Clause 1 of this historic Bill is the most important constitutional matter to come before the House of Commons since the 1972 Act. I have read some of the debates that Parliament conducted at the time, and we could indeed say that the repeal is more significant than the House believed the original Act to be. When the original Act was passed, the Government reassured the House that it was no surrender of sovereignty to a supranational body and no major transfer of power. They told the House that it was, instead, a major development of a common market; that the areas in which the European Economic Community would have competence would be very narrow and limited; and that the UK would preserve a veto so that if the EEC proposed anything the UK did not like, the UK would be able to exercise its veto and show that Parliament was still sovereign.
That was a long time ago. Over the years, what appeared to be a modest measure to form a common market has transformed itself into a mighty set of treaties and become, through endless amendment and new treaty provision, a very large and complex legal machine that is the true sovereign of our country. It has exercised its sovereignty through the European Court of Justice, the one supreme body in our country during all the time we have remained in the EEC and, now, the EU. We have seen how that body can now strike down Acts of Parliament, prevent Ministers from taking the action they wish to take and prevent this Parliament from expressing a view and turning it into action.
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We were told, for example, that the EU would never be able to control our tax system, yet many items carry VAT that I think Members on both sides of the House would like to abolish, although we are not allowed to do so by European legal requirements. Before the renegotiation of our relationship attempted by the previous Prime Minister, the two main parties agreed that they wanted certain modest benefit changes to our welfare system, but both had to accept that they were quite illegal. It was therefore quite inappropriate and impossible for the House to take action that would have withstood challenges from the European Court of Justice.