European Union (Amendment) Bill

I am most grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. This is the third or fourth time, on the first and second day of Committee, that he has taken as his principal example the working time directive. That was introduced under the health and safety provisions of Article 118, which of course preceded the Maastricht treaty—it was not introduced under that treaty. He has repeated the travesty that we were given specific assurances that the Maastricht treaty opt-out meant goodbye to the working time directive. I do not accept that anybody in Brussels would agree that such specific undertakings about the effect of the Maastricht treaty were given. It confirms that the European Court of Justice was not influenced by any wider political considerations but just by the question of whether health was centrally tied up with long working hours, which it found to be the case. We should not cast any aspersions on the European Court of Justice by suggesting that it had any wider political or other motivation. I can well understand that the fact that the noble Lord’s advice to the Prime Minister was wrong has got under his skin, but his history is woefully wrong.