European Union Bill

I thank the noble Lord for his comments. While it was not an issue of huge significance at the last general election, if you put this into the statute book, at the beginning of every Parliament, this issue would be one of the first items on the agenda. It would have to be, otherwise, as the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, said, nobody in Europe would know where the United Kingdom stood. If you put it into law that this must happen at the very start of every Parliament, I assure the noble Lord that it will become an issue. If that is so, why should we take the risk, even if he is right and I am wrong, because the next Parliament can do what it likes anyway?