European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill

Baroness Altmann Excerpts

Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard - continued) & Report stage & Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Tuesday 21st January 2020 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford) (Con)]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to speak to the really important issue of reciprocal healthcare, which touches on a lot of UK and EU citizens’ lives. This House has rightly tested this issue robustly and it is right that we consider it today.

The withdrawal agreement Bill guarantees that reciprocal healthcare arrangements, including for pensioners, workers, students, tourists and other temporary EEA or Swiss visitors, will not be affected during the implementation period. During this time, there will be no change to reciprocal healthcare schemes, such as S1 and EHIC, nor to the S2 route which enables planned treatment. Importantly, I can provide assurance that the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill also guarantees lifelong, reciprocal healthcare entitlements for people so long as they remain within the scope of the citizens’ rights agreements. This includes UK nationals who will have moved to the EU before 31 December 2020, as well as EU citizens who will have become resident in the UK before this time. I hope that that explanation is clearer than my letter.

Last year, as has been mentioned, this House spent a considerable amount of time holding informed and important debates scrutinising the provisions of the then Healthcare (European Economic Area and Switzerland Arrangements) Bill. With the permission of the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, I will call it HESA. We agreed that this was a key piece of legislation, providing the UK with options to implement any future reciprocal healthcare arrangements, subject to negotiation with the EEA states or with Switzerland after the UK leaves the EU. I understand the desire to know the outcome of these negotiations but, as they are obviously in the future, I am not able to give exact details, other than to say we want to ensure the best possible outcomes.

Following that scrutiny and the assent of Parliament…

[Baroness Altmann (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for giving way. A number of us on these Benches are deeply uncomfortable with what we are being told, as she well knows. We are willing to give the Government the benefit of the doubt and we hope that this trust will be repaid. We are talking about people’s health and lives: there really is nothing much more important. Will my noble friend take this back to the department, or can she assure us that there will be full information available to all citizens so that they know about this risk at the end of 2020 and can make the appropriate decisions? None of us knows what is going to happen after the end of this year.

[Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford]

My noble friend Lady Altmann makes a very important point. We have tried to ensure that the information is available and communicated. I am happy to review the clarity of this information and to do everything we can to improve it. My noble friend is absolutely right. We need for anxiety to be at the lowest level and for people to be prepared as possible. I can assure the House that we are doing everything we can to work in the best interests of UK citizens. We understand that there are many in European countries, as well as in the UK, who are looking at this issue with great concern.

I want to get back to the process of scrutinising HESA. As the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, said, this established a legal basis for the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care to fund and give effect to future reciprocal healthcare schemes through its provisions for data sharing and making regulations. It is important to cast our minds back to that debate. This is an implementation Bill; it does not concern the status of the arrangements. In addition, the Government are committed to the effective implementation of the citizens’ rights agreement and the healthcare protections that it provides.

Questions have arisen as a result of my letter, including those raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, last week. I have been asked why there is no mention of reciprocal healthcare in the Bill. This is because individuals within the scope of the withdrawal agreement are entitled to reciprocal healthcare cover from their competent country for as long as they remain so. The rights of EU citizens, EEA, EFTA and Swiss nationals and their family members who reside in the UK before the implementation period, are brought into UK law through Clauses 5 and 6 of the Bill.

I was also asked about Clause 30. This is limited to implementing parts of the agreement on social security co-ordination and to including reciprocal healthcare and EHIC, so it cannot operate in the way in which the noble Baroness was concerned that it might.

Finally, I was asked whether the consequential powers could be used to revert HESA to the original form—with global scope—that it came to this House in. It cannot. The consequential power does not allow for substantive changes to legislation. It will allow the Government to make only smaller, technical amendments for good housekeeping to ensure that legislation is consistent and functions well. It could not be used in the underhand manner that I think the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, thinks we intend. This would be much too substantial a use of the power; it would not be considered an appropriate use of it.

European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill

Baroness Altmann Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & 2nd reading (Hansard)
Monday 13th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Altmann (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Lea. I add my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Mann, and my noble friend Lord Barwell on their brilliant maiden speeches.

In the words of Charles Darwin, it is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change. The easy passage of this Bill through the other place clearly signals a changed parliamentary reality, as the British people supported the offer to “Get Brexit Done”, so we in this House must change our approach. We are leaving the EU on 31 January and this legislation is required to ensure a period of time to adjust, at least until the end of 2020. In line with the Salisbury convention and election promises, we must not frustrate the timetable. It seems that we must give the Government the benefit of the doubt, and I will be willing us to succeed.

