European Union (Future Relationship) Bill

William Wragg Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Wednesday 30th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)]

This is about sovereignty. Sovereignty is spoken of by some as a near-religious phenomenon, either through veneration or rejection. It is either doctrinal truth or mumbo-jumbo, depending on the bent of the beholder. However, it is far more prosaic than that. It boils down to the question of who governs, and whether that exercise of government carries the broad consent of the people so governed. Admittedly, that is not quite as catchy as “take back control”, but it means the same thing. This agreement achieves that, which is why I shall support it.

Perhaps the greater question that emerges today is not whether the vote shall be won, but what we now do with our regained sovereignty. These brief minutes are insufficient to the task of answering that question, aside from recommending not some 1,200 pages for study, but 11 pages of the late Lord Chief Justice Bingham’s excellent book “The Rule of Law”, namely chapter 12, on the sovereignty of Parliament. I always enjoy re-reading that chapter, particularly its comment on the judiciary, which speaks to a wider point of parliamentary sovereignty. Bingham wrote:

“The British people have not repelled the extraneous power of the papacy in spiritual matters and the pretensions of royal power in temporal in order to subject themselves to the unchallengeable rulings of unelected judges.”

Quite so! Indeed, might I stretch those sentiments to the situation after 11 o’clock on new year’s eve and say that the British people did not vote to take back control in order to be ruled by ministerial diktat, via secondary legislation, using the negative procedure, as we have seen far too often this year? So 2021 will be a year for national renewal, and it will also be for us, as representatives, and for the Government, as the Executive, to live up to the rediscovered responsibilities that come with sovereignty.