UK Parliamentary Sovereignty and the EU

Richard Shepherd Excerpts

Tuesday 15th June 2010 Westminster Hall

[Mr Richard Shepherd (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)]

I apologise, Mr Streeter, for having missed the opening of the debate and the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash).

I see this debate as being divided into two sections. Sovereignty of Parliament is questioned—indeed, threatened—by the development of the European Union. That may be so if custom and usage has a part in it; sovereignty of Parliament is the profound constitutional doctrine that has determined the course of our development over nearly three centuries. I do not see that concept being threatened for as long as the judges apply it.

The conflict that arises with the European Union is entirely of Parliament’s making. If there is a conflict, it is because Parliament assents to each and every dreadful transfer of powers—powers of initiation, and powers of legislation—to the EU. The conflict lies with Parliament asserting—contrary, I would argue, to the will of the people—that all these transfers and mechanisms used by the EU are appropriate. That will doubtless be the Government’s position today; they will fudge along, arguing that we are, of course, taking strong measures to protect our sovereignty. However, there is no need to protect our sovereignty if we in Parliament are clear about its relationship with the people.

I have argued during my time as a Member of the House of Commons that it is not the sovereignty of Parliament in the current age but the sovereignty of the British people that matters, and that for as long as Governments are not prepared to refer the issues involved in that concept to the people themselves, then the question of legitimacy arises. Those are the issues that I think thread through the problem.

Anyone who has experienced modern British government knows the tyranny of the majority; the sovereignty of Parliament can indeed assert itself and, as a raw concept, be a great tyranny. Instead of the old traditions, with Governments attempting to win arguments to pursue their policies, they now resort to sheer, simple, straightforward majoritarianism. It is evidenced, of course, in the proceedings of the House, where guillotines are the order of the day. No one can say, in a proper and reliable sense, that the sovereignty of Parliament rests upon consent, in the sense that due and proper process, the seeking of an argument and the ability to develop an argument, is scrupulously observed by Parliament.

In respect of the European Union, one speech on what was happening was perhaps the best that I ever heard. Leaving aside all the manoeuvrings, it was an observation made on 28 February 1992, when I was moving my Referendum Bill on Maastricht, that it was incredible that what will now be two generations of those who had run our country’s affairs were prepared to surrender that thing which this island, this nation, had believed was among its crown jewels—self-government. That is what this conflict is about.

In my lifetime, Governments of both parties have, since the referendum, pursued the giving away of whole areas of self-government. The hon. Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins) referred to the right of others to determine our employment laws and the relationship with the trade union movement. Such matters were brought up by Peter Shore, whom we remember as the author of Gaitskell’s “a thousand years of history” speech. That was not a rabid anti-European Community measure, or the Common Market as it was then called, but a speech made in the absence of knowing what this would lead to—cautious, intelligent and well worth reading today.

Why have the two generations who have run our public policy pursued a policy that undermines the very sense of sovereignty of the British people, and done so often contrary to the wishes of the parties—it destroyed Major—and the people, as regularly diagnosed by public opinion polls? Those who make the laws are accountable. That is what self-government is about in a democratic age. They are accountable to the people, in our instance; hence, I call it the sovereignty of the people. What in those relationships makes the European Union, to which we have outsourced the making of our laws, accountable to the British people? Of course it is not accountable, nor was it ever intended to be. The biography of Edward Heath was mentioned; his regard for the wholehearted consent of the British people was contemptuously disregarded. It took Mr Wilson and a split Labour Cabinet to give a “sort of” referendum to the British people on something of which Mr Gaitskell would have said, “We do not know where this leads”. And we did not know where it led.

I praise my hon. Friend the Member for Stone for initiating this wide-reaching debate about where we are and the significance of what we should be. I stand, as does my hon. Friend, for the British people in this argument. In the end, those who give cast-iron guarantees on referendums, or otherwise, destroy faith and trust in themselves and in our system. This debate gives us a way forward to show that our political parties believe in their people, their nation and the trust conferred when they make a pledge.