European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Trevethin and Oaksey Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 1st March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Trevethin and Oaksey (CB)]

My Lords, I hope that this is not too legalistic an intervention but I wish to seek some clarification. There have been a number of references to the Miller case. In paragraph 36 of its judgment, the Supreme Court said:

“The applicants’ case … is that when Notice is given, the United Kingdom will have embarked on an irreversible course that will lead to much of EU law ceasing to have effect in the United Kingdom, whether or not Parliament repeals the 1972 Act. As Lord Pannick QC put it for Mrs Miller, when ministers give Notice they will be ‘pulling … the trigger which causes the bullet to be fired, with the consequence that the bullet will hit the target and the Treaties will cease to apply’”.


I may be being obtuse, and of course there is an important difference between the role of the applicant and the role of the legislator, but I am curious to know whether the amendment would, if enacted, provide a bullet-proof jacket to the bullet which my noble friend Lord Pannick so effectively deployed in argument in the Supreme Court.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb]

My Lords, I support Amendment 31. I realise that I am feeling a bit fractious, which is probably because I have not had my dinner. I cannot answer for other noble Lords’ fractiousness this evening but I imagine that it is for similar reasons.

I have no legal training but I think that the situation is perfectly logical. We had to have an Act of Parliament to go into the EU, and therefore surely it is completely logical to have an Act of Parliament to enable our withdrawal. To those people who keep on about taking back control, I say that if we do not have that Act of Parliament and that scrutiny, we will be giving the European Parliament or the EU more control over the terms than we have ourselves. So I commend Amendment 31.