Given that the prime minister has promised to place ‘Britain at the heart of Europe’, I was surprised to see just how little effort the government has made in responding to our report on the UK-EU relationship,

Today’s response falls far below the standard parliament expects from government. It fails to engage in any meaningful way with the foreign affairs committee’s recommendations. It is frequently evasive and waffly rather than what we hoped would be thoughtful and substantial policy.

This is truly thin gruel and only serves to reinforce my committee’s conclusions in our report: the government has no clear strategic priorities nor vision for its UK-EU reset, which given it is central to government policy, is very disappointing.

Thornberry said government’s engagement was a vital part of the democratic scrutiny and the committee had hoped it would pick up on key recommendations including the need for an EU white paper and a dedicated committee for scrutiny of EU affairs.

When the UK was in the EU, the Commons had a European scrutiny committee. After 2016 it focused on Brexit issues, but it was scrapped after the UK left the EU in 2020.