European Union (Amendment) Bill

And may I say, ““With some relief,”” Sir Alan, because I know that we are time-limited. To summarise, I have other proposals concerning the two-thirds majority. I proposed that to demonstrate that although I thought an Act of Parliament was a good idea, subject to the arguments that I have just presented, it might run into serious difficulties. I said, almost in a gesture of despair, that to have two thirds of each House required as a matter of law to have to give effect to a proposal would be a kind of block. It is intended as an indication of the fact that these arrangements under the clause should not be allowed to go through without a serious block. The two-thirds block is loosely based on the arrangements in the US, recognising that the US constitution is different from ours. However, it was an attempt to demonstrate that to push something like this though required a very stiff hurdle. The other amendment I tabled concerned the insistence that the scrutiny reserve should be fully complied with. Again that links back to my point on the difficulty in terms of the timetable and the chronology into which we could be locked simply by saying that we want to have an Act of Parliament, as that itself might fall victim to a provision agreed by QMV or some other way through the aegis of the Council of Ministers, and therefore become binding in UK law under the European Communities Act 1972. I proposed a requirement that we would have to comply with all the scrutiny arrangements so there would be no excuse for a Government Department to override the European scrutiny arrangements. That would therefore protect any legislation that we decide we want to approve by this procedure. The procedure is faulty, and it is also fraudulent because it is not possible to disapply legislation that has been passed in pursuance of the 1972 Act. I have made my case. We must not allow the Government to get away with any more of these fraudulent activities.