European Union Bill

My Lords, I will not detain the Committee for very long. At first sight one might think that this amendment was a bit of a fuss about nothing. Why should anyone fuss about the codification of the practice of an existing competence? However, when one comes to examine the matter, the implications are serious. They were spotted by the House of Commons European Scrutiny Committee, which reported in these terms. It said, referring to the exception in Clause 4(4): "““In our opinion, this exception is significant: it would cover the practice of EU institutions pushing at the boundaries of their competence (competence creep), sometimes supported by judgments of the ECJ, and subsequently codified in a revision of the Treaties””." I give your Lordships a simple example of what I am talking about. We are talking about, for instance, converting a non-binding intergovernmental agreement, which can be revised or revoked by another simple intergovernmental communiqué, into a treaty law which can never be changed except with the unanimous agreement of all member states. We are talking about what is in effect a transfer of power or competence because we are enshrining in the treaties an obligation that was not in them before. All this is not fanciful: conversion of simple agreements into what is to all intents and purposes permanent and irreversible Community law, backed up by sanctions against backsliders, has happened and does happen. In particular, parts of the Lisbon treaty were justified as mere codification of practice. For instance, our own European Union Select Committee, in the 10th Report of the 2007-08 Session, on its assessment of the impact of the Lisbon treaty, found that new Article 43(1) of the Treaty of European Union, inserted by Lisbon, which set out the task for which the EU could deploy military and civilian missions under the common security and defence policy, codified in the TEU the tasks that had been agreed by member state Governments in 2003, as part of the European security strategy. However, the wording of the report, which I have here, hardly demonstrates that the committee had a clear understanding of what was happening. Rather surprisingly, at paragraph 12.127, the report stated: "““The Treaty will not change the scope of the CFSP or transfer any additional powers to the EU in this area. The new provisions in the Treaty could lead to a more active role for the EU in the area of CFSP, but much will depend on the degree of consensus among Member States regarding such a role””." In fact, a non-binding intergovernmental agreement that could have been revised at any time by a simple intergovernmental communiqué was becoming virtually irreversible treaty law. It was not a mere codification, but a clear example of well concealed competence creep. We are not debating whether the common security and defence policy is good or bad; I am pointing out that Clause 4(4)(a) would allow the conversion of a non-binding practice into binding and irreversible community law. The Bill is saying that when that happens, there is no need for a referendum. Finally, the amendment and the situations that I have described should make us wonder whether the provision in the Bill for referendums, far from being an attack on parliamentary democracy, may mean that Government have to take more care to ensure that they are open with their own Parliaments as to the implications of proposals, because of their statutory obligation to hold referendums, if there is a transfer of power or competence. I shall certainly not press the amendment to a vote, but I hope that Select Committees will in future be alert to the possibility of new law being made under the guise of codification, and report accordingly.