The government’s EU bill will ‘place beyond doubt’ the principle of parliamentary sovereignty over EU law, minister for Europe David Lidington said last week.

He told the UK Association of European Lawyers that the bill will put on a ‘statutory footing’ the principle that EU law has effect in the UK only because acts of parliament have said that it should, and it could therefore be repealed by future UK legislation.

Lidington (pictured) said this would ‘guard against any risk that common law jurisprudence might drift towards accepting the arguments put by the prosecution in the "metric martyrs" case’, in which it was argued that parliament had surrendered its supremacy in favour of EU law.

The minister said the bill, which will be debated at second reading next week, would also require a national referendum before the EU treaties could be amended or a new treaty signed which would amount to a transfer of power or competence from the UK to the EU.

He added that there are also a number of ‘specific, one-way decisions’ that would require a referendum, including any decision to participate in a European Public Prosecutor or extend the prosecutor’s powers once the UK had joined.

Lidington suggested that the lack of a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty was the root of much of the public’s ‘disaffection’ with Europe. He added that there was a ‘serious point’ in the fact that ‘millions of people’ now spend their Saturday evenings voting to ‘make certain that Ann Widdecombe is not excluded from Strictly Come Dancing’. The minister said this showed a habit of ‘participatory democracy’, even if confined to ‘the trivial aspects of life’.