It is a pleasure to be called to speak, after a characteristically entertaining contribution by the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant). I agreed with a lot, though not quite everything, of what he said. It is also interesting to speak after the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), who made a fantastically strong case for the benefits of staying inside larger organisations. It was an excellent case for why Scotland should remain with the United Kingdom. I congratulate him on making such a strong case here, and I look forward to hearing it elsewhere.
It is good that there is general agreement across the three Front-Bench spokesmen of the three main parties, and indeed the Scottish nationalists and others, that the UK needs to remain opted in to many of these measures—the most significant ones. That is very important and I am pleased to have seen it. I pay tribute to both the Home Secretary and the Lord Chancellor for resisting some of the siren calls from their Back Benchers. They understand the importance of these measures and it is important that they stick with that.
I have a number of fears about where we might head. One, which I hope can be addressed, is the fear of a gap—that there may be a pause between us pulling out and going back in—and the consequences that that would have. This was mentioned earlier. There are some provisions for temporary measures and so on, but what would happen to the head of Europol, who is a Brit? Can he continue as head of Europol if we are outside, whether for a minute or a month? Would that cause problems? Would anybody agree to temporary transitional arrangements if that meant that the person in charge came from a country that was not part of Europol? That is a big worry.
The bigger worry, however, is that we might accidentally fall out of all these measures without that being the intention of the vast majority of the House. That could be because negotiations fail and we simply cannot reach an agreement—there was much in what the hon. Member for Rhondda said about the concern that many of our European partners have about our attitude to European co-operation. What happens if someone tries to cause trouble and we cannot close the negotiations? That also applies to other suggestions. If we have a formal, fixed vote before negotiations, that will make it incredibly hard to have a proper negotiation. There are a number of core measures. There are also a number of peripheral measures. If this House says, “These are the absolute lines,” it makes it very hard to create a proper negotiation—actually to have a discussion with the European Union. That could lead us to falling out unintentionally.
I am aware of what happened in the House on the issue of military intervention in Syria. There was a proposal from the Prime Minister to have military intervention without UN approval, and there was a proposal from the Leader of the Opposition to have military intervention without UN approval. There was a small group across various parties—about 50 of us—who did not want intervention without approval, but because neither side would agree with the other’s version of the wording, our small band won. I am delighted about that, but I would not want the small band of people who want us to be out of all these measures to win because of a disagreement between the two sides.