Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness. She speaks with great sincerity and consistency in making her arguments, and I share many of her thoughts. I said on the earlier group that I am also awaiting the conclusions of the work of the International Relations and Defence Committee. I hope that it will be able to guide us with some of our thinking on this on Report, after its consultations with the community. Reference has been made to my honourable friends in the House of Commons, who have also for many years been consistent that we should not repeat the history of making decisions on behalf of the community without involving them. It is our long-held view that that is the basis on which we should go forward. One of the reasons why I intervened on the noble Baroness, and had the interaction with her noble friend, was that there have been some parts of the debate, especially in the House of Commons, where seeking consideration of the right to self-determination has perhaps been used as a bit of a proxy for other considerations, to try either to prevent a treaty or to prevent the restoration of rights. As the noble Lord said on behalf of his noble friend, we seem to be talking about some form of limited sovereignty, some form of limited and partial right to self-determination.