European Union Bill

My Lords, I shall speak against Motion D1. The reasons for doing so are quite straightforward. The noble Lord, Lord Hannay, commented on flexibility and how important it is that in going forward in unpredictable circumstances we should have flexibility. While I agree with him there, I am not clear that Amendment 15B provides that flexibility because, in order to have a suspension of Section 6 or Schedule 1, it would require us to have the approval of both Houses. Does the noble Lord believe that the approval of both Houses could be arrived at in a manner which did not revisit all of the contentious issues in Section 6 or Schedule 1? If they could have been debated without extensive deliberation or scrutiny—call it what you will—we would not have spent as much time as we have on the Bill. On the other hand, flexibility nevertheless exists in the ability of a future Government to repeal either the entire Act, as it will be by then, or sections of the Act. My noble friend Lady Williams spoke of the importance of the people of this country having their say on a sunset clause—I prefer to call it a suspension clause—in a general election. If the Act went forward unamended, the people could still have their say because there could equally easily be a debate on whether or not this Bill should be repealed by a new Government were they to win the election. I did not intervene in the debates on the earlier amendments but this debate has been about trust in the people and the constitution, and much has been made about the move to plebiscitary democracy. The theme of the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, throughout the course of the Bill has been his anxiety for the Liberal Democrats and whether they feel awkward and embarrassed by it. The presumption underlying those comments—and the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, has been a member of my party, the Liberal Democrats —is that we are reluctantly going along with these measures and that there is no philosophical underpinning whatever. During the passage of the Bill we have had commentary about Burke and parliamentary democracy, and about an hour ago the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, referred to Tom Paine. The philosophical underpinning for why the people should be trusted comes from no less a person than John Stuart Mill. He said: "““A state which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands, even for beneficial purposes, will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished””." That is why we have supported the Bill and why we trust the people; they are ultimately sovereign.