Lisbon Treaty (No. 3)

My right hon. Friend makes an extremely good point that explains why we should look very carefully at what is happening and why, in the laughably short one and a half hours that we have to consider the amendments this evening, we should take every opportunity to amend the Bill. In that way we can try, to the extent that it is in our power, to prevent the greater dangers that lie ahead. The other aspect of leaving the balancing and explication of different rights to the Court rather than to the parliamentary process is that we cannot amend decisions when circumstances change or if we find that they are not what we wanted or what our constituents feel to be fundamentally fair, reasonable and right. The fact that we cannot amend them means, in turn, that we cannot take risks with them. Those hon. Members who have expressed concern about economic rights should know that I would feel far more confident about granting economic rights to workers, say, if I knew that they could be withdrawn if they did not work out to their advantage. For example, I might fear that a change might turn out to price people out of a job rather than increase their well-being. If I knew that it could be revised, I should be much more willing to be generous about trying it out in the first place. Therefore, we have a choice: we can either throw caution to the winds, leave all decisions to the ECJ and hope that everything turns out all right, or we have to be terribly cautious about granting specific economic and other rights, for fear that we cannot change them if they work out badly. Whatever one's position in these matters—whether one sides with the Labour Members who have spoken in the debate or with the neo-liberals to whom they have referred and of whom I assume that I am one—I urge the House to say, ““Yes, we believe in rights, but ultimately they should be defended, protected, developed and evolved by the parliamentary process and not by a foreign jurisdiction over which we have no control and to which there is no recourse.””