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European Union Committee

My Lords, I hope that we might keep proceedings reasonably short this afternoon, as there are a lot of speakers for the main debate, which the House is no doubt looking forward to. I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, did not put down his Motion again this year. The timetabling of my Motion is, I think, exactly the same as it was last year. The Committee of Selection met yesterday. A Motion was tabled to agree the proposed membership of this committee and the Motion was put down on the Order Paper for today. However, I can give the noble Lord advance notice that, next year, the Motion will be tabled at more or less exactly the same time as it has been this year and as it was last year, the year before and the year before that, so there should be no surprise about it. What has surprised me is this. During the year, I have been eagerly anticipating the noble Lord nominating either himself or a friend, if any, to sit on this committee because he complains about its membership. He says that very few of its members are Eurosceptics and that most are Europhiles. I would not dream of trying to categorise all the people whom we are putting on to this committee today. What is missing is his own amendment to put himself down for it. We have not seen such an amendment. Perhaps we can look forward to that next year.