My Lords, on behalf of my colleagues on these Benches, I warmly welcome the debate. I am enormously grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, and the Select Committee for all their work. However, we still need to address two other issues: first, the values that are implicit in the work of the convention and in the European institutions; and, secondly, that deathly silence about things European within British society, which the Minister described as the growing sense of disengagement and disillusion across Europe.

One of the great privileges of being a Bishop in this House is in saying daily prayers. I recognise that for some the saying of those prayers here will seem a quaint and irrelevant anachronism. Some will be glad that prayers happen, though they themselves will not necessarily take part. For others, the prayers are fundamental, not only because of what they say about God, but because of what they imply about the role of us all in this Chamber. Whatever views any of us takes about those prayers, they are a reminder at the very least of the possibility of God. They are predicated on a belief that we are not solely answerable to one another and to society, but that we may also be answerable to Almighty God.

Whether you actually believe that or not is not exactly the point. Even if personally you have drawn the conclusion that there is no God, allowing for the possibility of God ensures that debate in this House has a dimension that it logically could not have without it.

It does not follow from what I have said that I am in favour of theocracy as a form of government. I believe that wherever it rears its head theocracy should be resisted, tooth and nail. What I argue for is that the concept-it is a very mild one at one level-of the possibility of God should not be kicked into the margins in our debate about European institutions and the European future. However, my experience of the European institutions as they are emerging is that God is simply discounted and denied-"Laicity rules okay" and that secularist ideologies of governance are becoming stridently and assertively exclusive.

With the greatest respect to the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan-I am sure that he is not at all surprised that I have risen to the theological fly that he cast across the water-the theological concept of perichoresis is not primarily about individualism, but the communal relationships of the person within the godhead. "Europe" can and does cope with private expressions of religious belief, but it is not coping, cannot cope and wilfully will not cope with institutional or communal forms of religious belief, of whatever faith that belief may be.

That is a serious moral weakness in the underlying philosophy of the institutions. It is proving to be a serious weakness in what the Minister referred to as the European political architecture, because it wilfully denies the possibility of God. Therefore, it wilfully denies serious and long-held beliefs about human dignity and worth and purpose that have helped to shape Europe for the best part of 2,000 years. It limits the vision of what it means to be a human being, and of what it means to be a "human being in community". To set up a Europe based on that kind of narrowness of philosophy is to design potential failure into the system.

Will the Minister assure this House that, for the sake of richness and diversity in Europe, the role of the Churches and other religious communities in relation to the European institutions and their political architecture will be given serious attention? Might she also be willing to be generous enough to suggest that the good practices which have grown up in this nation over the centuries in this regard might be worthy of further study, not only by Her Majesty's Government but by governments across Europe? To want to be at the heart of Europe and yet, at the same time, to ignore the soul of Europe would be to make a profound mistake.

My second point relates to the serious lack of high-quality public debate about things European in this nation. It hardly happens at all and, if it does, it is simply based around sound-bites about the five economic tests and when a referendum might be held.

I was very fortunate to be present in Parliament when the BBC World Service organised a seminar on the threat of war in Afghanistan. Some of your Lordships may also have been present. The seminar was brilliant. It was the BBC at its very, very best. Is it not possible for a public-service broadcaster to see that it has a duty not only to entertain but also to inform and educate? Endless make-overs of homes and gardens and endless narcissistic reality television mean that the brilliance that exists in the BBC is being completely wasted.

In our country a serious contribution to the debate about Europe is long overdue. The talent is there. Can someone please allow it to be released so that the citizens of our country can help to shape the European future and not simply be pawns in a future being shaped by others?

I conclude by joining everyone else in the House in urging that this subject be brought back to this place with the frequency which its profound importance to the life of our nation and to Europe so richly deserves.