European Union (Implications of Withdrawal) Bill [HL]

My Lords, I am grateful for that reply. I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken—perhaps especially to those who do not agree with the Bill, because they have at least given us the opportunity of a lively and wide-ranging debate. I shall sum up with some comments on some of the remarks that have been made. I was most grateful to my noble friend Lady Noakes, if I may call her that. I was interested in her ideas that there should be a time limit to the inquiry and a limit on costs. I accept that, and I will have to think between now and Committee how that might be done. Most of the work has in fact already been done; it is out there in academic studies and so on. The noble Lord, Lord Watson, and other noble Lords confused the Bill with a Bill to withdraw from the European Union. He said it was not the time; if ever there was a time to withdraw from the European Union, it is not now. But that is not what the Bill says. It merely asks for an inquiry so that there can be a more informed public debate. The noble Lord also asked my noble friend Lord Vinson whether one solution to the democratic deficit might be to give the European Parliament more power. That is not a realistic question. It is impossible to imagine that the 27 Governments of Europe would agree to abolish the Commission’s right of proposal and the whole of the existing system of lawmaking and to pass that power to the European Parliament. One of the fundamental flaws of the European Union that has not been mentioned today is that there is no European demos. There can therefore not really be any European democracy to be reflected in any European Parliament. The noble Lord, Lord Dykes, said something from a sedentary position.