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European Union (Amendment) Bill

It is the issue, and the point needs to be repeated over and over. I believe that there are Members on the Labour and Liberal Democrat Benches who believe in that, because their own parties evolved from, or came from, the fight in the 19th century for the very rights that we are now taking away from them. It is astonishing that a vague application of general principles, through the European Court of Justice, should be allowed to be a substitute for people's right to choose who they want to vote for, and to choose the Government under whom they want to live. We are always being told that we have to listen to what that European Court says. Opinion 2/94 of 28 March 1996 says that accession to the ECHR would"““entail a substantial change in the present Community system for the protection of human rights in that it would entail the entry of the Community into a distinct international institutional system as well as integration of all the provisions of the Convention into the Community legal order””—" end of story. That relates to a European Court of Justice case. There is no argument about that. As many Conservative Members have rightly said in their extremely good contributions, the European Court of Justice has the last say—and the last laugh.