European Union Bill

Ian Paisley Excerpts

Tuesday 11th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr MacShane]

I am a courteous, friendly fellow, Mr Evans, so I accept interventions even if they are points of order on the dark side of the moon.

[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

I appreciate the right hon. Gentleman’s courtesy in giving way. He is right that putting something into a Bill and stating that we reaffirm sovereignty may not in itself affect or change the law, but it sends a signal to the very people who effect our law, for example the UKRep or the Council of Ministers, and all those people who just go with the flow in Europe, instead of standing up for the needs of Britain, which are effectively written off. Saying it therefore sends a positive and powerful signal.

[Mr MacShane]

With respect, the hon. Gentleman is not being fair to our officials, who undertake the arduous task of negotiating the treaties or agreements that affect Britain. If he travelled widely on the continent as I do—and I am sure that he does, too—he would find that in capital after capital, people think that the EU is, if not a British plot, an Anglo-Saxon hymn to free trade. Again and again, in Berlin, Madrid and Paris, I have had to defend the EU and the European Court of Justice, because the vast majority of rulings in the ECJ uphold open and free trade, and slap down the protectionist instincts of many EU member states.

[Ian Paisley]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for almost inviting me back. Having worked in Brussels and in France for two years on issues to do with European law and how it affects our kingdom, I found that people went with the flow unless backbone was put into the UKRep’s office or into the Council of Ministers. We see it directly in fisheries policy, as fishermen in Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland are prohibited from doing the job that they want to do—fishing our seas—week in, week out, because of bizarre regulations that flow from Europe.

[Mr MacShane]

As the hon. Gentleman spent time in France, he may have read in the French papers reports of blockade after blockade of French ports by French fishermen, outraged that the British interpretation in Brussels of the common fisheries policies prevented them from doing what they wanted to do. This is a collective decision that we have taken, and I suggest that Government Members are honest: if they do not like the European Union, they will not alter it one little bit by putting new forms of words into clause 18.

Our representatives in Brussels and in all the Ministries that negotiate every aspect of our relationship with the EU will not be impressed by the proposals. If hon. Members do not like it, they should pull out—that is the honest position to take. There is no magic form of words that can get us out of our obligations under this or any other treaty. If they do not want to be in any of the treaty-based organisations, all of which are part of international law and which can, if necessary be prayed in aid by our judges, they should say so. There is a completely separate problem concerning the erosion of parliamentary sovereignty in relation to our courts. We are writing into our unwritten constitution judicial power that exists in other countries. The Germans have a constitutional court, and its rulings guide and control part of Germany’s relationship with the EU. We do not have such a court, but perhaps we should have. We all know full well the strength and power of the Supreme Court in the American constitution. We have never allowed that; we have wanted everything to happen here in Parliament and have not moved to a form of written constitution. We could put into one an obligation to have referendums on new treaties, as the Irish constitutional court has and the Danish constitution does. All those things are possible.

The Government could simply have said, “There will be a referendum on each new EU treaty—period.” That would have been very powerful and given the sovereign people the right to decide what should or should not happen. It would have severely limited the chances of this or any future Government negotiating changes to a treaty that we judged to be in our interests.

It is no accident that any reference to a referendum on enlargement is excluded from the Bill, because the Government want Turkey to join the EU—and so do I. However, nobody in the House can possibly imagine that the question of whether 85 million Muslim ladies and gentlemen from Anatolia should have free access into this country would not receive a resounding “no” from the British people in a referendum.

So we go back to the clause, again and again. Nothing in the amendment strengthens the Government’s hand or puts backbone into the UKRep spine—straight and sturdy though I am sure it is.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. However, during my 10 years as a Member of the European Parliament I gained a rough idea of what sovereignty was and how it is viewed by different member states within the European Union. His amendment would have some strength if we had market-tested it on the academic experts who appeared before the European Scrutiny Committee. I truly believe that if we had said, “This is what clause 18 states. What do you think of that?” they would all have said what we have said about the clause, which has been repeated a number of times. If we had asked whether adding this sentence to the clause would protect us in any way, I am pretty sure they would have said, “No, not really. This is all a matter of interpretation for the lawyers. We won’t get anywhere like that.”

