European Union Bill

Now that Minister has dealt with enhanced co-operation, can he go back to the chicken and the egg? It would be quite nice to know how he thinks the Council will conduct itself in taking decisions in this matter. This is nothing whatever to do with absence from the Council, which is a complete red herring. This is about what you do in a matter that requires unanimity. Without unanimity, there is no decision in any of the matters that we are talking about. I think that that is common to the understanding of everyone in the House. How is that unanimity achieved so that the British Government can submit the matter to their Parliament or to the public through a referendum if they have not expressed a view, because then there is no unanimity? There is a serious chicken and egg problem here. This is a probing matter. There are, for example, very well known procedures in Brussels, which I suspect the Government would take advantage of in circumstances such as this, whereby the Council would indicate that it could only reach political agreement on this occasion and that legal force could not be given to it through an A-point in the Council, or whatever, until the British Government had passed legislation, had a referendum, or whatever. If that is what the noble Lord is getting at, I have to say that the wording, including the wording that he quoted from Lisbon, is a long way adrift from that and will cause Ministers considerable difficulties if this becomes law. I hope very much that he will now be able to clarify whether we are talking about political agreement, which of course involves support—you cannot have political agreement without support—or legal agreement, because the British Government would be prevented from giving their legal agreement to the matter.