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European Union (Amendment) Bill

I say to the noble Lord, Lord Hannay—I have to be careful about asperity of speech—that I thought the Court was doing what he and his former colleagues in the Foreign Office told us, when we were in government, that it was doing; that the Court would look at the terms of the treaty itself in the way that we in this Parliament are used to looking at the terms of the Bill. Instead, the Court has looked at the wider considerations, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Slynn, pointed to that. The noble Lord, Lord Pearson, gave several examples—I do not want to detain the Committee by repeating them—of judgments that showed the Court taking the view that it was part of its role to promote a wider and closer European Union in interpreting specific areas of law. So I thought that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Slynn, was being supportive of the argument of the noble Lord, Lord Pearson.