Member

The Minister, who is always wonderfully helpful—she is a model Minister in that sense, even though this is the most appalling Bill that she has to defend—will tell me if I am wrong and there is some clause that would enable us in these circumstances to stop payment. She said earlier that we would just have to abrogate the agreement and not pay. That is a bit odd for a Government who are so committed to obeying international law that they usually relish doing things which give us no benefit but cost us money, power or influence. But if breaking it is the only circumstance in which we could terminate it by ourselves, that is a rather odd situation, and there should surely be circumstances in which we can terminate written into the agreement.