European Union (Amendment) Bill

Another very relevant point. Perhaps the right word that we are groping for is ““ruling””. What I am trying to get to is that the outcome of the rulings of the European Court of Justice and the powers of that court, which now extend over a very wide range of bodies, as they never did before, with its powers to impose large fines and many other penalties, are vastly extended with the collapse of the third pillar. I shall not go into the points that the noble Baroness raised about national parliaments. There is room for a very wide debate about whether in practice there is any enlargement of the role of national parliaments at all under this treaty. I know that the intention was there but whether it works in practice is something that we shall discuss at another time. The noble Lord, Lord Lester, implied that I was in favour of a constitutional court. I am not. I was merely saying that other countries had those courts and that as we did not have one it was all the more vital that we underpinned our systems of parliamentary accountability to uphold our constitution in the most effective ways. The core of the issue that we have been debating is the ““previous treaties”” issue, embodied in the interventions of the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, and the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, who raised—as has often been raised before—the question why. Why are we worried about this now and why are we trying to amend this treaty? Why are we critical of many aspects of it and why has the party for which I am speaking argued in favour of a referendum when we did not do any such thing for previous treaties? I gave one answer—the straw theory, as the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, put it. Of course, it does not have to be a straw by itself; it can be one in a very large bundle, as it is in this case and as the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, perhaps recognised. One more very large bundle is the thing that can sink the poor, wretched camel. There are other substantial arguments, and the noble Lord, Lord Owen, reminded us of a very good one—namely, that after the Maastricht treaty an election was held. There was a general election. Are we being offered now another general election on this issue? If so, I think that my party would be quite happy to proceed.