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European Union (Amendment) Bill

My right hon. Friend is right in his general principle, but let me add one or two points to what he said. First, there are already cases in the German and Italian courts—and perhaps the courts of one other country, too—that until recently and in some instances still remain in defiance of arrangements made by the European Court of Justice. That is because there is a conflict between what those courts want, what the European Court wants and the individual national constitutions. I am afraid to say that the tendency has been—it is part of the process of negotiations over the treaty of Lisbon—effectively to move past that as if it were not like an ectoplasm and as if it really did not matter very much. Actually, each of the countries concerned has displayed a tendency to roll over, even where there is a written constitution, as in Germany, as I explained earlier. I have been working over a number of months with German jurists of great eminence who oppose this treaty precisely because they fear it will have the effect of overriding the German constitution. About 10 years ago, there was the Brunner case, which dealt with similar questions. There are serious problems, as constitutions are being overridden by the ideology of the European Union. It is rather like the divine right of Kings, which overrode Parliament, leading to a pretty catastrophic result in 1649. I want hon. Members to take this very seriously, as this is not just a historical lecture, but what actually happened. I started my speech on the issue of the supremacy of Parliament and referred to the Putney debates for this reason—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston may laugh, but I am not absolutely—