My Lords, there are two parts to what we have been talking about. One is about the mandate and the other is about oversight of the ongoing negotiations. As I think has just been clarified, the EU Commission negotiators seem to manage very well by being given a mandate from elsewhere —that is, from the Council—and reporting back there, so it really should not be difficult. The Minister seemed to be quoting the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union by saying that the European Parliament did not have the powers that other noble Lords have suggested. I think he will find that there is an institutional agreement going rather further, and that is what gives it the grip.
During the discussion on the mandate, my noble friend Lord Tunnicliffe, who of course is an old hand at negotiating, said that his definition of the mandate that he used to work with was “Whether I’d get away with it”. It sounds as though our Government are trying to do that, which is rather the problem. Given that the Government have a majority of 80 in the
other place, I really do not see what they are afraid of by our requiring that they should put the mandate, and report on the negotiations, to a House where they obviously control the numbers. They cannot be that afraid of your Lordships’ House, so it is slightly hard to imagine why they are so resistant to this.
The noble Lord, Lord Hamilton of Epsom, championed the existence of Statements. Those work quite well for someone like me on the Front Bench, because I get my fixed and protected time to question a Minister when they come with a Statement. But if there are only 10 or 20 minutes, or even 40 minutes, on a Statement for Back-Benchers when this House has a plethora of real experts and we are talking about something as detailed as negotiations, our Statements at the moment do not really provide the sort of scrutiny that your Lordships would expect on such a vital matter.