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Business of the House (Lisbon Treaty)

The right hon. Lady is hugely interested in what the next Conservative Government will do, and that mounting interest is wholly understandable, given the political situation in this country. We have debated that issue separately, and we will do so again. If I went into all of that, I suspect that I would be well out of order. It is against the background of the Government’s stated objective of permitting very detailed discussion and consideration with great precision that the House must assess the procedural motion that they have tabled. At the same time that the Prime Minister made his commitment to very detailed discussion, Government spokesmen attempted to soften up the press by indicating that there would be 20 days of debate on the Floor of the House. That figure was reported in the Sunday newspapers on 21 October, directly after the Prime Minister’s press conference on 18 October. Those reports were extensively repeated and reprinted, and the Government did nothing to deny them. It is notable that the Prime Minister, who renounced spin when he took office last June as if it were a disgusting aspect of Blairism with which he would never again contaminate prime ministerial hands, has resorted to it across a wide range of subjects, with many announcements being made outside this House rather than inside it. In the same manner, the Government encouraged the belief to grow that there would be 20 days’ debate in the Commons on this treaty and that 20 days was a lot of time. In fact, 20 days is not so long for a measure that by general agreement fundamentally restructures the European Union, creates the important new positions of the European President of the Council of Ministers and the high representative for foreign affairs, removes national vetoes in dozens of different areas and provides for its own subsequent amendment without the passage of a further treaty. The Maastricht treaty, which, as my hon. Friends who intervened on the Minister pointed out, is the most direct comparator for this particular measure, was subject to 29 days’ debate on the Floor of the House. That treaty involved, in the words of the Foreign Secretary,"““a smaller transfer of power””—[Official Report, 3 July 2007; Vol. 462, c. 803.]" than the treaty now before us. Furthermore, those debates took place when the parliamentary day was a good deal longer—for these purposes, it was normally twice as long as a parliamentary day today.