European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 6) Bill

Baroness Altmann Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 5th September 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

I simply repeat: the alternative arrangements documents are there and go into considerable detail. They can be dismissed or agreed to, depending on your state of mind, but they are a way out. I now want to say something on a different area. Are there any other interruptions before we leave this? There is one more.

[Baroness Altmann (Con)]

I have enormous respect for my noble friend and what he has been trying to achieve in this House. If we are honest, the hard border and any mitigations are trying only to make a hard border slightly less hard. The only way, if we leave the customs union and single market, to solve the problem in Ireland is to have a border down the Irish Sea and cut off Northern Ireland. Is that what the Conservative and Unionist Party wishes to do?

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

That statement—“the only way”—again reveals the Manichean approach. There are already controls on livestock and weapons down the Irish Sea. They already exist. There are controls all around the invisible border to Northern Ireland, so this constant either/or is misleading us and guiding us away from sensible compromise solutions, which a calmer atmosphere would soon reveal and resolve.

European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 6) Bill

Baroness Altmann Excerpts

Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 6th September 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Altmann (Con)]

Perhaps it would assist the House if one could point out that there has been a general election since the referendum. The Bill is about rejecting no deal, and at the general election in 2017, 53.2% voted for parties that opposed no deal—17.1 million people—and only 14.4 million people, 45.1% of the electorate, voted for the Conservatives, the DUP or UKIP, which would sanction no deal. So the people spoke then, and in the 2019 EU election 44.4% voted for the Brexit or Conservative parties while 54.4% voted for parties that were opposed to no deal, which is what the Bill is about.

[Lord True]

Then the noble Baroness should be very confident about supporting my amendment and voting for a general election.

When I spoke after the disgraceful closure of debate on the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, I said that we were now in a situation—the public and the world know this—where the Government were not in control of matters relating to Brexit. Power on those matters rests with a majority in the House of Commons. That majority is served—perhaps driven—by a group of people, some of whose names appeared on the back of the Commons print of the Bill, who are taking decisions, thinking up clever wheezes and have now put forward legislation designed to frustrate the will of the people and an Act passed by this very Parliament that states that we should leave on 31 October.

Who are these people? We know who the members of the Cabinet are. We know who the Cabinet Secretary is. We know who gives the legal advice to the Cabinet. We know the civil servants involved. But who are the people who meet and seek to decide the destiny of this country in relation to legislation on Brexit? Who are those behind this Bill and behind the strategy of the remainer group in this country? Where are their names? They must be accountable in the same way as the Cabinet.

I return to the fundamental point—