European Union Bill

My Lords, I shall speak briefly in support of these amendments and I want to make two points that have arisen in other contributions. The first is the question of one Parliament binding another. Some perfectly valid points have been made by those who say that much of the legislation that we pass binds a succession of Parliaments until they repeal it. However, what is not noticed is that the Government stepped into the quagmire by stating categorically that this Bill, if it becomes law, has no application during this Parliament, because they are not going to agree to any of the things that would trigger its application. That, I think, puts it in a completely different category and explains why a sunset clause has become particularly apt. I argue that it is a constitutional aberration to sit around trying to pass legislation which has no application in the timetable of this Parliament and which is designed purely to be applied in subsequent Parliaments. That is an oddity which I think justifies the sunset clause. The other question is the one put very eloquently by the noble Baroness, Lady Quin. We need to clear our minds a bit on whether we want to go in a major way into a plebiscitary democracy. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, who is not in his place, thinks that turning this country into a simulacrum of Switzerland would be a jolly good thing. I do not happen to share his view on that. However, I think that noble Lords who say that the voice of the people must be heard should think a bit about this. Incidentally, most of them are sitting on the Benches of a party that has resisted referendums consistently over the past 40 years. What is being suggested here is a major lurch into plebiscitary democracy in just one section of our institutional life while leaving the rest of it more or less as is. That is a peculiarly unbalanced way to approach this matter. By all means, let us have a debate about whether we should move away from representative parliamentary democracy to a plebiscitary democracy, although I have no doubt whatever what the outcome of that would be. There would be a massive majority against doing so. However, do not let us lurch in one section of our national life into potentially 50 or 60 referendums. That is why I support a sunset clause, and I could support any of the variants in Amendments 61, 62 and 63. I hope that the Government will think really carefully about this because it is a serious matter.