European Union (Amendment) Bill

I am very grateful. I am tempted to quote from ““A Midsummer Night’s Dream”” and say that the noble Lord is as wise as he beautiful. But I shall not do that, because it might be considered improper. Whatever Lord Denning said in this House as a parliamentarian is not the law. The law is what is stated in the Appellate Committee by the Law Lords. As I attempted to say briefly, it is absolutely clear beyond argument, not only in Lord Denning’s Court of Appeal in the case of McCarthys v Wendy Smith, he made the supremacy of European law absolutely plain, but he also set aside in that case the part of the Equal Pay Act that conflicted with an equality directive, and explained why. In Factortame, Lord Bridge for a unanimous House of Lords displaced the discriminatory provisions of the Merchant Shipping Act and explained why. In the EOC case, another Appellate Committee displaced the provisions of an old employment protection Act as being inconsistent. In all those cases, they explained the relationship, not in this House as parliamentarians, but as our final court. All that they said echoed similar judgments by the European Court of Justice. If Lord Denning in advanced years began to say political things here, they are not of the same judicial weight as when he acted as a judge. When he acted as a judge in the Court of Appeal, he made it absolutely clear. I suggest that one should focus on what he and the House of Lords said as a court, and the European Court of Justice. All of them said exactly the same thing. With respect, it is hopeless to suggest that there is any lack of clarity. The position is that our sovereign Parliament has agreed, exercising its sovereignty, that so long as we remain members of the European Community/Union where European Community law reigns, in the sense that it applies in a particular area, any inconsistency in legislation or judicial decision or administrative action must give way. It is also clear that no member state can reply on its own constitutional order as an excuse for doing anything inconsistent with the paramount law of the European Community, now the European Union. Perhaps I may say that all that is now in any law school regarded as absolutely straightforward for any law student.