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European Union (Amendment) Bill

The noble Baroness will now see that there is a great thirst for her letters, and we are asking for more. I do not know whether they will shorten our proceedings, but they are certainly extremely interesting and informative. The letter to which I refer is one that I had not seen before. It is dated 22 April and addressed to the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, as chairman of his very distinguished committee. It comes from Jim Murphy and is concerned with ““implementation issues””. It raises a whole string of concerns about the Council presidency and the role of the president, which the Slovenians, who hold the presidency until 1 July, when the French take over, want resolved. They affect us very much, as they do the powers and role of the president. We are not clear whether this will be a ceremonial or an executive figure. Will the president have real hands-on power and the capacity to influence by words, comments, speeches and opinion-forming the entire global posture of the European Union and its 27 members? We just do not know which sort of president we are dealing with. It is only fair to suggest that, before we proceed very further with the ratification of this Bill, those who are placed in authority to make these decisions should, first, have reached them and, secondly, report them to the national parliaments in considerable detail so that we can look at them. It is no wonder that the Slovenian president is complaining about back-door deals and saying, probably in vain, that ““we need a democratic process”” in settling the presidency issues and candidatures. I do not blame him for saying that at all. That brings me to the third aspect of the amendment, which concerns the future role of the president and interrelationship with the high representative, who will now be the vice-president of the Commission and a member of the European Council. We have already touched on this matter in Committee debates, but inevitably many of these issues are cross-issues that come up again and again and we cannot necessarily cut them out of future debates—