eurealist.co.uk

Martin Stabe: Martin Stabe: Referendum Bill will clarify franchise: “Referendum Bill will clarify franchise”

The Guardian also has an article about the court case and says;

The issue rests on the claim that whereas the two-year delay under which peers could block but not veto a bill had been agreed by the Lords and Commons in 1911, the reduction of the delay to one year by the Labour government of 1949 was not endorsed by peers. Until now, that claim has never been tested in the courts.

The Countryside Alliance says the Parliament Act has always been illegal, but the government is believed to be confident it will be vindicated for using the act for only the fourth time since its creation.

Speaking as he arrived at the court, Mr Jackson said this was “probably the most important constitutional case” the high court had ever heard. “This case has a great deal to do with the constitution of our country and the way in which it works, and a great deal to do with understanding what the rule of law means,” he said.
The high court hearing for a judicial review of the Parliament Act is before Lord Justice Maurice Kay and Mr Justice Collins, and is expected to last two days. A judgment is expected to be handed down on Friday.
However, this is set to be only the start of a long legal battle, with law lords sitting in the House of Lords likely to be required to make the final decisions.

I would comment that if this case is lost then we do have a very serious problem because on the face of it if our system of government that has been in existence for at least 300 years has been changed without approval that undermines a lot of the basic protections we have against an over bearing government, because if they can ignore this law, they can and will ignore others, so no matter what the feelings are on hunting, this is not now about hunting it is about the power of a government to force through its policies against even against the rule of law.

The Anglo Saxon Chronicle

Hunting for MEP’s
The Countryside Alliance challenge to the Hunting Bill today, if successful, could make the European Parliamentary Election Act 1999 illegal too.

The 1911 Parliament Act was introduced to cut the powers of the Lords. They were no longer allowed to prevent the passage of ‘money bills’ The legal status of the Parliament Act, 1949, is questionable with regard to forcing through the Fox Hunting Bill, Some respected constitutional lawyers believe that it is not valid. It purports to enable legislation to be enacted after a year despite the opposition of The House of Lords. But, as Professor Hood Phillips pointed out over 50 years ago, the Act cannot be valid because it was rejected by the House of Lords and no power of amendment was conferred on the House of Commons by the Parliament Act, 1911.

Indeed the Parliament Act 1911 offers no authority to the House of Commons to amend primary legislation at all. And if the Parliament Act 1949 is invalid, so must be much European-led legislation, including most recently the European Parliamentary Election Act,1999. If the Government did use the Parliament Acts to force through this Bill they might come unstuck.

Here I must get down to technicalities. The Parliament Acts consist of the original Act of 1911 and the amending Act of 1949. The former Act said that, in relation to a Bill introduced into the Commons, that House would prevail against Lords disagreement, and the Bill would become law, if it were passed three times by the Commons. The 1949 Act substituted two times. At the time the Lords disagreed with this change, so the 1911 Act in its unamended form was used to effect it Accepting a literal construction, the 1911 Act permitted the 1949 amendment, but in constitutional law “a literal construction of a statute may well be rejected, if to accept it would conflict with the statute’s purpose”.

If only we could find a decent judge?

Comments on Law

EUreferndum

Andrew:
RN
There is a profound difference between a normal international treaty (eg. NATO) and our relationship with the EU as I’m sure you realise: a normal Treaty is NOT part of domestic law (not being passed as an Act by Parliament) but EU law obviously is.
Consequently, your point about “binding successors” misses the point. A new Government is not “bound” by a previous Treeaty in the way it is bound by EU law because the former is not law at all and is an entirely political question (eg. shd we stay in NATO) while the status of EU law means that one is bound in a way that is conceptually different from all previous English law (though new ideas about “human rights” law of domestic origin use the same arguments).
Nobody in the media seems to understand the actual position regarding EU law but it was explained very clearly by the Court of Appeal in the 2002 Metric martyr Case. This made clear that Parliament can amend or repeal the ECA 1972 as it wishes (though such action may be against “international law” in various forms, which raises other questions)…

