European Union Bill

My Lords, I hesitate to introduce an inquiring note to this love-in. I do not know whether noble Lords have read the Commons European Scrutiny report on this Bill, which has some interesting things to say on the principle of parliamentary sovereignty, having listened to a lot of legal evidence. I draw the Minister’s attention to what that report says in paragraph 76, as it might help him. The committee states: "““We think it right that, should an Act of Parliament instruct the courts to disapply an aspect of European Union law, the courts should do so: this is not only consistent with the case law of the courts, but also with the doctrine of the legislative supremacy of Parliament; and also with the rule of law." As I said on Second Reading: "““Encouragingly, the committee goes on to conclude that it is entirely within bounds for Parliament to ask judges to disapply any aspect of European Union law if that is the will of a democratically elected Parliament, even if—this is important—that were to lead to infringement proceedings in the EU Court of Justice””.—[Official Report, 22/3/11; Col. 699.]" There seems to be a divergence of opinion. Who is right—those who say EU law is supreme and should be within the Bill as the amendments suggest; or is the Commons European Union Scrutiny Committee right? It presumably has had legal advisers to instruct them as well. I suppose that we ought to take account of the fact that the French Government threw out the Romany Gypsies, which must have been contrary to EU law. However, as far as I know, no infringement proceedings were taken. Even now, the French and Danes are ignoring the provisions of the Schengen agreement, which they signed, and are putting in place border posts. As is well known, the French stopped a train from Italy that contained Tunisian emigrants who were given some sort of EU passe-partout and were supposed to be allowed into France. The French police stopped the train and would not let them in. Denmark has reinstated full border controls to stop immigration. Therefore, the argument about the complete supremacy of EU law does not any longer hold. I will be interested to hear what the noble Lord or his advisers say about this in response to the amendments.