The right hon. Gentleman has been a political ally of mine in previous cross-party arrangements, but not on this occasion. He has dodged answering the perfectly serious point that the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) just put to him. As things stand, article 50 will take effect in March 2019 and we will leave. Anything in the Bill is superfluous to that. A problem could arise only if—and this is possible—28 member states all agree that they are near to a conclusion but that they require a few more days or weeks to settle it. Once we are going they will not want us to stay in much longer, because they will not want us around for the European Parliament elections. However, it would be utterly foolish if 28 Governments all agreed to extend the process and the British representative had to say, “But we’ve put into
British law a timing that says, to the second, when we are actually leaving.” That seems to me a rather serious flaw in the proposed new clause.