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Inter-parliamentary Scrutiny: EUC Report

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lords who have taken part in this short debate and have made helpful contributions to our consideration of this topic. As the Minister said in his closing remarks, Norway has already played a very active part in a number of the missions of the CSDP so, whether this should be automatic or whether it should be the norm, by convention it would always be invited. We have kept the model as it is in the report because that is the practice in COSAC; that body has a framework in the protocol to the treaty. To make that a right could lead to problems. However, we believe that Norway should be invited on every occasion, and I will certainly make that point clear when we have the discussions next week. It was quite interesting that the noble Lords, Lord Davies and Lord Jopling, had different ideas as to whether the body should be larger or smaller. At the moment, given the pressures on budgets, it is going to be a case of keeping the size down. If we eventually move into a situation where more resources are available for inter-parliamentary co-operation, the possibility of having larger meetings from time to time of the kind that the noble Lord, Lord Davies, referred to should be considered.