Denis Cooper:
We’re only bound by these EU measures because Parliament has agreed that they will bind us, and Parliament could still change its mind on that either in one specific instance or more generally.
It’s better to have a convincing case why it’s necessary for us to renege on an international agreement, or people will think that we can’t be trusted to keep our word in the future. But our national courts have agreed that Parliament retains the right to do so.
However if we accept the EU Constitution, it may be more difficult for Parliament to say “We’ve changed our minds on that”, because by Article I-6 we will have explicitly agreed to give primacy to the EU Constitution. It would then be a question of what our national courts said, and whether they decided to defy the European Court of Justice. If not, how the government of the day would react when the highest British court (whichever that may be at the time) told the government that it had to obey the EU Constitution.
The government could then use its Parliamentary majority to pass a Bill re-asserting British sovereignty and directing the British courts to disregard any provisions of the EU Constitution that contradicted British laws. The judges might then conform to that, or they might still say that the EU Constitution was now the supreme source of law and therefore they must continue to defy the government.
In that event, they would have to be removed, which would need a vote in both Houses of Parliament I believe. If necessary, the police would have to be told to keep them out of the court rooms so their successors could take over. So then there’s the question of whether the commanders of the police would be loyal to HMQ and Parliament, or to the EU …..
Article I-6 contains the seeds of a major constitutional crisis, not just for us but for all of the EU member states.

So who are the masters now?

So who are the masters now proclaims the front page of the Daily Telegraph We’ll halt Howard’s curb on migrants”. How gratifying it is to have confirmed on the front page of the Telegraph today who is really in charge of this country.

Is how Richard North begins his post on the announcement yesterday that the EU commission, has “threatened” to block Michael Howard’s “tough immigration controls” if the Tories win the election.

“This really brings home the realities of power in this our former independent nation state.”

What is specially significant is the comment that, “Europe’s intervention in what has become a major issue in the election campaign took Westminster aback. MPs and officials were unaware of how much national sovereignty on immigration and asylum had been transferred to Brussels”.

That is a staggering statement and it takes David Rennie in a page 9 “analysis” to explain what has happened. “How did Britain end up binding its immigration policy to the European Union.

The chilling response to his own rhetorical question is: “…bit by bit, without great public controversy and with the full agreement of British officials led largely by David Blunkett”.

Dr North then drives home the point that this is not an isolated occurrence but works right across the raft of all policies, as indeed Monnet intended with his “Method” and although some would like us to believe this has now been dropped, that is patently a nonsense because we can see its workings on a daily basis;

“That is the way the system works, right across the board… bit by bit. A steady stream of measures, each of them complex and obscure, building incrementally. The final destination is never declared openly and each measure is treated separately, until the project is complete, and the trap springs shut.

Apologists for the EU will claim that the member states have approved the measures, so this is not “Brussels” imposing the measures. It is simply “sovereign nation states co-operating together”.

But what this demonstrates is that a group of officials and one minister can effectively work together to take over the agenda without the bulk of MPs or officials being aware of what is going on.

In fact what is going on is constantly denied and those of us who take the time to explain what is going on are derided as little Englanders or Xenophobes or even Swivel Eyed Loons.

The commission is making it very clear that it is now the master – the general election is an irrelevance.

Now who are the turkeys?

Loose the Delusion has suggested that because the Foreign Office mandarins are full on Europhiles, this somehow confirms the idea that our foreign Policy is going to remain a power of the British Government.

Arguing that the loss of Sovereignty over Foreign Policy would mean the department would become surplus to requirements and turkeys do not vote for Christmas, the question is posed if further integration truly meant a loss of control over foreign policy how is it that these mandarins are so supportive of British membership of the EU.

Already one Blogger has been taken in by the seeming watertight question

Cabalamat Journal says;

I can’t fault the logic. Bureaucracies usually attempt to perpetuate themselves, because the people running them want to keep their jobs. It’s therefore almost certainly true that the Foreign Office don’t think the EU will take over foreign policy.

The very large hole in the argument is that the loss of Sovereignty for the British Government and the therefore the British people, does not as suggested have a knock on effect in the Foreign office, in fact it enhances their role because it removes the power of the British parliament to control the diplomats.
Even if for some reason this was not the case and in this instance the turkeys were voting for Christmas, the whole idea is undermined by the Constitution itself which clearly states that the;

The Union’s competence in matters of common foreign and security policy shall cover all areas of foreign policy and all questions relating to the Union’s security, including the progressive framing of a common defence policy, which might lead to a common defence.

