How Heath deliberately destroyed Parliament's sovereignty over legislation
The following quote comes from a briefing paper from Lord Kilmuir to Edward Heath in December 1960, sent to me today by Anne Palmer. It is hugely relevant in the light of the present state of the European Union Bill.
The research paper 10/79 may be read in pdf format from this link.
The section on the effect on majority decisions in the European Council to which Britain objected is discussed as follows:
(a) The position of Parliament
It is clear from the memorandum prepared by your Legal Advisers that the Council of Ministers could eventually (after the system of qualified majority voting had come into force) make regulations which would be binding on use even against our wishes, and which would in fact become for us part of the law of the land. There are two ways in which this requirement of the Treaty could in practice be implemented:-
Parliament could legislate ad hoc on each occasion that the Council made regulations requiring action by us. The difficulty would be that, since Parliament can bind neither itself nor its successors, we could only comply with our obligations under the Treaty if Parliament abandoned its right of passing independent judgment on the legislative proposals put before it. A parallel is the constitutional convention whereby Parliament passes British North America Bills without question at the request of the Parliament of Canada; in this respect Parliament here has in substance, if not in form, abdicated its sovereign position, and it would have, pro tanto, to do the same for the Community.
It would in theory be possible for Parliament to enact at the outset legislation which would give automatic force of law to any existing or future regulations made by the appropriate organs of the Community. For Parliament to do this would go far beyond the most extensive delegation of powers, even in wartime, that we have experienced and I do not think there is any likelihood of this being acceptable to the House of Commons.
Whichever course were adopted, Parliament would retain in theory the liberty to repeal the relevant Act or Acts, but I would agree with you that we must act on the assumption that entry into the Community would be irrevocable; we should have therefore to accept a position where Parliament had no more power to repeal its own enactments than it has in practice to abrogate the Statute of Westminster. In short, Parliament would have to transfer to the Council, or other appropriate organ of the Community, its substantive powers of legislating over the whole of a very important field.
Thus unilateral withdrawal (not as provided for in the Lisbon Treaty) and simultaneous abrogation of all the European Treaties, is the only real means of avoiding the now imminent EU tyranny!
The research paper 10/79 may be read in pdf format from this link.
The section on the effect on majority decisions in the European Council to which Britain objected is discussed as follows:
(a) The position of Parliament
It is clear from the memorandum prepared by your Legal Advisers that the Council of Ministers could eventually (after the system of qualified majority voting had come into force) make regulations which would be binding on use even against our wishes, and which would in fact become for us part of the law of the land. There are two ways in which this requirement of the Treaty could in practice be implemented:-
Parliament could legislate ad hoc on each occasion that the Council made regulations requiring action by us. The difficulty would be that, since Parliament can bind neither itself nor its successors, we could only comply with our obligations under the Treaty if Parliament abandoned its right of passing independent judgment on the legislative proposals put before it. A parallel is the constitutional convention whereby Parliament passes British North America Bills without question at the request of the Parliament of Canada; in this respect Parliament here has in substance, if not in form, abdicated its sovereign position, and it would have, pro tanto, to do the same for the Community.
It would in theory be possible for Parliament to enact at the outset legislation which would give automatic force of law to any existing or future regulations made by the appropriate organs of the Community. For Parliament to do this would go far beyond the most extensive delegation of powers, even in wartime, that we have experienced and I do not think there is any likelihood of this being acceptable to the House of Commons.
Whichever course were adopted, Parliament would retain in theory the liberty to repeal the relevant Act or Acts, but I would agree with you that we must act on the assumption that entry into the Community would be irrevocable; we should have therefore to accept a position where Parliament had no more power to repeal its own enactments than it has in practice to abrogate the Statute of Westminster. In short, Parliament would have to transfer to the Council, or other appropriate organ of the Community, its substantive powers of legislating over the whole of a very important field.
Thus unilateral withdrawal (not as provided for in the Lisbon Treaty) and simultaneous abrogation of all the European Treaties, is the only real means of avoiding the now imminent EU tyranny!
posted by Martin at 4:24 PM
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