European Union Bill

The hon. Gentleman would do as well to ask what is the point of his amendment. The gist of his speech was that the clause will achieve nothing and we are going to have a report on it every year saying how it has achieved nothing. This is not a party political speech, but I think that the Labour party could have produced something a bit better than amendment 52, which is just a marking-time amendment that gave the hon. Gentleman the opportunity to make a few random points, but does not deal with the problems that we face. To be fair to Ministers, they have tried to face those problems. The clause does not sufficiently address the situation because it is a restatement of the existing position, under which the present challenges to parliamentary sovereignty have developed, as has been said. It does not go much further than what people were told before the referendum on the European Union in 1975, to which hon. Members have referred. Interestingly, the Labour party said that it would never have a referendum and yet it was the Labour party that put the issue to the people after the negotiations had taken place and after the country had joined. The people decided to stay in the European Union. I am sad to say that I am old enough to have taken part in that referendum, which probably makes me past it, as the BBC would say. To come back to my point, what the Bill says is not very different from what the British people were told in the literature sent to them by the Government of the day before that referendum. Fact No. 3 stated:"““The British Parliament in Westminster retains the final right to repeal the Act which took us into the Market on January 1, 1973. Thus our continued membership will depend on the continuing assent of Parliament.””" I do not think that the clause does not go much further than that, but let us look at the changes since then. The other safeguards that were set before the British people included the following key fact:"““The Minister representing Britain can veto any proposal for a new law or a new tax if he considers it to be against British interests. Ministers from the other Governments have the same right to veto.””" The many safeguards it was attempted to put in the provisions of the time, and subsequent other treaties, have turned out to be of little use. We need a more robust assertion of parliamentary sovereignty and I hope that, when he responds to the debate, the Minister will give a considered response to the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Stone. I cannot see what the great obstacle is to accepting those amendments if our objective is to entrench parliamentary sovereignty. Why is there such reluctance to accept them? They are not wrecking amendments to undermine the Bill, but are there to improve it and to provide a more robust assertion.