European Union Bill

With great respect to my noble friends Lord Waddington and Lord Lamont, I do not think that they are correct in this case. The test of what is codification and is therefore excluded from a referendum provision is an objective one. It does not depend on the procedures used to achieve the codification; it depends on whether there has been actual codification or something going beyond it. Codification, in the normal use of the word in English law, which is how the provision would be construed, means not a change in the law but the assembly in a convenient form of existing law. Of course there can be room for argument as to whether in a particular case there has been a change or merely a codification in the sense of an assembly of existing law, but the test is an objective one, not what procedure has been—