European Union Bill

I am sure that the noble Lord knows Justice Scalia of the US Supreme Court well. Justice Scalia has argued on a number of occasions that no American court could ever give credence to international treaty law or to any international court because intrinsically United States law is superior to that of any other state or court—a fundamentally nationalist line that is familiar to us. I am sure that the noble Lord shares it from an English perspective. I do not wish to pursue that much further. I merely wish to say that my puzzlement on this amendment and on those that follow is that there is considerable flexibility in the treaty that is now before us. It is not the aim of the Bill to tie the British Government or to repatriate powers. We have heard today, even from some of the people behind us on the coalition Benches, that the Bill is inadequate and that what they wanted was repatriation and a reduction of the powers. That is not what we planned. What we are asking for is a pause. Pauses are sometimes used to try to rebuild public confidence in a range of different policy areas and it seems entirely appropriate that, after the considerable extension of competence that the EU has been through over successive treaty changes, there should now be a pause. We should draw a line under the conspiratorial suspicions and fears—the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, used the word ““fears”” about his views on what the Bill might have behind it, underneath it or somewhere in a back cupboard—that Brussels is going to slide things past us by saying, ““Let’s work within the existing treaties for the foreseeable future and then, when we are absolutely clear that additional powers or competences may be needed, we will return to this process””. However, I hope that all Members of this House will agree that we have spent far too long with Governments and members of the European Commission and Parliament who love discussing institutional change—much more than they wish to discuss real policy outcomes. What we need to do now in the EU is to improve our real policy outcomes using the substantial amount of competences that we now share. I encourage the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.