European Union Bill

I wanted to press the mover and supporters of the amendment on one or two points. We have heard a lot during these debates about how inconvenient it is in the Council of Ministers if things get held up by the British people being consulted and the whole of that process in the United Kingdom. I ask those who support the amendment: what is their timeline for the independent review committee? It has to be appointed by the Secretary of State. Surely it will take a long time to be appointed, to meet, to deliberate, to report and all the rest of it. Are they not extending the inconvenience which they see as putting a spoke in the wheels of the European juggernaut? Secondly, they seem to have great faith in the scrutiny of Parliament. I must repeat to them the figures given to me by the noble Lord, Lord Howell, on 7 February, when he told me in a Written Answer that in the years from 2004 to 2010 inclusive, the scrutiny reserve had been overridden no fewer than 347 times in your Lordships' House and 364 times in the House of Commons. Those figures, apart from being almost unbelievable and, I should have thought, destroying any pretence that parliamentary scrutiny was worth anything in the process of European legislation, must remove some of the confidence that the noble Lord has in his amendment.