European Union Bill

No, I will not give way. I asked the House of Commons Library whether a judicial review was likely. The European Scrutiny Committee's conclusion was that"““re-course to Judicial Reviews is a more illusory safeguard than the Explanatory Notes imply.””" That is important. Surely it would be sensible for the Government to set out clear criteria for reviewing the reasonableness of a Minister's decisions. More importantly, the European Scrutiny Committee report tells us that the courts have already ruled that decisions by Government on whether to hold referendums are political decisions and that the courts have therefore been reluctant to get involved. That was borne out by the Wheeler case in 2008, in which the divisional court was asked to review the previous Government's decision not to hold a referendum on the Lisbon treaty. It concluded that the issue lay"““so deep in the macro-political field that the Court should not enter the relevant area at all””." If that was the case in the past, it is certain to be the case in the future.