European Union (Amendment) Bill

My Lords, I suspect that I am not the only one in the House who finds it difficult to follow the twists and turns of the Liberal Democrat explanation of its position. These are not trivial provisions. We are talking about the possibility of changing the conditions of the treaty in ways that are very substantive and which, under normal circumstances, would require a new treaty with all that goes with it. Let me point out just a few of the provisions we are talking about. Under Article 31(3) is the ability to move the common foreign and security policy on to QMV. The Government have made great play of the fact that that is to be by unanimity, but here is a provision that allows it to be agreed that it should be moved to QMV. A provision under Article 81(3) states that family law should be decided by QMV, while a decision under Article 31(2) would allow provisions on EU finance—the budget—to be decided not by unanimity but by QMV. The provision under Article 33(2) allows enhanced co-operation to be carried forward; borne not just by the cost of those members who participate but by all members including those who are not participating in the enhanced co-operation. Provision 48(6) allows revisions of procedures in the treaty to be taken by simplified revision procedures; that is, qualified majority voting. We may ask why the provisions are in the treaty; is it conceivable that anyone would ever want to do that? One can only assume that those provisions are in the treaty because someone believes that at some stage the European Union might want to decide that it moves these matters from unanimity to QMV; otherwise, why are they in the treaty? We could have struck them out. To suggest that such measures should be left to the Executive is a complete denial of parliamentary democracy. It may be that we trust that the Executive would say no and use their veto to stop those matters, but we are not an Executive Government in this county unfettered by Parliament. We are a parliamentary democracy, and our tradition has been that changes of this magnitude should be approved by Parliament. For the noble Lord, Lord McNally, to suggest that it is a huge bureaucratic burden to suggest that Parliament should be asked to approve changes that previously would have required a treaty change would have former liberal parliamentarians turning in their graves. We must accept that those are significant provisions, which are of the nature of treaty changes. It may be that they are not used in the future, but if they were used and the Government were to agree that those things should be done by QMV in the future and the treaty should be changed in that way, they must be subject to parliamentary control.