´óÏó´«Ã½

As MPs start their consideration of the EU Bill - which aims to enshrine the "referendum lock" promised by the Conservatives during the election - Bill Cash's European Scrutiny Select Committee has rushed out .

So does the bill do what it says on the tin - require a referendum on any further transfer of powers from Westminster to Brussels? Some Conservative MPs are pretty unimpressed with it (backbench eurosceptic Douglas Carswell has started keeping a scorecard of transfers of power since the election ) but the committee's criticisms are rather different.

They took evidence from academic legal experts (a pretty terrifying breed) to the effect that the legislative supremacy of Parliament is not, at present, under threat from the EU. In particular, they suggest that the key clause of the bill, clause 18, which is supposed to affirm the supremacy of Parliament over EU law in Britain, is not needed. The argument is that the EU Court of Justice insists on the primacy of EU law, while the British courts maintain that they have primacy over EU law, and passing another British law won't impress the Euro-judges in the least.

Indeed, they worry that a new law insisting on the supremacy of Parliament over EU law could be interpreted as meaning that Parliament doesn't always think it is supreme over the courts...

One witness suggested that the clause as drafted "goes out of its way to invite litigation". Here's their conclusion:

"Clause 18 is not a sovereignty clause in the manner claimed by the government, and the whole premise on which it has been included in the bill is, in our view, exaggerated. We are gravely concerned that for political reasons it has been portrayed by the government as a sovereignty clause in correspondence and also in the explanatory notes, which we discuss below. For these reasons we deeply regret that the Secretary of State has refused to come and give evidence himself on these matters."

• Bookmark with:
• del.icio.us |
• Digg |
• Newsvine |
• |
• Reddit
• - What's this?