European Union (Amendment) Bill

My Lords, I appreciate that this amendment has been received with less than total rapture by some noble Lords on all sides. As I made clear in moving it, I have brought it forward more in the spirit of seeking clarification. I confess that I remain uneasy and puzzled by some of the propositions before us. Of course presidencies evolve. The presidency of the United States has evolved in ways that make it vastly different from when the original constitution was drawn up. On the whole, however—I am not sure whether it is the case for the Philadelphia Constitution—constitutions tend to define the actual powers in relation to the legislature and other institutions of authority within a state and they tend to define the powers of the president. I do not want to get into an argument at this stage, although we will certainly get into an argument later, on whether this is a constitution because it has the same wording as what was called a constitution, although many people argue that that should not have been called a constitution either. Thereby springs many of our troubles. Nevertheless, this is an attempt to bring more coherence by one means or another, in this case by amending various treaties rather than putting around them the wrapping of a completely new treaty, and introducing various new positions and roles. The noble Baroness says that the President will work in a way that is ““complementary”” to the High Representative. Should we not be asking a little more clearly who is going to be in charge on the foreign policy side? Foreign policy issues will come up in the Foreign Affairs Council; the president will be sitting in the general Council; the issue of the rotating president will have to be sorted out in ways that I am not clear about even now—but as the noble Baroness has said, it will have to be sorted out—and there will be, in her words, a ““triumvirate”” who will somehow clarify all these things. Perhaps we should just relax, as the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, advises, and abandon any prescription so that the whole thing can evolve in various ways. However, we are a parliamentary democracy and we need to know where power lies and how it will be used. It would be an exception to the rule of the evolution of presidential roles, the transfer of powers and the creation of legal systems, which is what we are involved in, to leave the matter hanging in the air. The noble Baroness has made an excellent fist of trying to describe things which, frankly, are not yet settled. We are half way through the cooking, as it were, and we do not know how the meal is going to turn out. That will leave a lot of parliamentarians a little uneasy and worried. But this is not a matter that can be settled here and now. Loose ends need to be tied up and further discussions are coming along. Perhaps this is not the moment to test the amendment and therefore I beg leave to withdraw it. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.