European Union Bill

Personally, I believe that it is wrong to see EU law as having primacy. I underline again that the UK Parliament is sovereign, and has decided to be part of the EU and allow its laws into our national life through the medium of the European Communities Act 1972. Equally, it is abundantly clear that the UK Parliament could change that position. To my mind, clause 18 amounts to a codification of that principle, which is clear from the Factortame case and from the metric martyrs, Thoburn case. In the latter case, as Members will recall and as paragraph 107 of the explanatory notes explains, it was argued that EU law"““includes the entrenchment of its own supremacy as an autonomous legal order””." That argument was rejected. It is an important principle to understand: there is no autonomous legal entrenchment from the European Union. It is taken into account and part of our law only because we have made it so. I can do no better than quote Lord Justice Laws, who hit the nail on the head. He said:"““Parliament cannot bind its successors by stipulating against repeal, wholly or partly, of the European Communities Act.””" When I was a law student, studying my books, I always viewed Professor Dicey's principle as giving voice to the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty. It is quite simple—I always thought of it as: the last Act to hit the statute book takes precedence. If it says anything different from a previous Act, the latter is discarded to that extent.