European Union (Amendment) Bill

It depends what the noble Lord means by ““deeper and further integration””? There is a lot of case law in the European Court of Justice. In our discussions on the previous day of Committee, when we referred to the European Court—we will again, I have no doubt, in our discussions particularly on justice and home affairs—we looked at examples. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Slynn, who is not in his place at the moment, as a former judge in the European Court of Justice, was extremely helpful in describing both the methodology of the court and the fact that it does not operate in a political fashion, but that a lot of the work of the Court in determining its role and function was established long before the UK joined the European Union. The noble Lord will know that for himself. Any suggestion that the Court was seeking to try to move beyond its role of interpreting the law was in the noble and learned Lord’s view wrong. I am sure the noble Lord will look at the Hansard references for what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Slynn, referred to.