As the House knows, I deeply regret that we have lost the argument on our future relationship. I will not be celebrating on 31 January, but I accept it, in line with Martin Luther King’s wise observation:

“We must accept finite disappointment but never lose infinite hope.”


So my participation in this debate is in the spirit of hope. During Committee, I will point out where I consider that the legislation ideally needs amending, as that is the normal scrutiny role we are here to perform. But if Ministers reject the amendments, this House will not prevail, so in that event I must hope that EU withdrawal can move forwards successfully without the changes.

What else do I hope for? I hope that the Brexit ushered in by this Bill will not disappoint those who voted for it, and that the application processes for settled status will not cause distress to EU citizens living and working in the UK. I also hope that Brexit will not undermine UK manufacturing success or jeopardise jobs that depend on our integrated supply chains. I hope, in line with so many pre-election assurances, that it will not mean a border down the Irish Sea or threaten the unity of our United Kingdom., I hope, too, that this legislation will not lead to the sidelining of Parliamentary scrutiny—as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leeds and other noble Lords so powerfully expressed—with the Joint Committee and Ministers overriding Parliament, nor to a no-deal Brexit at the end of 2020 for want of allowing time to conclude the complex negotiations on our future relationship.

I sincerely hope that leaving the EU will bring a better future for the UK and greater freedom of trade and global interaction—but I must confess to being completely unable to see how all this will be achieved. So I must also hope that I am wrong and that the Brexit supporters are right.

The Prime Minister says that he wants us to remain close friends and partners, and I wholeheartedly agree. Let us hope that we can continue to live in peace on our continent, as we have done for so long since last century’s devastating wars and troubles.

The result of the election was decisive, but I hope that it will not be divisive. I implore the Government to reach out to those who are devastated or fearful of leaving the EU, to reach out across our country and across the regional, political, social and generational divides. The Government intend to get on with improving life outside the south-east and our prosperous cities, especially for the north, and want to create opportunities and improved living standards for all citizens of one-nation Britain. I hope that the Government will bring us together—all our four countries. We are a wonderful nation. Together, we have achieved so much. As we pass this Bill and leave the EU, I hope that we will continue to succeed together, long into the future.

Brexit

Baroness Altmann Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd October 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Altmann (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord King. We are here to take note of the UK’s withdrawal from the EU, which of course has not happened. I agree with my noble friend Lord Tugendhat that the divisive rhetoric that blames the fact we have not left on a remainer Parliament is entirely wrong. It is the Brexiters who have blocked Brexit. Sadly, extreme Brexiters have taken this Conservative Government further and further from compromise. After two years of negotiations, the withdrawal agreement negotiated with the EU was rejected by Parliament, but not because of remainers or the Opposition. In the third vote in March 2019, Hansard reports that 286 Members supported the withdrawal agreement, including the backstop, while 344 voted against—a 58-vote defeat for the Government. But 28 Conservatives and 10 Democratic Unionist Party Members voted against their Government. If these 38 had supported the deal, there would have been an 18-vote majority and we would presumably not be facing no deal now.

Since then, the current Prime Minister has apparently changed his mind and, despite voting for it in March, has decided that no deal is preferable to accepting the backstop. I have witnessed good colleagues resign the Whip or leave the Tory party altogether, and 21 brave MPs expelled for voting in the national interest against the no-deal Brexit that many agree would be catastrophic for our country and party. Like my noble friend Lord Cormack, I consider these MPs to be people of high integrity and true Conservatives, who should be part of a party that is traditionally a broad church, not a narrow sect that panders to a group of extremists who wish to override the will of Parliament and dismiss court rulings.

Thus far, I am grateful that Parliament and the courts are protecting normal democratic values against the extremes, but I fear politics is being put above democracy and economic logic. We must respect the result of the referendum, but we have done. Pandering to the Brexit Party or ERG extremists, and going back on one’s previous words, are not the normal Conservative values as I understood them. The Prime Minister, in his victory speech after the referendum, on 24 June 2016, declared:

“The most precious thing this country has given the world is the idea of parliamentary democracy”.


This is not just an idea; it is a reality. Our parliamentary democracy does not consist of pitting the public against Westminster and the courts. Parliament has rejected no deal time and again, and many on these Benches are incredulous at current events. Dismissing an 11:0 Supreme Court ruling as “wrong” scarcely squares with the Prime Minister’s pre-referendum promise to make British courts supreme.

