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European Union (Amendment) Bill

Not at all, absolutely not. If the noble Lord cares to read the House of Commons report on the use of Article 308, he will find that it applies to foreign crisis management, but is also applicable in this country and the European Union. This clause, Article 308, which was in the 1957 Act, and which allowed the Common Market, as it then was, to make minor adjustments to tariffs and so on, said that it could only be used in the course of the operation of the Common Market. This clause, with the support of the Luxembourg court, was used, among many other initiatives, to pass the control of civil contingencies to Brussels. Those civil contingencies clearly include civil contingencies in this country. There is no exception to them.