My Lords, I wish to speak in support of the amendment. I tabled a similar amendment in Committee which was rather less demanding than this one, but the Government dispatched it extremely briskly.
I suggest that this amendment might be helpful to the Government. The idea that all the special interest groups affected by these negotiations—the different sectors, companies and pressure groups—will sit still, while stuff comes out of the EU about the possibility of doing damage to their particular interests and concerns, is fanciful. If the Minister and the Government do not have any structured way of reporting back to Parliament, we will find that many of those people will lobby your Lordships’ House and there will be a demand for a huge number of Parliamentary Questions, as well as demands for debates, to deal with the latest set of rumours about a particular sector, industry or agency which may be being transferred back to Europe. The EMA would be a good example and Euratom is another. Therefore, the Government might find that
their life was made a bit easier if there was a structured way of reporting back to Parliament about the progress that was being made, especially if it was reasonably detailed and told some of these interest groups what was going on in the negotiations.