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European Union (Amendment) Bill

I will go straight to one of the arguments used by those who try to cover over the change of heart that they have had since before the election—that it should be a matter for Parliament that there has been a significant change. Parliament established a European Scrutiny Committee to investigate, decide and advise us on whether the Lisbon treaty was the same as the constitutional treaty. That Committee reported:"““Taken as a whole, the Reform Treaty produces a general framework which is substantially equivalent to the Constitutional Treaty. Even with the ‘opt-in’ provisions on police and judicial cooperation in criminal matters, and the Protocol on the Charter, we are not convinced that the same conclusion does not apply to the position of the UK under the Reform Treaty.””" I think that that answers the hon. Gentleman’s point. Those on the Front Bench have made it clear what they are going to do. It was positively embarrassing watching the Foreign Secretary squirming like a worm on a hook, if that is not rather unfair to worms, which do not deliberately place themselves on the hook. I wish Ministers had been as straightforward as Huey Long, a notoriously cynical senator in the United States of America, who on election promptly broke a solemn pledge that he had made to his electorate. When his advisers came to him and said, ““What should we tell people who are asking why you changed your mind?”” he said, ““Tell ’em I lied.”” The trouble with the Minister, who is a charming and nice Member of Parliament, and the Liberal non-rebels is that they do not have Huey Long’s integrity and they certainly lack his clarity.