European Union (Amendment) Bill

My Lords, I shall do my best to be clear with the noble Lord, Lord Howell, and not to be in any way dismissive. What I interpreted from our previous discussions, as noble Lords have just done, is that there is very little to say on the matter, because the treaty is so clear. It is therefore difficult to extrapolate in great detail. Let me say that noble Lords who have just spoken are right that the treaty is clear. Article 245 of the treaty on the functioning of the European Union states: "““members of the Commission may not, during their term of office, engage in any other occupation””," as my noble friend Lord Anderson said. Article 17(3) of the treaty on European Union says that members of the Commission, which includes the president, "““shall neither seek nor take instructions from any Government or other institution, body, office or entity””." If we have three positions and two of them are forbidden to hold any other role, then—unless my logic has gone completely astray—you cannot double hat any one of them. There are not enough of them to achieve that. The first proposition is that the treaty does not allow it: it is not a question of interpretation and there is no ambiguity; it is absolute clarity. Equally under the treaty there is no provision that we could do this by any passerelle provision: it is not there and does not exist. Indeed, as the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, has said, the only way that the two posts could be merged would be by a treaty change and that could happen only via an Act of Parliament, because this would be an EU amending treaty and it would have to be approved by an Act of Parliament. Noble Lords opposite have said that in their view, the most positive way to ensure that nothing that they are fearful of happens is by Act of Parliament; here it is. I hope that the noble Lord will withdraw his amendment.