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European Union (Amendment) Bill

I am extremely grateful to the Government for producing my notes, but I am too far down the gangplank to go back to where I might have started had I remembered them after dinner. The point is that in the new treaty there is a new protocol on the application of the principles of subsidiarity which results in disastrous decision-making. I have one serious question for the Leader of the House. In Article 4 it states that the Commission shall, "““forward its draft legislative Acts and amended drafts to national Parliaments at the same time as to the Union legislator””." In case noble Lords have not followed it, I think that the new Union legislator is the Council and the Parliament together. My question is this: how does COREPER come into that part of the decision? The permanent representatives committee cannot be found on the European Union website, it does not exist, and yet this is the body of permanent representatives from the nation states who meet in secret to consider proposals made in secret by the unelected Commission. Then, having done all the horse trading and swapped the fishing quotas for other things I do not care to mention, it puts the proposals to the Council of Ministers where unanimity is easily achieved. I ask therefore where COREPER comes into the process. In the end, these decisions are taken by the European Court of Justice. Article 8 of the new protocol makes it quite clear that it is our friend the ECJ, that engine of the Treaties of Rome, which makes the final decisions on whether something is subject to subsidiarity, whether it should be, should not have been, or is objected to by the national parliaments that are brought into this process in a completely meaningless fashion. The last question is important because the noble Lord, Lord Owen, asked earlier about the limits of the powers of the European Court of Justice in this matter. I think I pointed out in that debate that they are without limit and that there is no appeal against a judgment of the European Court of Justice. In the matter of subsidiarity and poor Mr Major’s negotiation of it at Maastricht, it is worth putting on the record the letter written by Mr Major to Mr Jacques Santer—at the time the lord high executioner, or rather the President of the Commission—after Mr Major had thought at the Maastricht negotiations that the United Kingdom had escaped the protocol on social policy and particularly the 48-hour working week. This letter is subsidiarity and the Court of Justice in action and is worth putting on the record. I have it here. It was put in the Library on the day the Statement was made. I got it from the Library and photographed it and it was removed from the Library the next day. But it is a public document and I am not breaching any confidentiality by reading it out. It is dated 12 November 1996 and is from the Prime Minister to Mr Santer. It states: "““Dear Jacques,""Article 118(a) of the treaty establishing the European Community.""My intention in agreeing to the protocol on social policy at Maastricht was to ensure that social legislation which placed unnecessary burdens on businesses and damaged competitiveness could not be imposed on the United Kingdom. The other heads of state and government also agreed that arrangement, without which there would have been no agreement at all at Maastricht””." Note that. "““However, in its judgment today””—" this is part of the answer to the noble Lord, Lord Owen— "““the European Court of Justice has ruled that the scope of Article 118(a) is much broader than the United Kingdom envisaged when the article was originally agreed as part of the Single European Act. This appears to mean that legislation which the United Kingdom had expected would be dealt with under the protocol can in fact be adopted under Article 118. That is contrary to the clear and express wishes of the United ""Kingdom Government and goes directly counter to the spirit of what we agreed at Maastricht. It is unacceptable and must be remedied.""The United Kingdom will therefore table amendments in the Intergovernmental Conference to restore the position to that which the United Kingdom Government intended following the Maastricht agreement. Those amendments will be aimed at both ensuring that Article 118(a) cannot in future be used in ways contrary to the United Kingdom’s expectation and dealing with the specific problem of the working time directive. I attach the utmost importance to these amendments and I shall insist that they form part of the outcome of the Intergovernmental Conference. I do not see how new agreements can be reached if earlier agreements are being undermined. Meanwhile I urge the Commission to refrain from making proposals under Article 118(a) which properly belong to the other member states’ agreement on social policy. I am sending copies of this letter to the heads of state or government of the European member states””." So that is the Court of Justice and subsidiarity in action.