European Union Bill

I asked at the start of Committee why we needed Clause 3. Clause 3 refers to the simplified or accelerated method used in Brussels for producing a treaty amendment. Clause 2 refers to the product of the normal method used in Brussels. The product, by the time it reaches us, is exactly the same: it is a treaty amendment. How it began, who proposed it and which process was followed in Brussels are irrelevant to the ratification requirements here. We should decide the ratification requirements and any necessary referendum requirements on the basis of the weight of the amendment, not of the means by which the amendment was agreed in Brussels. I therefore asked why we needed Clause 3 as well as Clause 2. I have read very carefully the Minister’s answer at the end of the debate. He did not answer the question. He cleverly lured me into a semantic debate about competencies and powers, which we played into the sand, but we did not hear the answer as to why we needed Clause 3. There is a difference between Clause 3 and Clause 2. If you eliminated Clause 3, you would eliminate something that is not in Clause 2. That is the final section of Clause 3, which contains the significance test. It is to that section that the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, is now proposing an amendment. There is no significance test in Clause 2, which is the first of the two clauses setting out what we do when a treaty is amended. Does that mean that the Government believe that any treaty amendment made by the traditional method, however insignificant, must require a mandatory referendum? That seems to be the implication of having the test only in Clause 3 and not in Clause 2. I would be inclined to argue that we should eliminate Clause 3 now but transfer subsection (4) to Clause 2, so that the significance test, whatever its form—the form in the Bill, the form as revised by the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, or the form as revised by others—applies to any treaty amendment. That seems to be logical. The noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford, used two arguments which perhaps play on the question. One was implicitly that Article 48(6), the accelerated method, would be used for the trivial, whereas the full-dress method, Article 48(2) to (5)—Clause 2 of this Bill—would be used for the heavy stuff. That may be so, but it does not seem very plausible to me. The noble Lord argued that we need not worry about having a series of referenda on the trivial because amendments would be bundled. He said that, from his long experience of Brussels, he knew that that was the way it worked. That is completely correct. In the past, treaty amendments have been brought together in a bumper-package intergovernmental conference, resulting in a new treaty or a massive treaty amendment. In my view that will not be the case in future. A lesson has been learnt that it is not right to lump a whole series of questions together. The answer in the French referendum and the Dutch referendum came about partly because a whole lot of measures—not all of them necessarily very large—were put together and people were asked whether they would buy the package. If there is anything in such a package that you do not particularly like, the reasonable answer is to say no. The European Union has learnt from that and the Article 48(6) method—the Clause 3 material—will not be trivial relative to the Clause 2—or Article 48(2) to (5)—material.