Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill

I could not agree more. The proposals for my sovereignty Bill follow on from the extremely sensible judgments made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Witney on my sovereignty amendments. As I will explain, I believe that we will have to ensure that we have a sovereignty Bill that really works—and, furthermore, not half a cup of sovereignty. Under all the provisions of constitutional law in this country—they are very clear, and they include the judgments of Lord Denning, Lord Diplock, Lord Justice Laws and Lord Bridge; the jurists of this country, including the House of Lords as it was, have all said this too—we have the right in this House, on behalf of the people and for the sovereignty of this country and of this Parliament, to pass legislation inconsistent with the European Communities Act 1972 or any laws implemented under it. We have the right to override those laws, providing that any such legislation is crystal clear, and expressly inconsistent with them. That is the law of this country. As I mentioned in an intervention on the right hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz), the problem with the Lisbon treaty and the annex to it is that, with regard to the case law of the European Union—and therefore the European Court of Justice—the primacy set out in declaration 17, which is quite explicit, constitutes guidance to our courts, including the Supreme Court, that we should apply the Handelsgesellschaft, the Costa v. ENEL and the Van Gend en Loos cases, which assert that all the laws that are made in Europe must apply to us, and also to our law-making processes and our constitution, including Parliament. For all those reasons—to go back to the reference in clause 24—this is a critical moment at which to examine not only the transfer of further competences but the competences that have already been passed, and that do not work. For they do not work; that is the problem. Had my sovereignty amendment to the Single European Act been accepted, when we had a full majority in 1986, we would not have had the working time directive or the recent financial services debacle, which is threatening the City of London. I have spoken on that in the past and do not need to repeat my argument. I believe that we are seriously at risk of losing 15 to 20 per cent. of our gross domestic product as a result of handing over the running of the City of London to the banking supervisory authorities and the new financial services arrangements in Europe. That could have been prevented if we had retained the veto by passing the amendment that I proposed in 1986. There are issues to do with immigration, over-regulation, energy and the common agricultural policy. According to TaxPayers' Alliance, £2,000 for every man, woman and child is paid over every year to the European Union. We have to pay out a rebate of £6 billion per annum. There are defence questions, too. Yesterday I was debating Afghanistan and Europol, and the fact is that Europol does not work. We had a very interesting debate on the subject in a European Committee. As well as all those reasons, there is the fact that we need to restore growth in this country. The right hon. Member for Rotherham is completely wrong in suggesting that only 10 per cent. of legislation comes from Europe. The bottom line is that it is at least 70 per cent. President Herzog of Germany said that it was 80 per cent. in Germany. For all those reasons, plus the passerelle provisions—again, that is an issue on which I do not need to go into detail—we are losing, and have lost, so much control that we have to go back into the legislative process and rebuild our abilities through a sovereignty of Parliament Bill. That way, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Witney has said, we can reverse those competences—that is, future and present competences; we have to reverse both. We have to ensure that the courts of the United Kingdom will do that, notwithstanding the European Communities Act 1972; that is what my Bill will provide for. In the most recent opinion poll, 72 per cent. of the British people say that in the national interest we should break European law. They also say, by a margin of 70 per cent., that they want an association of nation states. Some 88 per cent. want a referendum on the present situation, not to mention any future competences. For all those reasons, we have to stop the invasion of our constitution, and of the nooks and crannies. We have to have a realistic policy on the European Union. We need a policy that returns power to the people of this country, which is what they want—what they have demanded in successive opinion polls for the past 10 or 12 years. For all those reasons, I am prepared to accept the idea of having a referendum for the future and for future competences, but that goes nowhere near far enough towards establishing the position that we need to secure for the people of this country. That means that we have to revisit the arrangements to produce an association of nation states. France and Germany will fight that, but as I have said in the past, I believe that we should take the lead, as we have done in successive generations on matters relating to Europe in different contexts. We face problems under the European integration process, which has a deleterious effect on our economy and on Europe as a whole; there is the prospect of implosion, which will do nobody any good. I would simply argue that we have to revisit and repatriate the powers that I have mentioned, not for ideological reasons but for practical common-sense reasons, to ensure that the British people can govern themselves. We would certainly win the next general election if we had a UK sovereignty Bill along the lines that I am proposing. It is there on the Order Paper; I referred to it only last week. We would then get the support of the people of this country—without engaging in an unnecessary debate about whether we should be in or out—for getting the balance right and ensuring that we had political co-operation and trade, but not European government. That is the objective, and that is what we should seek to do. In my view, that would ensure that we won the next general election with a massive majority.