UK Parliament / Open data

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his comments, and I am very happy to leave it to the Government to draw the conclusions and answer the questions in due course. I do not think clause 5(1) helps at all, however, because my hon. Friend is right that it excludes the possibility of subsequent enactments being subject to the principle of supremacy, but in clause 5(2) it is equally clear that, so far as the retained law is concerned, the principle of supremacy remains, and therefore there may be judgments in the future that already existing law, where there is judged to be a conflict between an Act of Parliament and an ECJ ruling, should have the result that the ECJ ruling triumphs over the Act of Parliament. That is a perfectly possible and sensible position to adopt. It is not one my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) and I would like to see, and I doubt that my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) would like to see it, but it is nevertheless a perfectly tolerable position—and it then needs to be carried over for the Supreme Court just as much.

My point remains, however, and it is a simple one: that if the Bill is trying to achieve a hierarchy here, it needs to state what the hierarchy is, and in stating that hierarchy, it needs to make it clear who governs whom. At the moment, the Bill does not do that.

About this proceeding contribution

Reference

631 c315 

Session

2017-19

Chamber / Committee

House of Commons chamber
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