VASECTOMY OF PARLIAMENT
The European Communities Bill, presented to the House of Commons "by Mr. Geoffrey Rippon, supported by The Prime Minister, Mr Secretary Maudling, Secretary Sir Alec Douglas-Home, Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr William Whitelaw, Mr Secretary Campbell, Mr Secretary Walker, Mr James Prior, Mr Secretary Davies and Mr Solicitor General," invites that House, and the House of Lords also, to emasculate themselves. There should, and need, be no doubts as to the purpose of the Bill. Its object is made quite clear by the Explanatory and Financial Memorandum accompanying it. If we look at the Bill's presenter and supporters we will find those who, in the past, have resisted such legislation, who have declared its purposes to be dead, who have endeavoured to set up quite different arrangements, who have let it be known that they have never thought that any such Bill would ever be laid before the House. We will find that only Mr Heath and Mr Davies, among the Bill's supporters, have been constant in furthering the policy of which the Bill is the culmination; and, since "Mr Secretary Davies" is a newcomer to parliamentary politics and is, in party political terms, a man of straw, we cannot but conclude that the European Communities Bill represents not much more and not much less than the will of its chief supporter, the Prime Minister. The strength of that will is not in doubt. The power of its possessor cannot be denied. His visionary zeal is unique in recent parliamentary history. Should the Bill become enacted, then there cannot now or at any time in the future be any doubt but that its sole true progenitor, the man whose faith it represents, is Edward Heath.
Mr Heath's government — and if ever an administration was a one-man, onevoice administration, Mr. Heath's is it — now seeks Parliamentary approval for a policy which has never received the endorsement of the public. There is no reason to doubt the honesty of ministers who protest that they are genuinely convinced of the propriety and of the sense of the policy which is being pursued. But we might as well be quite clear that such a policy would not have been pursued by any other administrationIt is Mr Heath's policy. It is his own. It is private and peculiar to him. Without him, it would not have existed.
The government is a government of Heathmen.
Neither the policies pursued nor the men who pursue them are necessarily any the worse for being Heath's. It is no compelling argument against the European Communities Bill to say of it that it expresses one man's visionary optimism. There have been times when visionary optimism has done good, and although the occasions when it has done harm are far more numerous and spring much more readily to mind, we would not argue that the singularity of the optimistic vision vouchsafed to Mr. Heath necessarily implied its foolishness, or its guilt. We would, however, suggest that for the visionary approach to be acceptable, then either the national plight be so disastrous that no other approach could conceivably be envisaged, or that the national desire to be given a visionary portent be so overwhelming that the voice of reason must be shouted down. But when we consider our condition, we realise at once that neither our national plight nor our national desire is like this at all. We realise that there is no necessity of state nor any public aspiration which the European Committees Bill meets. There is no need for this Bill, nor does it in any way whatsoever express the hope of the country.
Nevertheless, it is still possible that the Bill could be a good piece of proposed legislation, and that its enactment could be desirable. Simply because it is unnecessary and unwanted does not mean that it should therefore not be enacted; although a controversial bill which lacks necessity and meets no demand should clearly be examined more closely, and defended with more vigour and candour, than has thus far been the case with this extraordinary Bill. Lack ing necessity and meeting no demand, its justification must be sought on the grounds that it endeavours to "do good," that our society after its passage is likely to be in some ways or others and taken all in all better as a conse' quence of the enactment of the Bill than it otherwise could reasonably be exPec' ted to be.
The revolutionary character of the Bill cannot be denied. It proposes a massive diminution of Parliamentary authoritY,' At present, with a few exceptions willcij are of little other than antiquarian terest, Parliamentary sovereignty ell' compasses the territory of the stat.e' Under the European Communities a great part of this territory would be ceded to the European Council of Minis' ters, the European Commission and the European Supreme Court. Parliament would, it is true, retain 9, voice in the imposing and raising ,°` taxation (but not necessarily in the (115. posing of the funds raised). Retrospec: tive legislation would be prohibitea• New criminal offences of a serious r0' ture could not be created without Par' liament-approval of the appropriate or der in Council. And [Schedule 2l.— (c)] "The powers conferred by sectioil 2(2) of this Act . . . shall not include power — (c) to confer any power t° legislate . . " except that this sub-PaW graph (c) " shall not be taken to Pre; elude the modification of a power legislate otherwise than under section 2(2) . . . and a power to give directiO as a matter of administration is not te be regarded as a power to 1egis0t$,e within the meaning of sub-paragraP'' (1) (c)." The cession of parliamentarY soviereignty intended in this almost ?„n, decipherable English, is very great deed. The Bill, if enacted, will embocv, — as critics of the continental ente,tt prise have continually insisted, again', the denials and protestations and pro, ganda and blandishments (often cl.,15 honest in nature if not in intent) ,e Article 189 of the Treaty of Rome. TP4, Bill amounts, in part, to a transPla"v, into English law, constitution and g°0/ ernance of this essentially alien piece es constitutional law. That Article deciarhe, (and it has not been, and could not in any way whatsoever modified bY negotiations with the Six): "In order to carry out their task the Council and the Commission shall, in accordance with the provisions of this Treaty, make regulations, issue directives, take decisions, make recommendations or deliver opinions. A regulation shall have general application. It shall be binding in itS entirety and directly applicable in all Member States. A directive shall be binding, as to the result to be achieved, upon each Member State to which it is addressed, but shall leave to the national authorities the choice of form and methods. A decision shall be binding in its entirely upon those to whom it is addressed.'
