European Union (Amendment) Bill

One of the aspects of the treaty that has caused so much concern in the House and in the country is that it provides, deliberately and extensively, for its own amendment on a huge scale, without recourse to a further treaty. Once again, it is in this respect an almost exact copy of the EU constitution, with articles IV-444 and IV-445 of the old constitution becoming article 48 of the Lisbon treaty. This group of amendments is designed to provide for effective parliamentary scrutiny of any use in the future of those powers of potentially immense importance. During these debates, it has become a regular refrain to point out that the Government are now trying to win acceptance for aspects of the treaty to which Ministers themselves were long and trenchantly opposed. The self-amending nature of the treaty is no exception to that. The 2003 Government White Paper referred to"““A proposal for a Clause which would allow the European Council to vote by Unanimity to move any Treaty Article to QMV. We oppose anything that would undermine the role of National Parliaments in Treaty change.””" And they were right to do so, because previous treaties, such as the Single European Act and the Maastricht, Amsterdam and Nice treaties, have only been amendable on any major scale through the passage of a later treaty, requiring a process of negotiation, publicity, media attention, parliamentary debates of a protracted nature and, in the case of this treaty, a commitment to a referendum—albeit a commitment that the Government seek to break. Such changes have therefore occurred only periodically. They usually come as a package to be considered in the round and are difficult to bring about, as they should be, since they can change fundamentally the governance of the nation states of the European Union. The ability to make a change as important as moving from a requirement for unanimity to qualified majority voting in any given policy area has always been opposed by the Government. The Secretary of State for Justice, when he was Foreign Secretary, talked of the prospect that"““late at night at an ordinary European Council, a decision on one other country's milk quotas is traded for a concession on moving from Unanimity to QMV…that is not acceptable.””" His was not an isolated voice. The right hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr. MacShane), then the Minister for Europe, said:"““We think that a self-amending Constitutional Treaty does not make a lot of sense.””" It will be clear to observers of our proceedings by now that this treaty is closer to being a list of things that the Government did not want than of those things that they favour, which is testimony to the abject failure of much of their negotiating effort. That could never be more clearly demonstrated than on this matter, where the self-amending provisions they agreed have ended up being agreed and spelled out in glorious detail in clause 6 of the Bill. These are the passerelle clauses—or ratchet clauses, as they might be more accurately termed—which allow the European Council in any area other than defence to move from decision making by unanimity to qualified majority voting, or from special legislative procedures to so-called ordinary legislative procedures, and all without any further treaty, let alone any consultation with the electorate.