European Union (Amendment) Bill

Could I just clear up one point? Again, I think it is important to be clear about it. Ever since the nineteenth century and Professor Dicey, it has been absolutely clear that under the English doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty, Parliament cannot bind its successors, in the sense—as Dicey pointed out—that even the Act of Union with Scotland could be trumped by a subsequent Dentist’s Act if that Act were to contain something that was clearly inconsistent. Therefore, it is clear that under the English doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty, as stated by the courts—because the whole thing depends upon the common law recognition of parliamentary sovereignty by the courts—if a Westminster Parliament were to decide to pass legislation overriding the 1972 Act, it could do so, in so far as English domestic constitutional law was concerned. However, it could not do so in a way that would be legally valid. If we are members of the European Union, to pass legislation that was incompatible with the supreme law of the European Union would mean English courts would be compelled to hold the subsequent statute inconsistent with Community law and to disapply it. This is because English courts are under an obligation in the 1972 Act—and under a directly binding European law—to read and give effect to every British statute in a way that is compatible with binding Community law. With this problem, there is a difference when it is looked at as an isolated English constitutional problem and when it is looked at in terms of our membership of the EU. So long as we are within the European Union, there is no possibility whatever of a subsequent statute breaching Community law, being struck down or disapplied by our own courts and, ultimately, by the Court of Justice. That is the fundamental principle on which our membership of the European Community is based. It is for that reason that amendments of this kind, were they to be carried, would be necessarily held to be invalid. Lord Justice Laws, a fine judge, floated in one of his judgments in the Court of Appeal—to take Dicey’s example—the supposition that Parliament were to be dotty enough, or the European institutions were dotty enough, to enact legislation requiring that all red-headed people should be boiled alive at birth. The question of parliamentary sovereignty and European Community law, in that kind of extreme hypothetical flat-earth case, could then arise. John Laws was indicating that, in that extreme case, there might be some possibility of litigation on that subject. Frankly, it is not really sensible to spend time on examples of that kind, floated by a distinguished Court of Appeal judge in a hypothetical way.