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Loans to Ireland Bill

It is not surprising that as a man of the world and a former European commissioner, the noble Lord is not someone who is so foolish as to want to exclude any possibility in the future and lose flexibility, but does he not agree that if we are not part of the permanent mechanism, we will not be part of the conversations, we will not be part of the analysis and we will not be part of the decision-making mechanism? We might have the opportunity to come in later on to a deal that has already been put together by others or to try to find some bilateral solution in the face of a much bigger multinational arrangement, but surely that is not a very sensible way of conducting our country’s affairs.