European Union Bill

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Minister for the care and attention that he has taken in answering this debate and for the manner in which he has done so. I am sure that it has been of great assistance to the House, and I will now be going to the Library to seek out a copy of the European Union access to documents regulations—I certainly would not want to fall foul of them, given what we have been told this afternoon. My right hon. Friend has approached the debate in the spirit of the new clause. I am sure that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart), in drafting the new clause, did not think that it was the finished article. It was a plea for greater transparency, and I hope that it has been taken as such. Despite possible problems with, for example, the phrase ““relevant documentation””, what that might include, and what implications might flow from it, I hope at least that on the question of amendments proposed by a Government during treaty negotiations and treaty changes—that is what new clause 1 deals with—whether through the ordinary procedure or the new simplified revision procedure, members of the public and the House will be told what amendments are being, and have been, proposed by the Government, so that we, and members of the public, can judge, in due course, the strength of the Government's position on what they ultimately recommend. We should be told whether a Government have been consistent in the amendments that they proposed and in what they subsequently recommend. I will give one example. I was struggling earlier to think of one, although I know that there are a lot of them. During negotiations on the Lisbon treaty, Ministers in the then Government came to the House and advocated a certain clause or course of action, but it was discovered that during the negotiations on the Convention they had advocated exactly the opposite. One prime example was the creation of the European ““foreign ministry”” itself—the European External Action Service. During the debate, I have helpfully been told by the House of Commons Library that the then"““government's amendments in the Convention to articles 1-27, III-197.1 describe the term 'Foreign Minister' as 'unacceptable' arguing that 'he/she should have no ministry'. The government preferred the term 'EU external representative'.””" Well we have our external representative—or rather, our High Representative— but perhaps that phrase conceals the fact that she is in reality a Foreign Minister, and the office was originally intend as such. We also have a European ““foreign ministry”” in the form of the EEAS, even though the then Government did not want it. They then had to come before the House, having apparently lost on that amendment, and argue from the Dispatch Box in favour of the creation of an external action service. The Minister will well remember, as I do, that on that occasion, Conservative Members opposed its creation. In the light of developments since, and what the public have come to learn and think about the EEAS and its conduct, I am not sure that our arguments against it have been entirely disproved. But there we are. That is one example. The new clause was a plea for transparency. However, I know that there are important matters still to come before the House, and I do not want to delay them by pressing the new clause to a vote. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion. Clause, by leave, withdrawn.