Leaving with no deal has no democratic legitimacy. Michael Gove, in April 2016, assured referendum voters that the UK would continue to be part of the EU’s free trade zone. He stated:

“The suggestion that Bosnia, Serbia, Albania and Ukraine would remain part of this free-trade area—and Britain would be on the outside with just Belarus—is as credible as Jean-Claude Juncker joining UKIP”.


No deal means losing our free trade with the EU. As my noble friend the Minister said in his opening remarks that business should be ready for no deal, I ask him when the temporary tariff regime will be published. How will smaller businesses be supported, given that we are just four weeks from 31 October? Could he tell me if there is any democratic evidence that the British people insist that 31 October must be a hard Brexit deadline?

No deal is not the will of the people. For example, in the general election in 2017, more than 17 million people voted for parties opposed to no deal. In the 2019 EU elections, 54% of voters rejected no-deal parties. How does this square with the Prime Minister’s conference speech today that we must,

“dedicate ourselves again to that simple proposition that we are here to serve the democratic will of the British people”?

In his article after the 2016 referendum, the Prime Minister stated that 16 million wanted to remain, so:

“We who are part of this narrow majority … must reach out, we must heal, we must build bridges”—


at that stage, I do not think he meant from Britain to Ireland—

“because it is clear that some have feelings of dismay, and of loss, and confusion”.

I totally support these sentiments, but what has happened to the man who penned them? Today’s supposed plans for the Irish border are, as many noble Lords have pointed out, not necessarily going to produce a deal. They do not seem to be designed to. Therefore, we are still heading either for an extension or no deal— 40 years of integration discarded.

Burke warned against sudden extreme change, so I finish with his wise words, which have helped me keep going in the face of so much madness:

“Never despair, but if you do, work on in despair”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Callanan]

If there are significant matters—of course we are still currently a member of the EU—then we are attending meetings, but not all EU meetings are to do with legislation. A lot of them are to discuss things that might happen, some of which could possibly impact on Northern Ireland, so we review which meetings we are attending on a weekly basis. I would of course be happy to meet the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, to discuss this further.

In concluding this debate, I remind your Lordships that it has been three years since the British people voted in the referendum to instruct the Government to leave the European Union. A number of noble Lords—the noble Lords, Lord Birt, Lord McNally, Lord Taverne, Lord Heseltine and Lord Livermore—spoke of having a second people’s vote. The noble Lord, Lord Shutt of Greetland, even questioned the continued validity of the 2016 referendum. I remind noble Lords again of the Government’s position that more British people voted in the 2016 referendum than for any other course of action in British electoral history. The message from voters in that referendum and the subsequent general election was clear; we cannot continue to second-guess such a clear instruction and we will never support another referendum.

[Baroness Altmann]

I put on the record that the Minister is not quite right. More people voted in the 1992 general election than in the EU referendum.

[Lord Callanan]

I will check the figures; I am not sure that the noble Baroness is correct on that.

I have laid out the ways in which the Government are working to deliver on that instruction and the way in which we are prepared for multiple outcomes. Today we have presented to Parliament and to the public our new proposals on Northern Ireland and Ireland. As I said earlier, I hope that these proposals can provide the basis of a rapid negotiation towards a deal, which is what we want. This will then allow us to focus on a positive future relationship that is in all our best interests.

This Government are looking to the future beyond our withdrawal from the European Union. We are looking ahead to work on the NHS, violent crime and cutting the cost of living. As the Prime Minister said in his Statement in the other place last week, and as he repeated in his speech this morning, what the British public want from the Government is for us to respect the outcome of the referendum in which they gave a clear instruction to deliver a withdrawal from the European Union and for the Government to move on and move forward.

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—

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.

Brexit

Baroness Altmann Excerpts

Monday 25th March 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Altmann (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake. It is also a matter of deep regret that we are here yet again debating the same issue, but we are where we are.

We have heard a lot this evening about democracy. Democracy, however, is not fixed in stone. When people vote, they rely on what they are led to believe at the time by politicians making promises and giving reassurances. Election manifestos are never normally sacrosanct. Indeed, much of past manifestos has never materialised.

We have respected and honoured the result of the referendum. Some suggest that we have not; I find that difficult to comprehend. To quote George Orwell,

“all political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome”.

