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Business of the House (Lisbon Treaty) (No. 8)

As has been said, we really did want that extra day on defence. It has emerged that we have the rest of today to debate just four amendments, whereas we will have six hours tomorrow to debate many more amendments. That will hopefully include our important amendment No. 20, which would not wreck the treaty, because it is procedural. It would amend the Bill so that no further vetoes could be given up under the so-called ratchet clause without an Act of Parliament. I raise that question because previous experience of debating this Bill does not set an encouraging precedent for being able to debate everything, not least because of the Government's deliberate ploy of using so-called themed debates to eat up time that would otherwise be available to debate specific, detailed amendments. On day one in Committee of the whole House, when we debated justice and home affairs, there were three groups of amendments. We only managed to debate the first group, and we did not discuss any of the important amendments concerning borders, visas, asylum and immigration. On day four, the theme was the single market. There were four groups of amendments, but we only reached the first group, so we did not touch on subjects such as social policy, the free movement of workers and intellectual property rights. On day five, as a number of hon. Members have said, we debated foreign, security and defence policy. That night there were three groups of amendments, and again, only the first group was reached. The treaty includes proposals on creating military structures that could rival NATO, a mutual defence guarantee and an armaments agency, but none of the amendments relating to defence were considered. I reiterate that we have repeatedly pressed the Government at business questions to allow us to debate defence, but the motion does not reflect that request.