51³Ô¹ÏÍø

Conservative Party conference: William Hague speech; Hague speech SOT- Such a denial of democracy must never be allowed to happen again. This coalition is agreed that we will not agree to move more areas of power from Britain to the EU. And as we promised at the election, before this year is out we will introduce a bill to make it the law that if any future government wishes to sign a treaty giving away more areas of power, it will be put to a referendum by law. This will be a referendum lock, and a lock to which only the British people will have the key. And because the Lisbon Treaty was, in part, a self-amending treaty, where its ratchet clauses amount to the transfer of an area of power, there too, any government that proposes to agree to such a change will require permission in a referendum. There was a further commitment we made on Europe at the election: to reaffirm once and for all the sovereignty of our ancient parliament. EU law has effect in this country because - and solely because - Parliament wills that it should. Parliament passed the 1972 European Communities Act. That was the act of a sovereign parliament - a parliament which is and remains sovereign. I can tell you today that we will legislate this autumn to underline that. A sovereignty clause on EU law will place on the statute book this eternal truth: what a sovereign parliament can do, a sovereign parliament can also undo.