European Union Bill

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time. The purpose of new clause 2 is to exempt most of the Bill from the functioning of the Parliament Act 1911. That would mean that were a Government to attempt to repeal it, they would have to do so with the consent of the House of Lords, without being able to re-present it a year later and get it into law regardless. The new clause would give the same protection to the rights of the British people to vote in a referendum on European matters as exists concerning the length of a Parliament. It is one of the ironies of our constitutional system that the unelected Chamber has since 1911 been the final guardian of the democratic rights of the British people. Since 1911, it has been impossible to lengthen a Parliament without the willing consent of the House of Lords. It is the one part of the Parliament Act that the House of Commons cannot simply override. The last extension of a Parliament came, I think, in 1944, as a final extension—until the war had been completed—of the wartime Parliament. That principle clearly applies to referendum Bills, which relate to a right of the British people to exercise their democratic choice that should not be taken away from them lightly, and should be as protected as anything within the constitution can be. It is worth mentioning—I hope that the Minister will be interested in this point—that one criticism has been made of the Bill by people who otherwise are sympathetic to it. It is that an incoming Government who wanted to push through the euro, or whatever, could simply repeal this legislation and go ahead with what they wanted to do anyway. Quite rightly, no Act of a Parliament can bind its successors, but the Bill contains no protection at all against a Government who do not want to follow it. Given that the whole purpose of the Bill is to protect the rights of the British people from further Europeanisation, it would be extremely sensible to exempt it from the Parliament Act in order to strengthen it. That would remove the one criticism made by people who are otherwise well disposed to the Bill. It would make it a stronger Bill, and one more settled in our constitutional situation. I think that many of us would like to see that. An important constitutional development is noted in volume 1 of the House of Commons European Scrutiny Committee's 10th report. It is a constitutional development that should concern the House, and on which the House should use its powers to set its seal, as it sees fit. It is essentially the Lord Justice Laws doctrine that came out of the metric martyrs case. He said:"““In the present state of its maturity the common law has come to recognise that there exist rights which should properly be classified as constitutional or fundamental… And from this a further insight follows. We should recognise a hierarchy of Acts of Parliament: as it were ““ordinary”” and ““constitutional”” statutes. The two categories must be distinguished on a principled basis.””" Lord Justice Laws went on to set out his definition of a constitutional statute as opposed to an ordinary statute. In the Bills we pass, however, there is no such difference. It is a distinction thought up by the courts, particularly to exempt the European Communities Act 1972 from implied repeal. As a matter of the most urgent constitutional principle, if there are to be two types of Act, it ought to be this House and the House of Lords who decide and determine that, not the judges. The judges are there to determine what we have said and rule on it, not to say that a new type—a whole new category—of law has been created. It seems to me that one of the ways the House could get round that is to make it clear when we think that a Bill requires particular and special protection. Fortunately—because, as some hon. Members may know, I am a great believer in tradition—we have a precedent for that in the Parliament Act, which allows the House of Lords to be overruled on everything, with the exception of a removal of a democratic right. The parallel with the Bill is exact: it is a protection dealing with a constitutional situation developed by the Lord Justice Laws doctrine.