European Union Bill

I, like my right hon. and hon. Friends, welcome the two aims of this legislation. The first, to hold a referendum on any future transfer of power, is vital to try to secure some democratic legitimacy for what might happen next. The second, to assert that this House and Parliament in general is sovereign, even over European law, is excellent, but I hope that Ministers will take away from this debate the great sense of unease among many colleagues, who feel that the Bill does not deliver what Ministers say it intends to. As my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax) just said, we face a large transfer of powers in all sorts of areas at the moment—in criminal justice, in City and business regulation, in the External Action Service and, soon, in economic governance. Any one of those areas would deserve a referendum, but the whole lot together would make a good package for testing out the Government's new enthusiasm for democracy and the debating skills of the Opposition, who say that that is exactly what the British public want. What is stopping them, other than fear and the belief that, perhaps, the British public would not vote for such measures after all? I am also worried about the assertion of the parliamentary sovereignty clause. My hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash) has probed and tested it, and there are legal dangers on the route that we are now taking. Sovereignty is something that we have for a period if we are prepared to use it, but it is also possible to let it slip away or to lose it, and we cannot make this Parliament sovereign by a single clause in a piece of legislation. It means nothing. This Parliament will be sovereign again only if it wishes to be; this Parliament will be sovereign again only if it has some political will; this Parliament will be sovereign again only on the day it says to the European Union, ““We disagree with you on this. You will not give us what we want by negotiation, so we are going to legislate for ourselves.”” Ministers should not pretend that this Bill has resolved the problem. Let us take the issue of fish. I have heard Ministers, from all parties that have been in government, say to the House that they, like me, thoroughly disagree with the discard policy, think that it is wrong and intend to negotiate a better answer. No better answer has been negotiated. We gave the European Union 20 years' warning. Why do we not simply legislate now to take ourselves out of the common fisheries policy and show that this Parliament is sovereign and works in the interests of the British people and a great British industry.