European Union Bill

My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, that it is a pity that so many of these amendments have been lumped together; it would have better if they had been somewhat disaggregated. We are talking more about Clause 6 than about Schedule 1, and whatever the objections in general to the Bill and the things listed in Schedule 1, I find it difficult to understand why people do not regard Clause 6 as eminently reasonable. That clause is about a substantial increase in competence and transfers of power. All the areas listed are where Britain has special arrangements or opt-outs. It is true that they do not require treaty change but they are none the less significant and affect us in different ways, so, given the Bill, it is logical that they should be subject to the referendum provisions. Those issues include the euro, the European army that was referred to, border controls and the European public prosecutor. I listened to the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, with great respect, as I always do, but I think that the establishment of the European public prosecutor is actually a very big issue, one that would be suitable to have a referendum on. I shall say a bit about that in a minute. An argument was put forward from the Benches opposite that in having Clause 6, which deals with the passerelles, we were going against the Lisbon treaty after it had been ratified. That is not really the case; although those passerelles exist and were in the treaty, they say that we ““may”” do this, not that we ““will”” do this. These are significant changes. I may add that I am told that the Germans have altered their treatment of passerelles to give more say in any ratification of parliaments in future, so this does not go against the Lisbon treaty. In any case, the argument that the passerelles represent the will of Lisbon may sometimes be true, but sometimes passerelles were put in the treaty simply because countries could not agree; one group of countries wanted to go ahead faster while another group did not, so they decided to compromise and have a passerelle to leave the issue for a later date. I remember it being reported that one of the Finnish participants in the Lisbon treaty said, ““The passerelles were where we failed, where we couldn’t agree””.