[Ian Paisley]

Is not the reason why people do not get excited about this sort of stuff—the hon. Gentleman has put his finger on it—the way in which laws are changed in this country? He is right: it is not a bang theory. As someone who has worked in Europe and been a Member of the European Parliament, he will know that Europe changes laws in a very nuanced way. A European directive informs our officials what they should do and our officials make those changes, sometimes at the behest of our own courts. However, such changes happen as a result of a nuanced change in Europe. They are dumbing us down quite deliberately, so that this Parliament is no longer sovereign.

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I agree, which is why I focused my attempts to amend the Bill on the parts of it where there are opportunities to get this place to debate matters more thoroughly. We should get the country more interested by having referendums on some of the big changes that happen in Europe. In the Lisbon treaty there is an awful clause—the passerelle clause—which has untold danger written across it.

There are many things that former Ministers for Europe did; I am talking not about the right hon. Member for Rotherham, but about a friend of mine, the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) when he was Minister for Europe. The European charter of fundamental rights was meant to have no more relevance to British law than a copy of the “Beano,” but it is now enshrined in the Lisbon treaty. I am very wary of the process and how it works, which is why I am keen on tightening up many other matters in the Bill, and have tabled amendments to do that.

None of those issues are helped, or indeed hindered, by clause 18. The Government’s apparent intention is that the clause will combat any argument that parliamentary sovereignty is limited by EU treaties directly—in other words, that Parliament cannot act contrary to those treaties while they apply to the UK. A strict reading of clause 18 would not prevent someone from arguing that parliamentary sovereignty would be limited by the European Communities Act as applied by the courts. There are many different arguments on this matter, but I want to return to the simple fact that we can take from the expert witnesses’ testimony before the European Scrutiny Committee anything we like, to allow us to argue on any side of the issue. Sensibly, Professor Adam Tomkins submitted in written evidence to us that

“European Union law is far from being the only contemporary challenge to the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty”.

That is a very salient point. Human rights law, and indeed common law itself, would also pose challenges, as would different types of law coming from different places through different courts. Those challenges will not be affected by what clause 18 states, and will not be changed or challenged by the amendment if it is passed. We will still be in the same position.

I am concerned because I have a strong belief that we will not be able to negotiate strongly with our European partners until we start banging our fists on the table, reminding them that we are the second largest net contributor to the European Union and using the vetoes that we have. We should do exactly what the French and the Spanish do in all budgetary and other negotiations, which is to play their hand as hard as they can for the best interests of their country. That is what I would like our Ministers to do, and what I would like to believe they are doing. I want to hear from our Ministers that we will not only talk and be good at the rhetoric, but that we will start instructing United Kingdom Permanent Representation to the European Union to do the right thing by our people. Again, none of that is affected by clause 18 or the amendment tabled to it.

I humbly suggest to my colleagues who may be excited by the clause that perhaps this is not the battle we should be fighting. There may be other areas where we can give the people we represent the referendum they want, and we should be angling for that. Perhaps there are ways in which we can tighten up the Bill through other amendments to other clauses. The timing of the implementation of the Bill means that it will apply to decisions made by the Government in the future. Perhaps we can do a much better job by tightening up the rest of the Bill, rather than getting excited about this clause.

Maybe at some point in this Parliament we can have a referendum on Europe, which is something on which I have not had the opportunity to express my view. I would love an “in or out” referendum; hon. Members can guess which way I would vote in that. Based on where we are now and what we have, it would certainly be “out”. I want the British people to have their say on our relationship with Europe and I also want them to be engaged in what is going on in their name in this place and in the negotiations. Other parts of the Bill, rather than this clause, are the place to try to bring that about.