European Union Bill

The explanatory notes were changed when they were reprinted before the Bill was introduced in the House of Lords, just as I gave the House an undertaking that they would be. We amended the notes to make it clear that the references to common law in the relevant section were meant in contradistinction to statute law and that we were not commenting, as a Government and in either the Bill or the notes, on the important but much broader philosophical debate about the origins of parliamentary sovereignty. Let me deal first with the point of general principle to which my hon. Friend the Member for Stone, in particular, referred. It has always been the Government's position that clause 18 is declaratory of the existing state of our law in making it clear that European Union law has direct effect and application in this country for one reason and one reason only: namely, Parliament has given it that effect through primary legislation. I differ from my hon. Friend in that I continue to believe that it is valuable for us to have this declaratory clause on the statute book to serve as a clear expression of Parliament's will and as an abiding point of reference for the courts if they are invited in future to consider again the sort of arguments that have previously been brought before them, most notably by the prosecution in the metric martyrs case, to the effect that European law has acquired over time an autonomous authority of its own that does not derive from Acts of Parliament.