Maurice Hayes (Independent)

I welcome the Minister of State to the House. I welcome also the earlier statement by the Minister of State, Deputy Roche.

We should recognise the Convention for what it is. It has been an amazingly innovative way to try to sort out the problems of organising the business in Europe. We have all suffered and complained in the past about work being done in smoke-filled rooms during unsocial hours at night and so on. For the first time, Europe has tried the bold experiment of sharing it thoughts and having an open debate which was open to intervention from people via the Internet. This involved people from the national parliaments, the European Parliament and various interest groups. It is something of a coup that M. Giscard d'Estaing was able to preside over it and carry it off, and we should not minimise the extent of the achievement. As many Members here remarked, we would not have believed three or four months ago that they would have reached this degree of consensus on major issues.