I think this addresses the concerns that John and Navdeep expressed. I'm not sure if it will address Peter's entirely or not.
I'd suggest that the committee agree that we as a committee--because you know my feeling about delegating our job to the House, I think it subverts the work we're here to do....
My compromise is why don't we do a press release as a committee, send that out, say this is the work we're undertaking as a committee, and in that way it addresses your concerns about making sure it's on the record that this is being studied by this committee now.
We don't get a debate out of it. I know that's apparently what one of our members wants, but we do as a committee keep control of our own agenda and at the same time we communicate openly and clearly that we're studying this issue. Ultimately, if the negotiators arrive at an agreement--which we don't know here and shouldn't pretend to know--while our study is going on, you would all have the right as committee members to say we want an emergency debate or we want to adopt a motion censuring the government. You can do any number of things as a committee to express your concerns at that point.
But I don't think we can cover off all the possibilities here. So if we do a press release as a committee, we are doing our job, and we're keeping control of our own agenda, gentlemen, which I think is very important here.