European Union Bill

My Lords, one benefit of our largely unwritten constitution is the flexibility that our system gives us; one defect is that we do not have a very consistent set of principles to guide us. We tend to be pragmatic. My experience as a blow-in or holiday resident for 38 years in the Republic of Ireland and my experience of their system, makes me attracted to one of the arguments in the speech in support of the amendment by the noble Lord, Lord Kerr. It has convinced me that any attempt in this Bill to introduce inflexibility would be a grave mistake. I also think that referenda on complicated and highly technical matters are not a very good idea. The Irish constitution has been interpreted by a narrow majority of the Supreme Court of Ireland as requiring referenda in quite a number of circumstances. When the treaty of Lisbon was put out for referendum the Irish Government produced an information pack which was completely incomprehensible even to lawyers, since it referred to bits of that treaty by reference to article numbers, paragraphs and specific legislative proposals. They left an information pack in each post office. I took the trouble to try to understand it and, as I say, I found the information given to the citizens of the Irish Republic to be so opaque that I certainly could not understand it. Essentially, what this Bill is seeking to do is to treat itself as a constitutional Bill that will pre-empt future Parliaments, unless they exercise their sovereign powers to repeal it. In other words, it seeks to act in a quasi-constitutional way. It will therefore inevitably introduce rigidity where at the moment we have maximum flexibility, and do so in the name of the democratic imperative. I do not find that persuasive when one sees the range of issues that are apparently to be subject to future referenda. That will not help the interests of the United Kingdom in negotiating within the corridors of power in Brussels and it will not enlighten our citizens, were we to have referenda on these subjects. Since it is not proposed that the powers in this Bill should be exercised in the lifetime of this Parliament, I believe that sunset and sunrise are appropriate.