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

I am grateful to the Minister for making those points. My point was that the €2.3 million is the cost of the WEU organisation, not the cost of the Parliamentary Assembly of the WEU, which is half that. I am delighted by the Minister's assumption that the United Kingdom will gain from the sale of the building in Paris, because there had been rumours that it was to be gifted to the French Government. As holder of the presidency of the Assembly, we took the precaution of having an independent valuation of the building; it is worth at least €50 million, so the UK should benefit somewhat from its sale. The Foreign Affairs Committee has been diligent in looking at the structures. Paragraph 5 of the European Union Committee report refers to some of the existing structures:"““We backed a 'conference of committees'-type institution to replace the WEU Assembly, comprising a combined and enlarged version of the current informal Conference of Foreign Affairs Committee Chairpersons (COFACC) and Conference of Defence Committee Chairpersons (CODCC).””" The only problem with that is that, to my knowledge, the Conference of Defence Committee Chairpersons has not met for at least the past two years, so we are not actually replacing an effective body.