European Union (Amendment) Bill

Of course, as usual, I will abide by your strictures, Mrs. Heal, and we may, of course, have the opportunity to debate that in tomorrow’s proceedings. Amendment No. 39, which stands in the name of the right hon. Member for Wells and is supported by the hon. Members for Stone and for Rayleigh, among others, is intended to make it more difficult for the Government to make changes to terminology or numbering in other UK laws that result from the Lisbon treaty. The Bill contains a power for the Government to update terminology and numbering in existing legislation. That is a power to make purely technical changes. For example, the article numbers in the treaties will change on the entry into force of the Lisbon treaty and the co-decision procedure is renamed as the ordinary legislative procedure. Those are not changes in substance, but UK law may need to be updated to reflect such changes in terminology. Again, I disagree with the conclusions reached by the hon. Member for Stone, but the Committee would generally agree that he made a thoughtful contribution. I hope that he will not mind my saying that his assertion was a criticism of section 2(2) of the European Communities Act 1972. It is commonly acknowledged that subsections (2)(a) and (2)(b) contain relatively wide-ranging powers.