European Union (Amendment) Bill

Perhaps I may ask the noble and learned Lord a further question; like other noble Lords, I have found his intervention extremely helpful. Some noble Lords have been adumbrating the theme of the European Court of Justice running amok. But is it not fair to say that that could not happen without redress? Perhaps I may give an analogy from UK history. In the trade union world, the most famous case of the past 100 to 150 years was the 1901 Taff Vale judgment which overturned what we had thought was the common law right to strike. Parliament, under the then Liberal Government, of course reversed that judgment in 1906 with the famous words about tort and no court taking action in contemplation of a trade dispute. By analogy with, let us say, competition law, if the European Court found that the existing law meant such and such but the Community institutions realised that that was not what they wanted to achieve, and if there was a wish to change the rules governing competition policy through treaty or a decision of the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament, then that would, ex hypothesi, be binding on the European Court of Justice. Does the noble and learned Lord believe that something along those lines would be a fair way of looking at the limitations on the powers of the European Court of Justice?