My Lords, I am going to make a rather cynical contribution to the debate. The debate has brought out very clearly the difference between accountability and a mandate. I am not in favour of the Government’s hands being tied by Parliament in these negotiations. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, that it is for the Government to conduct these negotiations, not for Parliament. We will have the opportunity to comment and to give our views, and we should. We certainly should not be cowed from doing that.
However, I will quote a recent example that I really think establishes this point. The Government unexpectedly, before the election, got an agreement with the European Union that the European Union always said that it would not make. How did they get it? They did it by making a concession on the Irish Sea that they would never have got through Parliament. They made a concession which they had said they would not make—but they found it necessary to do it, and when they had done it, Parliament and the electorate came to the conclusion that it was the right thing to have done. If Parliament had been able to control what the Government were able to do, the Government would not have been able to make that concession.
We might be cynical about that concession—we might think it was the wrong thing to do—but it was the thing that got the agreement and that was necessary to get the agreement. Certainly, the Government will need friends in these negotiations, but they will also need flexibility, and Parliament should not seek to take away that flexibility.