The facts are that the red lines set in the beginning, dictated by the ERG, were and are impossible. The promises of the leave campaign are undeliverable. One million people marched on Saturday for a chance to vote now—now that they know more about what Brexit means—and 5.5 million people have in a matter of days signed a petition asking to cancel Brexit. Our democracy must be able to adapt to these changes.

The Prime Minister, cajoled by the ERG, refuses to consider that the course that we are pursuing may not be the will of the majority now. How can we possibly know that? How can it be anti-democratic to ask people’s view? If the Prime Minister’s deal is what people want, why not prove it? If 17.4 million people wanted a hard Brexit, let us prove it. I find it difficult to understand how the Government can insist that the British people cannot change their mind after two or three years but Parliament can be asked to change its mind in two or three weeks, as the Prime Minister puts her deal to MPs again and again. It is time to face reality. Government and Parliament have not been able to find a way forward to implement the referendum result, and no deal must not be allowed to happen by default. However, sadly, I struggle to see that this threat has actually gone, notwithstanding the Prime Minister’s welcome words at the Dispatch Box earlier today.

On 12 April the Prime Minister’s withdrawal agreement and political declaration will most likely not have passed. She will have a choice: she can stick to her sacred duty to deliver Brexit and be consistent with her statements that “no deal is better than a bad deal”; she can ask for a further extension, and thus have to fight EU elections; or she can revoke Article 50. I cannot be confident she will choose the latter course. Parliament may not even be sitting, so what would stop us leaving with no deal?

I cannot share the sentiments of my noble friend Lord Lilley, whose reassurances are of no more comfort to me than those about the easiest trade deal in history we were going to enjoy; about the rolling over of the 40 deals we already have with other countries, ready to go by 28 March—or about the ability to have our cake and eat it. All the reassurances so far given by the Brexiteers have proven false. It is simply not safe to ignore the TUC, the CBI and businesses large and small across the country—or indeed our obligations under the Good Friday agreement—and suggest that leaving without a deal is somehow okay.

We need to find another way forward, and, as my noble friend Lord Bridges of Headley has said, this is not the time for party politics. To quote John F Kennedy:

“Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past—let us accept our own responsibility for the future”.


We do not want a Tory or Labour answer. We want a better answer than we have had so far. That, as my noble friend Lord Hailsham and other noble Lords have wisely said, would suggest to us that we need some kind of Government of national unity to see us through this Brexit situation.

The Prime Minister has even said that she has tried to work across the House to find an alternative way forward. That has simply not happened. There have been no free tests of the opinion of the country’s elected representatives. The assertions that other options have been rejected are not right. Whipped votes are not an indication of parliamentary views.

Time is short, but Back-Benchers across Parliament ideally need to work together in the national interest to unscramble the Brexit mess. Indeed, Brexit is rather like trying to get an egg out of an omelette: you may get some egg back, but it will be broken. We must rise to the challenge that the current crisis is causing. I respect the fact that many noble Lords are extremely reticent about the idea of going back to the people—I am myself—but this started with the people. Maybe we need to let it end with the people.

Further Discussions with the European Union under Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union

Baroness Altmann Excerpts

Wednesday 27th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

We do. I made it clear yesterday—I am not sure whether the noble Baroness was in her place when I spoke to the House—that no deal is our choice because if we amend the deal on the table, we can get one. It is our choice, not that of the other side.

The costs of no deal, as I said, have been set out. The worries of the CBI, the IoD and of all the others have been made pretty clear to the Government—I am sure they have been if they are making them clear to me—and I wonder sometimes whether Ministers read their own papers. Yesterday, the Government’s own paper predicted that the economy would be between 6% and 9% smaller in the long term in a no-deal scenario compared with today’s arrangements, with the north-east losing out more than anywhere else—I am sure the Minister noticed. I thought that that, at least, would have attracted his attention.

[Baroness Altmann (Con)]

Would the noble Baroness ask the Minister to agree that yesterday’s paper which predicted the 6% to 9% reduction in the economy in the event of no deal noted that that excluded any short-term disruption costs from no deal?

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

It is a shame that he will not be replying but I am sure that his colleague—judging from that lovely poker face of his—has made a careful note of that and will respond later today.

We know that one bit, at least, of the Government is listening because we know they are preparing to set up a hardship fund—presumably with the money that the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, thinks will be available to pay for all those who will lose out; this seems a funny way of running the economy. Despite all that and the pressures for the hardship fund, the no dealers today have been attacking the grown-ups in their own party as “saboteurs, wreckers and blackmailers”. This, coming from politicians who have blackmailed the Prime Minister by voting against her and who are willing to wreck the economy and sabotage business, all for their own ideological hang-up. This has to stop and it has to stop now.

