The fuss about the Referendum Bill is continuing in the Commons and will, helpfully for the government, turn attention away from what matters and that is their doomed "renegotiations" with the EU, which, as I have pointed out many times is a logical nonsense. We are part of the EU and we cannot negotiate with it or have a relationship with it.
Meanwhile in the House of Lords a very different Bill has had its First Reading and been ordered to be printed: Lord Pearson of Rannoch has introduced a Bill "to make provision to repeal the European Communities Act 1972; and to make provision for the Secretary of State to repeal any enactment that has been a consequence of the European Communities Act 1972". That is not going to get anywhere very far either but some of the debates could be interesting.
There is a need to consider how the Acquis Communautaire should be unpicked, once we are our own masters. There is 50 years of it to do and it may not always be possible to know which clauses of which Acts derive from it, as the government of the day does not usually own up as to where the requirement came from.
ReplyDeleteMost of the so-called eurosceptic press go along with stories of "a new government policy" rather than looking behind for the surrender to Brussels. I think it was Peter Lilley who likened the process to the conduct of a complaisant husband accepting the fruit of his wife's adultery as his own child, rather than admitting the rue situation.
Far simpler to have an Act giving power to repeal all Acts after a certain date up to independence day by statutory instrument. My favourite starting point would be the Wilson government's repeal of Praemunire
but there may have been some other shady enactments before then to get us ready for the EEC.