Letter: A pedant writes

Saturday 06 March 1999 19:02 EST

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I CANNOT resist the temptation to trump Alan Watkins's magnificent pedantry in insisting that Mrs Thatcher never in fact "signed" the Single European Act (SEA) although everyone says she did. He is right that signing laws is not one of the prime minister's duties, but wrong in suggesting the SEA was not signed. It was signed by Lynda Chalker, as plenipotentiary representative of the Queen, in Luxembourg in February 1986. The glorious opening he quotes, "Be it enacted by the Queen's most Excellent Majesty" is from the act of ratification, not the SEA. The SEA begins with the rather more prosaic words: "His Majesty the King of the Belgians".

DAVID JONES

Liverpool

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