European Union Bill

I will at the appropriate time. I specifically chose the questions that I asked again and again in the evidence sessions: will clause 18 change the way in which the courts interpret their duty to review legislation in the light of EU law under the European Communities Act—and if not, what is the point of having it? I asked that of everyone who came to give evidence, and they all said that the clause would not change things; when pressed, they said that it would make no difference. In fact, it is a restatement of where we are, and I accept where we are. This is not about giving up sovereignty to the EU or to anyone else; it is about our deciding in this House that we would give the EU power to make laws within certain spheres and that the laws then passed would have primacy. But it is the choice of this Parliament, and if this Parliament chooses to take back that power by doing something that says, ““We will challenge this,”” we are able to do so. The arrangement is not changed by this clause, but the clause is dangerous because it attempts to con the British people into thinking that it makes a difference. It is also dangerous because Professor Tomkins is right. He is a professor at the university of Glasgow, but he gives advice on constitutional affairs to the House of Lords and he has said that the clause invites a challenge and puts into a Bill something that people will use, perhaps for mischief or for some other reasons. The clause does not change anything. We have these powers, and we could take them and use them; to put them into a Bill is to mislead people. That is shown in every piece of evidence now lying around me on this Bench: everyone we asked either said that in their written submission or answered the question by saying that it was true that the clause did not make a difference. I listened to the speech made by the hon. Member for Hertsmere (Mr Clappison), and he not only made some good points that agree with what I am saying, but cited some of the evidence that we received from the professors and others, who all said that the clause would make no difference. It is not right to debate this matter without referring to the amendments, because that is the purpose of this section of the debate. The amendments in the name of the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash) and others just add to the confusion. They have drafted something that pretends to be different from the current situation but is not. Adding comments about common law and about preambles before the clause does not change the clause; it just says that under a law that those in this Parliament passed by their sovereign right we gave away certain primacy in law to the EU under section 2(1) of the 1972 Act. What we put before this, or what we put after it, does not make any difference. Why does a Bill that says, ““We will give the people of this country power to make choices, and power over the EU when it makes a proposal,”” not contain the right to have a referendum on enlargement treaties? Such treaties are the only ones that will definitely come before this Parliament in the next period, and probably for a very long time after the Lisbon treaty. Why does this Bill not say that that power to have a referendum is going to be given to this Parliament? Why does the Bill not provide an automatic decision that such a referendum must be held? It is because the Government are playing a joke, not only on the people in this place but on all the people of the United Kingdom. If the Government were serious, that provision would be in the Bill. If they were serious, the Bill would contain something different from this clause. The amendments in the name of the hon. Member for Stone and others would not change that. However, amendment 52, which was tabled by the Leader of the Opposition, is worth supporting because it proposes that the Government will report annually on how much of this Bill has been used to challenge anything coming from Europe. That would give everyone a chance to see whether the Bill is the joke that I say it is, or something of substance. I challenge the Government to accept the amendment. If they are serious and really think—I cannot imagine how deluded they would be to think this—that clause 18 makes a difference, I urge them to accept amendment 52, because we would then have a serious matter before us. We would have a Bill approved by the Government that would not just be a waste of time, because it would allow us, and the people of Britain, to judge annually whether it is a waste of time. That would make a major difference where nothing else would. I am not angry about this, because I already believed that this is what would happen if we ever got a Conservative Government. I said that from the Government Benches as the Lisbon treaty went through, and I said to the person who is now Foreign Secretary and others that if the Conservatives ever got power they would not be the Eurosceptics that they pretended to be in opposition. This Bill and this clause show how true that is.