European Union Bill

My Lords, I think we all understand that Clause 6 is at the heart of the Bill. We have spent considerable time on Clause 6 and we will return to it on Report. No doubt we will have discussions between Committee and Report on aspects of it. I will just say a few things on Clause 6, how it fits in the Bill, and where it fits in the coalition agreement and so on. The coalition agreement was, of course, a headline agreement, and on that basis the coalition partners negotiated the detail that came out of it. We have seen this evening—and those of you who read the debates in another place will be well aware—that this Bill is a compromise between incompatible positions. It is doing its utmost to draw a line underneath the long argument about keeping competence and centralisation in Brussels, which has run through British and other national politics for a long time. It is our case, in putting forward this Bill, that the Lisbon treaty provides extensive competencies that we can use. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Lea of Crondall, that this is not in any sense an attempt to destroy the Lisbon treaty by the back door. It is based on the understanding that the Lisbon treaty does indeed provide a great deal of headroom for us all to achieve the objectives that we seek. As the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, was speaking, I had a quick look at Articles 191 and 192 of the Treaty on the European Union, because I wanted to check how much headroom the Lisbon treaty gives us on environmental policy. It is quite clear that EU carbon emissions targets are agreed under existing competencies, and largely under qualified majority voting. All the Bill does is to say that if the UK wants to give up its veto over the environmental matters listed in Article 192(2), including fiscal matters, town planning and the structure of our energy supply—that is to say, if we wish to move from unanimity to qualified majority voting—then we have to bring it back to Parliament, and, if necessary, for a referendum. We are now going to move on to Articles 7 to 10, which will deal with a range of issues that will not be subject to referendums, where parliamentary scrutiny— parliamentary approval—is set down. That is very much an indication that we have done our utmost to distinguish between sensitive and significant issues and other issues on which we can move. However, I am not persuaded that we need endless flexibility, which we do not have, to be able to achieve the objectives which we as a constructive member of the Union wish to pursue over the next few years. The Lisbon treaty gives us that flexibility.