European Union Bill

Debate between Martin Horwood and Geraint Davies

Monday 24th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Geraint Davies]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that if the number of referendums available in this Bill were available to every country in the EU, the EU would grind to a standstill—the situation would be completely ridiculous? How can he be an honourable Liberal Democrat and support that?

[Martin Horwood]

The hon. Gentleman might want to listen to the rest of my speech, because there is some risk of what he describes, and that is the thrust behind our amendments.

Amendments 67 and 68 may look drastic to some of our Conservative colleagues, because they seem to remove a swathe of the referendum provisions from the Bill. However, they seek to tease out the rationale for the referendum lock in the case of amendments to the treaty on the functioning of the European Union using the simplified revision procedure. The amendments do not relate to referendums on changes to the treaty on European Union or even to referendums on changes to the treaty on the functioning of the European Union that do not use the SRP. So the amendments do not seek to remove referendums altogether from this Bill; they ask whether referendums on treaty changes under article 48(6) of the treaty on European Union—the simplified revision procedure—which, after all, was created for relatively uncontentious and insignificant changes in the functioning of the European Union, are really justified.

As a small aside, may I ask the Minister to explain why “transfer” of power or competence “to” the EU is used in the explanatory notes and in some of the language associated with the Bill, rather than “pooling” or “sharing” powers and competences “with” the European Union, which has been the established language until now? To those of us who are fairly relaxed about pooling sovereignty and powers with the European Union when it is right to do so, “transfer” sounds a slightly more pejorative term and its use an example of linguistic drift.