European Union Bill

Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts

Tuesday 5th April 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

My Lords—

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

My Lords—

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, it is the custom of the House that two noble Lords should not be standing at the same time. We are in Committee; I wonder if the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, might take his seat.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

My Lords, I do not want to strike a note of discord with the Minister or indeed with the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, but the noble Lord, Lord Davies, has a point. If you read Clause 2(2)(a) as perhaps a court might read it, there is the possibility—however remote, as the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, says—that in future something might happen that affected Gibraltar but did not affect the United Kingdom. As it reads at the moment, the UK would have to have a referendum. That is my interpretation of the paragraph.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I offer to get the sharpest minds in the Government to look at this again and see if there is a real problem. This is a worthwhile probing amendment. I might perhaps mention that the coalition Government are committed to looking at the issues of tax avoidance, in which these various Crown dependencies and associated entities like Monaco and Andorra—particularly Monaco, the constitutional relationship of which with France is at least as cloudy as that between the Crown dependencies and the United Kingdom—will come into play. It may well be that others in this House would like to pursue some of those questions further, perhaps through a committee inquiry, but, I suggest, not as part of this Bill. With regard to this Bill, Protocol 3 to the European Communities Act 1972 sorts out who is in and who is out.