European Communities (Amendment) Bill

Part of the debate – in the House of Lords at 4:00 pm on 20 November 2001.

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Photo of Lord Pearson of Rannoch Lord Pearson of Rannoch Conservative 4:00, 20 November 2001

Like my noble friend Lord Tebbit, I did my best to oppose the Treaty of Maastricht. Any attack that the Minister may make on the party is not something which will worry me very much. The noble Lord may have misunderstood my question when he cited a list of items which moved to QMV under Maastricht. My question concerned the 28 foreign policy groups which meet in Brussels and, as I understand it, already decide most of our foreign policy. I accept that it is not appropriate for the noble Lord to provide all this information, even if he had it at his fingertips—which I suspect he may not—during Committee stage. To establish just how bad is the situation already, my question is: what areas do these groups cover, to whom do they report and what action have we ever taken outside them? Have we ever acted against the view of the majority in those 28 groups?