Member States shall actively and unreservedly support the Union’s common foreign and security policy in a spirit of loyalty and mutual solidarity and shall comply with the acts adopted by the Union in this area. They shall refrain from action contrary to the Union’s interests or likely to impair its effectiveness.

Let us just pause at this stage and remember the words of Dennis Cooper who said “As far as the EU is concerned the British rebate is an exception to the rule, and like all such exceptions it will be attacked again and again until it’s eliminated. This is why it’s a mistake to suppose that we can escape any provision in the main body of the EU Constitution by adding a protocol to the Treaty. Yes, the protocol will be legally binding, but only until one British government or another is bullied or persuaded into giving it up”.

The LDT argument not only goes against the principals of constitution but the EU Commision itself, which for someone who supports the EU is a strange case to make.

There is no doubt that this is the case because today we have an announcement by none other than the Commissions external relations commissioner, Benita Ferrero-Waldner, who has said that the EU should strive for a single seat in the UN Security Council.

Speaking in Berlin on Monday she said “I think that one should consider a special seat for the EU in the security council given its foreign policy significance”. That the United Nations system is very strongly based on nation-state thinking. She said the commitment to multilateralism is a founding principle of EU foreign relations. Our goal is to strengthen international security through concerted work within the framework of international organisations.

Mrs Ferrero-Waldner said she is aware of the position of member states but added that “Europe must speak with one voice in the Security Council”. she argued, “sovereignties” should be combined

Mrs Ferrero-Waldner, said that she is “not making the case for a European superpower … Europe is not in the act of building up a global empire”.

Her comments were rejected almost immediately by Germany - a country which is itself pushing for a seat in the Security Council once it is reformed.

Speaking in New York on the same day, German foreign minister Joschka Fischer said the idea was “unrealistic”.

He said that Germany would agree to creating a single EU seat if France and the UK would give up their own seats. He added, however, that “this will not happen in the near future, so the debate is over before it has even started”.

That of course is in a round about way arguing for exactly the same thing as the Commision, an EU seat at the expense of the British and French seats.

French to change their Constitution

For those who argue the EU Constitution is no more than a tiding up exercise or will not infringe on our own constitution they should consider that the French parliament is revising the French constitution to allow for ratification of the EU Constitution.

This I would suggest does shine a light on the lies.

But French MPs are demanding of their government the right of a debate in the Assembly before every important European summit, and the government to explain its position, MP Hervé Morin has said European affairs are no longer just international politics.

Well somebody has noticed!

Around 50 socialist opponents of the EU Constitution, led by Laurent Fabius, will abstain. An article in L’Humanité argues that “the aim of the constitutional revision is the total abdication of the sovereignty of the French people” because it creates the illusion that the EU Constitution will have little impact on the French institutions. Whilst Socialist MPs are taking issue with Article 2 which is a requirement for a referendum before each new enlargement of the EU.

I think they will find that the EU Constitution will take care of that point because it allows revision of the text without recourse to national parliaments.

Tim Worstall: Just How Much of our Law Comes From Europe?

Further thoughts to my post below..

So Who Rules Britain?
The EU Commision has confirmed that Britian is no longer a sovereign country, and that our Constitution has already been destroyed by our membership of the EU. The British people no longer have the power to elect a government they want to run the country. If this or any government can sign international treaties that cannot be removed by a following government we have lost any notion of democracy.

We did have a self protecting constitution in this country, much of it has been ignored by the people we elect to protect it, and they have over the years pretended that it was their parliamentary rules which have replaced that it. One of those rules was that one parliament cannot under any circumstances bind a following parliament because to do so would be to remove democratic choice from the people. We can now see the results of this destruction, when a foreign power can dictate to a political party that they will not be allowed to introduce a policy on which they have been elected.

Within hours of the Tory announcement that they would limit immigration to Britain if elected the European Commission said that Mr Howard was too late and they would block a Tory government. The qualifications directive establishes a binding EU definition of who is a refugee. It has been adopted by Britain and other EU governments and comes into full force in September next year, regardless of who wins the election expected in May.
If a future British government were to enact laws that contravened EU regulations, the commission would begin “infringement proceedings”. Those would be followed, if resistance continued, by legal action in the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg.
Telegraph

What was that Tony Blair was saying about still being in charge of our borders?