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European Union Bill

What is clear in the Bill is that anything under article 48(7) relating to the giving up of a UK veto or a move to qualified majority voting would require primary legislation here. My hon. Friend the Member for Daventry questioned me on those areas of policy, defined in various parts of the treaty, where article 48(7) could be applied to move from the special to the ordinary legislative procedure, but where QMV still applies now and would apply in the new circumstances. If it would help the hon. Lady, I will happily copy the letter I write to my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry to her as well. We took the opportunity in working on this Bill to take a fresh look at this issue. We concluded that a general principle could be applied—that articles already in the treaties that provided a ““one-way”” option should also be considered to be passerelle clauses. These one-way options add to or reduce what could be done within existing areas of EU competence, but without changes to either voting rules or legislative procedures. We felt that they should be subject to primary legislation. We also looked hard at articles that modify the composition or rules of procedure of existing EU institutions and bodies. We will come on to most of those when we debate clause 10. However, we felt that the article allowing for the amendment of the number of Commissioners was a highly significant article as it could be used to negotiate a reduction in the current requirement that every member state should nominate one Commissioner. We therefore proposed, because of the importance of that matter, that any such decision should require approval by primary legislation.