United Kingdom Parliamentary Sovereignty Bill

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Friday 18th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

I am delighted to see in the Chamber distinguished colleagues who are members of the European Scrutiny Committee and others who have kindly agreed to support the Bill. My hon. Friends the Members for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) and for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) are two such Members.

I am delighted that, pursuant to the principle of parliamentary sovereignty, at 11 o’clock the Prime Minister is going to come along and tell Parliament about the implications of the European Security Council resolution last night.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

UN, not European.

[Mr Chope]

The UN—I thought I said that.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

No, you said “European”.

[Mr Chope]

That just shows how they’ve got at me, doesn’t it? I am going to tell the House later about some of my discussions earlier in the week in, dare one say it, Brussels.

The principle of parliamentary sovereignty means that the UK Parliament can enact any law whatsoever on any subject whatsoever, and can do so by ordinary legislation. That means that if the people want to change the law, their representatives elected to Parliament can do so. Likewise, if the people do not want the law to be changed, their parliamentary representatives can ensure that it is not. If the courts interpret laws that we have passed in a way that Parliament does not wish, it can change those laws.

This is still a hot topic, despite the lengthy discussions about it in this place when we debated the European Union Bill. To give a flavour of it, I shall give examples of the regular correspondence that I get from constituents on it. I have a letter dated 10 March, an old-fashioned holograph from a lady from Christchurch. She says that she is fed up with the way in which the British people are being overridden by the EU and disappointed by what the Prime Minister said in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) about a referendum. She thinks that the sooner we get the British people a say in the issue, the better.

I have another letter, which came this Monday, which talks about the people’s pledge and the desire for the voters of the UK to decide once and for all whether we should remain in the EU or leave it. In a sense, the purpose of the Bill is to ensure that we do not have to go through that process, because we in this elected House would be able to decide what we wanted and what we did not want in relation to EU legislation.

[Mr Chope]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend and indebted to him for the work that he has done on this subject. This is but the latest in a series of Bills, many of which he has drafted. Of course, he knows the answer to his question, which is that if the Bill were passed, it would have the effect that he has described. I think the House and the country would be a better place as a result.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

I may be anticipating a point that my hon. Friend will make later—he may just be clearing his throat and will turn to the contents of the Bill in a moment. May I take him to the last word of clause 1, which is “reaffirmed”? If the Bill is enacted with the words:

“The sovereignty of the United Kingdom Parliament is hereby reaffirmed”,

will that change the current situation or leave it as it is?

[Mr Chope]

Arguably, it would leave it as it is. There was a debate on the European Union Bill about whether we needed to reaffirm our sovereignty. My concern, which I think was first expressed in the House by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood), is: “If you don’t use it, you lose it.” The monarch—the Queen—is sovereign, but because she has not exercised her sovereignty for a period of time and is exercising it less and less, there comes a stage when people say, “You have given it up.”

The concern that I and a lot of other Members have is that if we do not keep reasserting our sovereignty, we might suddenly find that an external body or court interprets that as meaning that, by default, we have conceded that Parliament no longer has sovereignty in various aspects of our country’s affairs. That is why clause 1 is in the Bill. It may seem bizarre that we have to reassert that, but I believe that we need to do so because our Parliament is under continual assault from external organisations that are trying to interfere with our right to decide our own affairs.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

I do not want to detain my hon. Friend, but it was not the beginning of clause 1 that I was questioning; it was the word “reaffirmed”. I wonder whether the word “affirmed” or “exists” would have done.

In 1948, or sometime about then, when NATO was created, we agreed to give our sovereignty on starting a war to people who were then at Fontainebleau and later moved to Brussels. I do not mean that as an argument against my hon. Friend, and I am not opposing what he is trying to do, I am just trying to clear up what clause 1 actually means and why its last word matters.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend asks why use the word “reaffirmed” rather than “exists”. I have chosen that particular word, but other words could be substituted for it. I am not saying that it is the only word that could be used in clause 1 to convey the meaning that I wish to get across. I think it is a good word, and unless and until somebody comes up with an amendment that they think is better, I would like to keep it in the Bill. If my hon. Friend would like to join me in considering the Bill in Committee in due course, I am sure he will have the chance to move amendments and speak to them to explain why he thinks his choice of words is better than the words in the Bill.

May I take the House back briefly to the “Invitation to Join the Government of Britain”, which was the title given to the Conservative party manifesto at the last general election? On page 114, under the subtitle “Promote our national interest—an open and democratic Europe”, it is stated:

“The steady and unaccountable intrusion of the European Union into almost every aspect of our lives has gone too far. A Conservative government will negotiate for three specific guarantees—on the Charter of Fundamental Rights, on criminal justice, and on social and employment legislation—with our European partners to return powers that we believe should reside with the UK, not the EU. We seek a mandate to negotiate the return of these powers from the EU to the UK.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

Perhaps we will explore those points of difference, but I note what the hon. Gentleman says.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

Having listened to the exchange between you, Mr Speaker, and my hon. Friend, I think it would be in order for him to refer again to a proposal in his Bill. Clause 3, “Judicial notice”—a heading that might be explained—mentions “any rule of international law” in subsection (b). The first debate this morning was a debate on the Wreck Removal Convention Bill. If enacted, that will bring a convention—a piece of international law—into domestic law. How do we avoid a referendum on that under the terms of the United Kingdom Parliamentary Sovereignty Bill?

