Parliament Refuses to Discriminate Over EU

This week new age discrimination legislation came into effect. So, hard on the heels of the child booster seat law, the government introduced another EU law without Parliamentary scrutiny.

True, it has been a long time brewing, but the Employment Equality (Age) Regulations 2006 were laid before Parliament on 9th March, and nodded through the Commons on 28th March, and then the Lords on the 30th March.

On the 27th March, the Commons' First Standing Committee on Delegated Legislation discussed the regulations for 46 minutes, and on 30th March the Lords discussed them for 32 minutes. That was it.

Not bad for legislation which the Minister responsible, Gerry Suttcliffe, said had "huge" significance, was "broad in scope", and would have "far reaching consequences." As he said, the UK regulations to implement Council Directive 2000/78/EC of 27th November 2000 were developed "through a process of continuous engagement with our stakeholders" - not by Parliament.

Yet again Parliament allows itself to be sidelined, fails to debate complex and far-reaching legislation, declines to challenge any aspect of a new UK law, and fails to hold anyone to account for it.

Britain's interests are represented, insofar as they are represented at all in the EU, by the UK government. The UK government does not have the power to determine EU law or policy, except in those ever-shrinking areas still reserved to national government: it can only lobby and play politics with other EU governments.

The hard truth is that unless and until Britain's Parliament is prepared to challenge the principle of EU power it has no say whatsoever over large areas of law and policy, because it has legally subordinated itself to the EU via the European Communities Act 1972.

Parliament is thus entirely unable - as is the UK government - to hold EU institutions to account, and because it is not prepared to discuss the EU critically, and assert itself at all in relation to the EU, Parliament also fails to hold the British government to account either for its own EU policy, or for the effects on the UK of EU actions.

With respect to the EU, Parliament is unwilling to discriminate between that which is in Britain's interests and that which is not. It would rather hide its head in the sand.