---

European Union Bill

My Lords, I must apologise to the House and the Minister for having been unable to contribute to the debate on the Bill so far. I feel compelled to contribute at this point by the extraordinary speech of the noble Lord, Lord Liddle. When the Government of the day brought the Lisbon treaty to this House, one of their proud claims was that they had protected the red lines that they had set out, including the red lines on areas such as social security and judicial co-operation, through the introduction of these emergency brakes. If legislation was brought forward in the European Union that was seen to be against our national interest in these areas, or against things that we could tolerate, we had the right to say, ““We will not go along with this. We don’t think this should be applied to the UK””. Effectively, we have a veto. The other member states can proceed without us if they wish, but it gives us a cast-iron guarantee that in these very sensitive areas the EU cannot override the UK Parliament and the UK people in legislating in what are regarded as areas of national importance. For the noble Lord to say that we should now throw these emergency brakes away—