European Union (Amendment) Bill

By the time the noble Baroness comes back I will have finished. This amendment simply would remove the whole bogus concept of subsidiarity from the Treaties of Rome. As Members of the Committee will know, the concept of subsidiarity was introduced at Maastricht when the unfortunate John Major was Prime Minister of this country. Mr Major returned from the Maastricht negotiations saying that he had won ““game, set and match””. Included in that triumph, 25 per cent of all the regulations of the European Union were going to be repatriated. I have another question for the Conservative Party, which was in charge at the time. How many regulations have been repealed under subsidiarity since this great negotiating triumph of Mr Major at Maastricht? I do not want to be told about how many new pieces of legislation might have come into force had it not been for subsidiarity, because it was a good influence on the legislators and they did not go along with it, I want to be told how many pieces of European legislation have actually been cancelled or repatriated. I can tell the noble Lord, Lord Howell, on the Front Bench that the answer is zero, but I would not mind if he said it. To understand why the principle of subsidiarity in the Treaties of Rome was never really a starter, it is worth putting on the record once again the key paragraph in the concept. It goes as follows: "““In accordance with the principle of subsidiarity, in areas which do not fall within its exclusive competence, the Union shall act only if and insofar as the objectives of the intended action cannot be sufficiently achieved by the Member States””—" either at central level or at the regional and local levels— "““but can rather, by reason of the scale or effects of the proposed action, be better achieved at Union level””." As usual I have to apologise for the Eurospeak, but it is worth concentrating on those words. The question that arises from the paragraph is this: who decides what is better dealt with at which local level? The answer to that is the EU. In the treaty we are discussing at the moment, there is a new protocol on subsidiarity. If anyone wants to read a procedure for not making a decision or for making a decision—