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European Commission

That point is very well made. As a former Minister for Europe, my right hon. Friend knows this territory very well. In fact, he was probably the Minister for Europe when some of these decisions were made in the early days. Immigration is an important matter; it is in the annual policy strategy document, and it will obviously work into the work programme. It is not an issue that will go away; it has to be worked on, and we have to engage step by step with that process. With many of these matters, if the Lisbon treaty is ratified, we will have to take opt-in decisions on them, and as a Committee we are considering how they will be dealt with by Parliament, because Parliament must have a say in advising Ministers about whether or not they should opt in on each of these individual matters. The point about the 2007 inquiry that we undertook relating to this subject is that it is not likely to cause the kind of engagement on the annual policy strategy document that would prompt the debates on detail. Such issues will come within the work programme; but by highlighting some of them today, we hope that members of the Select Committees will look at the annual policy strategy document. The Government are very positive about it. I have not heard anything from them to indicate that there is something in it that frightens them. It contains matters that we know they are now moving through the process. We will send the annual policy strategy document and our report on it to all the Select Committees, and I hope that Members will engage with it. Others who do not serve on Select Committees might want to look at the document to see which items are covered, as the hon. Member for Kettering did, whether it is the audit function, or immigration and asylum, the use of Frontex and the building of stronger Schengen arrangements to protect our borders. Those are all things that I hope will be attractive to Members of Parliament who think, as I do, that we need to engage much more closely with Europe. Europe post-Lisbon will involve more of a resolution of forces and less of a triangle of Commission, Council and national Parliaments. The European Parliament will get much more power. We must find a way to be one of the forces in it that makes good policy for Europe, and one of the ways to do so is to engage early, which the annual policy strategy document gives us a chance to do. I will have to leave early, Mr. Bayley, because I have to speak about the European Union to a group of business people for the Industry and Parliament Trust at 3 o'clock, so I apologise that I will not be here for the rest of the debate.