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Inter-Parliamentary Scrutiny (EU Foreign, Defence and Security Policy)

I accept that fully and it is true of all inter-parliamentary oversight committees. We are, willy-nilly, increasingly having to discuss how, collectively, at European level, we express our common foreign policy goals when we decide what they are. Yesterday, the Prime Minister slapped down the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) when he called for an in/out EU referendum. The Prime Minister said, ““We are staying in the EU and that is it.”” I am glad that he said that after five years of encouraging the hopes of Eurosceptics, but if it is the case, this House has to work out how best to take part in debates and decisions on what Europe is going to do—we cannot wish it away. I am not criticising the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee or the officials who have worked on this report, because it is probably the best they could manage of a bad job, but it is exactly a reflection of our House's inability to network and create alternative sources of democratic parliamentary legitimacy and oversight for what is done at European level.