European Union (Amendment) Bill

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Wirral, for putting these amendments together into one block—a great advantage—and for using the old English word ““zeal””, which I have not heard from the opposition Benches for some time. I also support what the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, said, about the incredible importance of this part of the responsibilities of the European Union. I accept that Amendments Nos. 29A and 29B are not wrecking amendments; none the less, they put up quite a big hurdle, in the sense that Amendment No. 29B would require an affirmative resolution of both Houses before the Act could come into effect. I shall speak about the competition rules because they are an area we should be careful about changing, and the amount of work put into that sector by the European institutions, particularly the European Commission, is important. It is not just the big issues; there are a large number of small issues about subsidies to individual companies and so on where we urgently need the Commission to continue the sort of work it has carried out over many years. We cannot afford to lose them because we cannot play our European matches without a referee, and obviously we do not want to give the referee a red card—although some teams sometimes wish that would happen in European competitions. This is an important area for the United Kingdom. I stress that in any one period there are a large number of decisions, not just the important ones on competition issues that we need to have taken in order to protect the free market. The consequence of the large number of decisions, many of which are directed to one country only, is that they are mostly short-lived because action is taken, but generally there are six to 10 times more decisions in a year than there are directives in the European Union. In consequence, a large number of them are withdrawn. Those who quote figures about legislative Acts might bear in mind what a large number are withdrawn; for example, in 2006, 943 European legislative Acts—that is, directives, regulations and decisions—were repealed, withdrawn or expired, and 532 of those were decisions. As a matter of interest, because I am sure we can put anything into the debates here, in 2006, 264 Council decisions were adopted while 296 decisions expired or were withdrawn or repealed, so the net effect in 2006 was minus 32 decisions from the Council. We have to be careful how we handle this issue to continue benefiting from the competition rules, and we want to see those fully carried forward in the Lisbon treaty.