Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill

We are not going to fall out, Sir Nicholas. Thirty is obviously the figure the Minister has in mind. Therefore what we are talking about is a rebuttable presumption that the House both debates and approves 30 treaties. I think that the House should be obliged to approve all of them by way of some form of affirmative procedure. However, I acknowledge that the House should not be obliged to debate all of them. Therefore, we have to find a way through the conundrum of requiring the approval of the House by some affirmative procedure, but allowing it to decide not to debate. Surely it is not beyond the wit of the constitutional experts available to this House—who are numerous, although they often get it wrong—to devise a mechanism that achieves that. I looked at today's Order Paper and I noticed a devil of a lot of motions, which the House will be asked to approve, that we will not debate—motions 4, 5, 6 and 7. That is a significant number of the 30 that we are talking about.