changes of personnel and all kinds of things happening within those 27 countries.
Charles Grant of the CER, who is usually correct, has said that in all of this, politics matters more than economics. Therefore feedback from the Government about how the other countries and the European Union are responding will help us to understand the negotiations. As I said in Committee, it would be terrible if we come to that final vote in this House and there are surprises because we do not know what has been happening and how discussions have been going and, even worse, because the Government have not taken the time to listen to our EU committees.