[Mr Chope]

Under this Bill, we would not need to have a referendum on the international convention on wrecks any more than we would on any other convention. Clause 2 says that referendums will apply to the implementation of legal instruments that increase the function of the European Union affecting the United Kingdom.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

That is the assertion that I am sure is in my hon. Friend’s mind, and not one with which I would necessarily disagree, but the Bill does not say that. It reaffirms

“the sovereignty of the United Kingdom Parliament; and for connected purposes”.

Clause 1, which we have discussed, states:

“The sovereignty of the United Kingdom Parliament is hereby reaffirmed”

for one reason or another. However, clause 2 states:

“No Minister…shall make or implement any legal instrument which…is inconsistent with this Act”—

alternatively, not additionally—

“without requiring it to be approved in a referendum of the electorate in the United Kingdom.”

It was clearly explained earlier—I think my hon. Friend was in the Chamber—that if the Wreck Removal Convention Bill becomes an Act and the convention becomes international law, ratifying the convention will make international law apply to us without our Parliament having done anything more. I leave that question with him. If he does not have the answer today, perhaps he will write to me afterwards.

[Mr Chope]

Perhaps we will deal with that in Committee. I admit to being present during the fantastic speech made by my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) in support of her Bill, but I must admit that I was not following every iota of its content, so I am not sure whether what has been said on her behalf by my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) is a valid objection to or criticism of my Bill.

Despite my hon. Friend’s intervention, I will not be diverted from finishing expressing my concerns about the proposals for the admission of the EU to the European convention on human rights. Fortunately, my understanding is that our Government have a veto, and its details are being discussed at intergovernmental level—certainly by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe this week. I hope that the Minister will realise after this debate that we need to be alert and concerned about the implications of what is happening.

I say that because on 19 May 2010, the European Parliament passed a resolution on what it described as

“the institutional aspects of the accession of the European Union to the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms”.

Like most such resolutions, it is rather too long for most of us to bother to read—it runs to several pages—but I want to draw the attention of my right hon. and hon. Friends to paragraph K on page 2. It states that the European Parliament stresses that

“the main arguments in favour of accession of the Union”—

the European Union—

“to the ECHR…may be summarised as follows: accession constitutes a move forward in the process of European integration and involves one further step towards political Union”.

If that is the interpretation put on it by the European Parliament, we need go no further than getting a commitment from the Government today that they will not support this, and that in discussions on it they will play hardball, rather than the softball they have been playing up to now over EU powers.

The resolution also states that

“while the Union’s system for the protection of fundamental rights will be supplemented and enhanced by the incorporation…into its primary law, its accession to the ECHR will send a strong signal concerning the coherence between the Union and the countries belonging to the Council of Europe”.

It is actually nothing short of an attempted takeover. My hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash) will probably be alert to the point at which the resolution states that

“accession will also compensate to some extent for the fact that the scope of the Court of Justice of the European Union is somewhat constrained in the matters of foreign and security policy and police and security policy by providing useful external judicial supervision of all EU activities”.

This is all part of the creep and incrementalism of the EU as it tries to put its finger into everybody’s pies.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

But is our hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash) right? I am not sure that if we read the Bill from beginning to end, which is the way that I normally try to read Bills, we find that it says that. If my hon. Friend thought that he ought to curtail his speech—we thought he had just been clearing his throat—because others want to speak, or because he wants the Government to explain, I am sure we ought to stick by our normal conventions. I know that it is a rule but not a convention. My hon. Friend normally keeps the House going for quite some time when a private Member’s Bill is being promoted, and the Minister does not always have time to complete his speech. I do not see why he should change the convention simply because my hon. Friend is promoting a Bill himself.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend has failed to look at today’s Order Paper and failed to notice that I do not have one Bill but several, and therefore I have a conflict of interest. If I speak too long on one Bill, I may jeopardise the chance of being able to speak on my next.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

I have been accused of many things, but not greed. People who are frustrated legislators and willing to spend a couple of nights sleeping in the Palace of Westminster to queue up for their tickets may have the opportunity of having their Bills brought before the House. I hope that some of my other Bills on the Order Paper will be debated, not least my Local Government Ombudsman (Amendment) Bill. When I first put that title down last June, I had not anticipated that I would read in my local paper last Friday that the Hampshire county council health and safety people had interfered in the Beaulieu pancake race, so that it is now the Beaulieu pancake walk rather than race. I had not realised that my third Bill would be so relevant to a local story, but now it has a relevance above all else. I hope that we get a chance to discuss it.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

I do not think that my hon. Friend should have taken the words of the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant)—who is speaking for the whole of his party, I see—too seriously, partly because we should not accuse someone of greed during Lent, but also because the House should be grateful to my hon. Friend for bringing the Bills along together. It is no different from a group of MPs sharing a taxi: it is simply combining things. My hon. Friend is now talking about his third Bill. What about his second one?

[Mr Chope]

I will not talk about my second Bill yet. I hope that we will get a chance to have a proper debate on that.