European Union Bill

Sarah Newton Excerpts

Monday 24th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Michael Ellis]

With great respect to the hon. Gentleman, a new country—whether it be Turkey or any other—joining the EU does not mean that more decisions will be shifted to the EU. Nor does a new country joining the EU mean the giving up of vetoes. That is the difference. Conservative Members have always supported the widening of the EU, and a wider EU has changed it for the better by bringing in free-market allies such as the Czech Republic. I hope and expect Turkey to join, and I would encourage it to do so.

[Sarah Newton (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that in the event of Turkey joining the EU, we—unlike Labour Members—can exercise the transitional arrangements. If there are concerns about a great deal of people coming into this country, we can put limits in place, as indeed our colleagues have done in other European countries. That is something that Labour Members abysmally failed to do when they were in government.

[Michael Ellis]

That is absolutely right. Conservative Members have learned lessons from previous enlargements and we will not allow full free movement of workers from all new members, carte blanche, as soon as they join. We should require, it seems to me, complete fulfilment of all the membership criteria, particularly on criminal justice enforcement, for example. Labour messed up on that previously and this country suffered.

I respectfully submit that there has previously been a fundamental lack of understanding of sovereignty issues in this country. One example I would venture to provide is Labour’s creation of the Supreme Court. The very name is a misnomer, I submit, because in this country the law is not as it is in the United States where the American Supreme Court in Washington DC is empowered to say that the Government’s legislation is unlawful and to strike it down. The US Supreme Court can overrule Congress, but in this country Parliament is sovereign. Labour thus showed a fundamental misunderstanding of the British constitution when it called the institution that took over from the House of Lords judicial committee “the Supreme Court”. The law in this country is not supreme; Parliament is supreme and Parliament gives the law its authority, not vice-versa, unlike under the American system.

That brings me to clause 18, which is crucial and reaffirms that Parliament has ultimate sovereignty over European law.