European Union Bill

His excellent speech; I am happy to be corrected. My hon. Friend the Member for Dover made an important and helpful analogy between the negotiations that he as a lawyer would conduct on behalf of his clients and the work of Ministers representing this country in the Council of Ministers and in other European institutions. He quite rightly said that it would be—I paraphrase somewhat—rather absurd for him to be forced to reveal to his opponents his entire menu of options during a negotiation. I adopt that analogy but take it one stage further: it would be even more absurd for my hon. Friend, as a lawyer justifying his decision to his clients, then to be forced to disclose not only the documents that he generated as a result of his negotiation, but the documents generated by his opponents. That would potentially prejudice not only his position but that of another party to the negotiations. Indeed, I am sure that he took part in negotiations with more than one party. One can therefore see how the entire house of cards comes tumbling down as regards the freedom to indulge in a human negotiation. Let us face it, we are all human—we all know the constraints that can be placed on us if we know that everything that we say and do is, as in this place, taken down and recorded. If negotiations are to mean anything, there has to be an element of freedom within which our elected Governments who represent us on the European stage can conduct themselves. For all those reasons, I oppose what is otherwise a very well-intentioned new clause.