European Union (Amendment) Bill

I shall try to deal very briefly with that. The Government may have been wrong, but we stood on a platform of maintaining workplace laws and conditions within the competence of the United Kingdom. The opt-out from the Social Chapter of the Maastricht treaty, which this Government gave away on being elected in 1997, was fought for hard, because there were concerns about the effects on competitiveness. The noble Lord was correct on the timing of the working time directive. The point that I was making was that we had a clearly defined policy; we assured people that it was possible to deliver it, because it was subject to qualified majority voting—under Article 118A, if I remember correctly, but it was a long time ago. That was then overturned, because the Commission reintroduced it as a health and safety measure, with the European Court holding that working time was a health and safety issue, thereby stretching the elastic beyond a point of breaking. That was a highly contentious and political decision, making it a matter that required unanimity in the Community and the Commission to bring it forward. It therefore became impossible for a democratically elected Government to deliver the policy in respect of working time on which they might have been elected. That was the point that I was trying to make, if perhaps not terribly expertly. I hope that the noble Lord now understands my concern about the role of the Court. In respect of the future, I am concerned that the Minister may be in the same boat in thinking that she has all these red lines and has secured the position, only to find that the Court will continue to behave as it has done from the beginning, which is to promote a wider and deeper Europe and stretch the elastic to breaking point. That may very well damage the European Union and the institutions to which I know the noble Lord is committed.