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A Citizens’ Agenda

May I take this opportunity to congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his appointment as Chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee, of which I, too, am a member. We may have slight differences on policy questions from time to time, but I think he will bring an enormous amount to bear on the working of the Committee, and we are very pleased to have him as our Chairman. However, may I point out to him that, in addition to what he said, we also said in our report that, on the future of Europe,"““The Government’s general position appeared to be to shelter behind the obvious absence of any consensus on the future of Europe and to say that it would inform the House of its views once there was one.""We considered this somewhat at odds with the notion of increasing the involvement of national parliaments in decision-making””." Would the hon. Gentleman be good enough to elaborate a little on the very important comment that we made at that point?