Under the Bill, if enacted, an enor Mous body of administrative law in the form of directives, regulations and decisions of the European Council of Ministers and of the European Commision will at once become part of the laW of the land. These bodies will continue to have the power " to make regu lations, issue directives, take decisions," and these regulations, directives and decisions will all have the force of law in this country. They will not be subject to Parliamentary scrutiny, or, if they are so subjected, Parliament will not have Power to amend or to reject them, r, or they will be binding. Such sovereignty ' as this country will retain in such matters will be the dubious PtAver of veto in the Council of Ministerms; but this power is a ministeral and not a parliamentary power, and it may Well be held, in due course, to run counter to the Treaty of Rome itself; and 48,1totild the European Supreme Court 'Ills hold, then even this vestigial piece °f sovereignty will have disappeared. This is not all. What is proposed is a ast extension of administrative law, by decree, by directive, by regula`151n, by the unscrutinized and irrespon sl.ble decisions of ministers in the Council of Ministers and of Commissioners in tie European Commission. The power °f the executive is magnified out of all recognon, and the effect of the exer cise of that power (whatever obscure Prhraseoloy is employed to obscure the /act) will be to give the full force of oaw to directives. The executive, thus, aver great tracts of national life, :quires a legislative capacity; and the b'3tecut1ve in this case is not national ellt is European, and will amount to sev ,,r.al bodies in which the national voice will be merely one among several. pi The Bill, and the accompanying ex a anat°rY and financial memorandum, tend the Prime Minister and other minis have not yet declared what the ituation Natio would be if a unanimous re fl., ri or directive or decision issuing 4utn the EEC were resolved by the 11.7. use of Commons to be unacceptable. tio-Y do not say whether it is the intent() ria°f this European Communities Bill that-estroY the constitutional position ees-; no Parliament may bind its sucpe,:?rs. They do not say what will hap " if there is a dispute on a matter of law between the Supreme Court of Judicature in one of its branches here, and the European Supreme Court.
Whatever else this Parliament was elected in 1970 to do, it was not to mutilate itself and its successors by legislating away its own sovereignty. This is the purpose of the Bill before it. It is arguable that the Bill itself, in seeking to bind the present Parliament and its successors, is ultra vires. Whether future parliaments will have the will or the capacity thus to argue we do not know. Nor do we know what, in the course of time, will happen to the powers of parliament on the one hand and of the European Council of Ministers on the other; but the presumption can only be that the powers of the House of Commons will, by this one act, be incalculably reduced, and the powers of the European Directorate be correspondingly increased. The Prime Minister has made noises about a European Parliament with powers of its own : but if such a parliament comes about, it will have to fight for its powers against the entrenched position of the Ministers. To whom are these ministers meanwhile responsible, and how can their powers be constrained when they act unanimously? To this question, too, we are given no answer: nor will, nor can, acceptable answers be given.
The European Communities Bill which is now before the House of Commons invites that body to give up its power not to any English sovereign, but to a Continental sovereign whose name and whose nature we do not know. The Commons, in its long history, has had many ups and downs in its continual struggle with the executive, and although the history and interpretation of that struggle is disputed among historians, constitutionalists and lawyers, the Commons has acted best and most true to itself when it has sought to restrain the powers of the executive and to protect the liberties of the subject. It has acted worst and in a manner false to itself when it has allowed itself to be persuaded, cajoled, bribed, tricked or corrupted into being or acting as the willing and abject instrument of the executive. The European Communities Bill is an invitation from the Government to the House of Commons to undergo voluntary vasectomy and thereby to give up for good, for itself and all its successors, its creative power and become instead a fat and flabby institutional eunuch.
The duty of members of Parliament who have the understanding to see this and the courage to act upon their understanding could not be more selfevident. It is their duty to preserve the powers of the Commons, which are now threatened as they have never been threatened since before the Glorious Revolution of 1688.
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