Will the Minister who will sum up, and who is definitely not an ERG hardliner, push his political masters—or, perhaps, his political mistress—to rule out unequivocally any no-deal departure, with its lack of a transition period and the chaos that goes with that? Will he urge the Prime Minister to change her approach and to find a consensual way forward to unite the Commons and the country, and will he ensure that an extension to Article 50 is requested this week? It is clear we will need it, but requesting it this week, rather than being forced into it, will help to calm nerves and offer some certainty to business. Will he work to see that such an extension is used not for more pretence and tweaking of words, but for a serious reconsideration of how we withdraw from the EU?

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Altmann]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hannay. It seems that we are participating in yet another act of that long-running theatrical exercise that has been going on in Parliament for quite some time. Perhaps we could call it “The Brexit Chronicles”. We are not sure yet whether it is a farce, a tragedy, a comedy or some combination of all three—indeed, one could suggest that it encompasses many more aspects of theatre. However, as has been directed by the last act of our play, we are led to believe that somehow the Prime Minister will go back to the EU and get 27 countries to reconsider the withdrawal agreement that she herself agreed, with concessions made on all sides, and tell them to tear up the backstop, which the EU considers essential to protect its external border and one of its smaller nations. The fact that our own Government are willing to play fast and loose with the Irish border is indeed shameful, but that is how it appears.

My noble friend Lord Cormack referred to the excellent article by our noble friend Lord Finkelstein. It seems that the ERG has roundly rejected the only agreement on offer for the orderly—if only for the short term—Brexit that apparently it has always wanted. It has now bullied the Prime Minister into disgracefully refusing to take no deal off the table. The Orwellian arguments being used to keep threatening no deal are almost beyond belief. Indeed, the nationalist obsessions behind these arguments reflect Orwell’s words:

“Nationalism is power-hunger tempered by self-deception”.


The self-deception is on quite an exceptional scale.

I will quote from an article today by my right honourable friend David Davis, who writes that the announcement yesterday,

“sends the wrong message to the EU”.

He says that,

“ruling out No Deal, or extending Article 50 … may harm our negotiating position … because it takes away our leverage in negotiations and is against our national interest”.

So no deal is somehow in our national interest. In any case, the EU has said that the negotiations are over. Even the Prime Minister, in her Statement yesterday, of which we are taking note now, says that these are discussions, not negotiations. As other noble Lords have said, the EU will not reopen the withdrawal agreement. Yet the ERG says that we must not abandon this no-deal charade. That is either dishonest or delusional. I fear that it is the latter, especially as, in the same article, Mr Davis says:

“Above all we all want an orderly exit from the European Union”,


and that:

“Conservatism is based on pragmatism and realism”.


He says also that:

“The public has always been ahead of and more relaxed on No Deal than politicians. They are right to be”.


Somehow, therefore, no deal represents an orderly exit from the EU and is the pragmatic and realistic choice. Words almost fail me.

In previous acts of our play we have been told that the purpose of no deal is a necessary fiction of some kind, whose purpose is to threaten or bully the EU into capitulating on the backstop. That is playing Russian roulette with several chambers of the gun loaded. This no-deal threat is not like a normal deal, where you walk away and go back to your village if the other side does not agree to your terms. If we leave with no deal, we will have set fire to many of the homes in our village. It is not like, as some suggest, having an independent nuclear deterrent. We hope never to have to use it. Others also would assume that we will not actually use it, but our enemies cannot be 100% sure. This no-deal threat is not like that. It is about as realistic as threatening to use our nuclear arsenal when the missiles are primarily trained directly on ourselves, or as—as the leader of the Opposition suggested—having our nuclear submarines sailing around without any missiles on them. No deal would be an unmitigated disaster for many parts of our country—not, perhaps, for the individuals who are promoting this idea, but certainly for many innocent people around the nation.

Many noble Lords have referred to the Government’s paper from yesterday. Indeed, my noble friend Baroness Wheatcroft has pointed to one thing that stood out particularly to me, which was the HMRC estimate that the administrative burden on our country’s businesses just from customs declarations on UK-EU goods trade could be around £13 billion a year. I looked up the receipts that the Government get from corporation tax in this country. For the year 2015-16, which is the year to which the £13 billion refers, corporation tax receipts were £43.7 billion. So the impact of a no-deal Brexit, just from customs declarations, would be the equivalent of a 30% increase in corporation tax on British business. Having trumpeted the reduction of corporation tax and tried to attract businesses to the UK, making us the best place to set up a business, the Conservative Party is suddenly suggesting that we contemplate slapping an increase of this nature on our companies, just for a business to be able to carry on doing what it has already been doing freely for years.

