This report from the bulletin of the hard working OpenEurope on yesterday's Fabian Society meeting in the House of Commons. It makes you wonder about all those fine words on the sovereignty of parliament. Perhaps it has now become the sovereignty of passerelle.
At a meeting of the Fabian Society in the House of Commons last night, Labour MPs Michael Connarty, who is Chairman of the EU Scrutiny Committee, and Gisela Stuart debated whether or not there should be a referendum on the EU Lisbon Treaty. Michael Connarty said he was against a referendum in principle, despite conceding that "It's not that much different from the Treaty for a Constitution". He also said he had three outstanding reservations about the Treaty, which the Committee will be investigating - on the opt-ins on Justice and Home Affairs, on the yellow card system and on the passerelle clause. He said he wanted Parliament to have a role in deciding whether or not the UK should opt in to future JHA initiatives which will be decided on by QMV. He said: "We want the Government to have a procedure that puts that in the hand of the Parliament, because that is what parliamentary democracy is about - it is not left to a deal in the Council, but it is left to a debate that will go to the floor of the House. People will say the Government will whip it in or won't whip it in - if it's not right you can argue against it, and I think, if it's really bad, you can get 30 members of the other side to vote... and turn it over."
Connarty said he wanted clarification about the role of the Parliament if the passerelle clause is used. He pointed out that it is a one-way "gangplank", saying: "the reality of the passerelle is that you are walking the plank - you walk along, you fall off the end, and you can't back up", and said there was "no chance" of a move to QMV from unanimity being reversed once it is decided. Connarty also said "I didn't put it [the referendum promise] in my manifesto, just as Ken Clarke didn't put it in his, because we both disagree with the concept of a referendum."
Labour MP Gisela Stuart pointed out that there is "no evidence of the Commission ever having withdrawn anything" on the basis of subsidiarity, with one exception. She said she had despaired at having been the only Labour backbencher to have voted in favour of the Conservative amendment for there to be primary legislation for moves to QMV during the debate in the House on the passerelle clause. She said she fears the EU project will collapse if it does not have democratic legitimacy, and warned: "If the Treaty of Lisbon is ratified and implemented, and devolution to Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland continues apace, in fifteen to twenty years time, this House of Commons will have only two functions - one will be to raise taxes, and the other will be to authorise war."
She also warned that "If the EU Health Directive as it stands goes through in ten years time we won't be able to run the NHS." She criticised the fact that "things happen by stealth" so often in the European Union, saying: "My fundamental misgiving of the Lisbon Treaty is that in terms of checks and balances, it has completed the tool box, with the exception of defence and taxation, so that if the EU wishes to do something in any member state, it can use one tool or another, whether it's legislation, or whether it's court cases, you name it - it can now do it. Because it is either shared competence, or it is by co-decision, it can always do it now." She said: "We are making fewer and fewer decisions that matter... I can't tell my constituents where the buck stops."
