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European Union (Amendment) Bill

My Lords, this is turning into a fascinating debate but I must get to the core of the amendment. However, I must say in response to that lovely intervention from the noble Lord, Lord Watson, that that is precisely the point: I am not talking about alternatives. I am talking about the proposition that I would like to resist. I sometimes hear advancing towards me the argument that the European relationship with China is a substitute for our own bilateral relations. None of my German or French friends would accept that for a moment. They would laugh at us. They are developing their own bilateral, as well as their European relations with China and Japan. We arrived in China and found that it is not the EU propositions or EU trade policy that have arrived, it is German concessions, French contracts and German franchises—they have got the advantage of us. It is about time that we realise we must act in this network world bilaterally as well as through various organisations, of which the EU is only one. Unless we understand that, we are going to be outwitted at every point. That is why one feels very deeply about this constant distortion of the argument, as though we are proposing either Europe or something else. That is nonsense. Let us turn now to—