The Spectator’s Notes | 8 January 2011

You may have heard government ministers — Conservative ones anyway — saying that their current EU Bill ensures referendums on further transfers of power from Britain to the European Union and puts parliamentary sovereignty on the statute book.

You may have heard government ministers — Conservative ones anyway — saying that their current EU Bill ensures referendums on further transfers of power from Britain to the European Union and puts parliamentary sovereignty on the statute book. It does neither of these things. A separate Bill would be required for a referendum actually to take place. As for sovereignty, this is allegedly rescued by Clause 18, which says that ‘It is only by virtue of an Act of Parliament that directly applicable or directly effective EU law (that is, the rights, powers, liabilities, obligations, restrictions, remedies and procedures referred to in Section 2 (1) of the European Communities Act 1972) falls to be recognised and available in law in the United Kingdom’.