European Union (Amendment) Bill

I will certainly give way to my right hon. Friend in a moment. I just want to get this on the record. It is absolutely essential to protect the provision that my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks explained so well just now from being overridden by the European Court. I know that my right hon. Friend does not want that to happen. I have pleaded with him on a number of occasions to listen carefully to what I am saying on this subject. He is right: these changes should be brought about through primary legislation. He is also right that the provisions would ride roughshod over our parliamentary procedures here, and that the proposed motion would get nowhere. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) is also right to say that this measure will be driven through by the Whips, and that that is a reason why an Act of Parliament should be used. However, it is also necessary to protect such an Act of Parliament from the predations and assertions of the European Court of Justice in circumstances in which we, as a nation—and we, as a Parliament, on behalf of our own citizens and voters—have decided that we want to take a position that differs from what is being prescribed, sometimes in defiance of the wishes of our own Government. We already know, from contributions from the Minister for Europe and others, that the Convention overrode a lot of the decisions that the Government wanted to make. We are therefore already implementing in the Bill things that we know the Government did not want. That is because they were weak-kneed and they buckled. In the circumstances that I am describing, we would be overridden and kicked into touch.