Lisbon Treaty (No. 3)

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. The situation raises difficulties of interpretation. I am not saying that there are no arguments to the contrary; what I am saying is that the Government should say why the arguments that they have put forward in the context of a potential domestic Bill of Rights, which they have indicated they wish to introduce, apparently do not need to be considered in the context of the charter of fundamental rights. As yet we have received no answer whatever to that question, because the debate has, I am afraid, so frequently been reduced to such facile levels. The second issue is the protocol and the impact of the charter of fundamental rights on our national legal and parliamentary processes. The Government negotiated the protocol for some purpose. However, having listened to what those on Treasury Bench have said on the matter, one begins to think that the protocol is merely a fig leaf, whereas it was originally sold as a protection. The protection that the Government wanted concerned their anxiety to persuade the public in the UK that the charter could not be used to have an impact on, effectively, domestic legal areas. As European law is expanding—one of the purposes of the treaty of Lisbon is for that to happen—and moving into, for example, areas of crime and justice, which we debated last week and on which I disagree most profoundly with what the Government are allowing to happen, it must be inevitable that the charter of fundamental rights will apply even in crime and justice areas that fall within the European Union's remit, if the Government opt into any of them. Again, we have yet to hear any explanation from the Lord Chancellor or the Minister of how the Government think that will operate in practice. If the protocol is in fact worthless—as in my view it is—there will be instances where the European Union and the European Court of Justice will use the charter of fundamental rights to affect the development of UK domestic law in areas such as criminal justice to which we have opted in. It may be argued that that is a good thing; indeed, some Government Members, and certainly Liberal Democrat Members, seem to think that that would be a good development. However, the issue at least merits some debate, which is the very thing that we have not had from the Government.