The Government have created risk and uncertainty for some of the UK’s largest manufacturing sectors, including automobiles, food and drink, and chemicals. Let us take a couple of examples. Chemical firms with integrated supply chains, whose products cross borders many times, would have to register with the European Chemicals Agency. Currently that is automatic via the EU, but businesses would have to register for 12,000 different registrations if there were no deal and they still wanted to sell into the EU. They would also have to transfer their existing registration to an EU-based entity. Each of those registrations costs £1,500 plus the associated administrative expenses.

For food, the impact of leaving with no deal would be particularly grave. The country is not even remotely ready for a no-deal Brexit. In fact it is probably the small and mundane procedural issues that will cause some of the worst problems. For example, Defra has suddenly realised that we do not have enough pallets to be able to cope with the consequences of no deal. Most pallets that are used by British exporters do not conform to the third-country rules that the EU requires for trade because we have a much more relaxed set of regulations as a member. The UK will apparently not have enough EU-approved pallets for the exports that we require if we leave with no deal in March. Those UK companies that miss out will have to wait for new pallets, which can take weeks to be ready.

Another example is that labels that food and drink companies put on their products will become illegal from 29 March if we leave with no deal. It can take months for new labels to be produced. Any UK company without a presence in the EU would have to take down its websites with a .eu suffix. Here is an example that I find particularly interesting: March/April is a particularly bad time to leave without a deal because it is the very time when we are most reliant on importing fresh fruit and vegetables from the EU. Some 90% of lettuces come from the EU at that time. By May or June there is less reliance on the EU so that would actually be a better time to leave without a deal. That might also help to avoid the worst initial disruption to food supplies, as well as giving more time to prepare for no deal.

This is where I see the situation very differently from my noble friend Lord Howell. I am deeply concerned about how the final act of this Westminster Brexit chronicle may unfold. I am concerned that the possibility of no deal may actually have risen. This could indeed be the final denouement of the saga that we are engaged in. Everyone knows that we are not ready to leave in March with no deal. An extension has to be requested. If it is agreed, the Prime Minister insists that it must be a one-off, it must be short and it must not last beyond June. There will be no renegotiation of the withdrawal agreement, so it is entirely possible that a short delay would be designed just to give us more time to prepare for no deal. In the meantime we will keep threatening no deal and hope that the EU will surrender to our wishes, but if, as most of us in today’s debate agree, the EU will not give us anything better than the withdrawal agreement apart from some slight changes to the political declaration and reassurances on the backstop, what next? We will face the choice between vassalage and suicide. Neither represents the freedom and control that people who voted to leave voted for. The ERG would, it appears, choose the suicidal route, perhaps believing that the gun is not really loaded, or that some deus ex machina will rescue us. Other Members of your Lordships’ House—I entirely understand this—would choose vassalage, at least in the short term, and then hope that the political declaration will deliver some decent terms for us.

However, I believe that Parliament would be betraying our democracy and our country if we refuse to go back to the people and check before taking any of these courses, to make sure that this is what they will support, given that the circumstances are so different from those that people were presented with when they voted in either 2016 or 2017. It is time to respect the British people. We have respected those votes. It is now time to respect the people by asking again for confirmation of whether they wish us to proceed in this way before the final curtain comes down.

EU Withdrawal

Baroness Altmann Excerpts

Wednesday 13th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Altmann (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Dinton. I have enormous sympathy with just about every word he uttered. Like others, I contribute to the debate yet again with a heavy heart and deep regret that we find ourselves in this position. Once again, I find myself supporting the noble Baroness’s Motion and urging my noble friends on the Front Bench to accept it without putting it to a vote.

We are here to take note of the ongoing discussions—not negotiations, just discussions—taking place within the EU following our Article 50 notification. Why are we noting anything about discussions? The EU has made it clear that negotiations are over, on terms agreed and signed off by the Prime Minister and our team. What are we to make of this? We seem determined to break bonds with our nearest neighbours, to all our costs. We persist with apparently running down the clock, threatening no deal up to the last day, expecting the EU to cave in to whatever we demand. It is just not going to happen. The Prime Minister’s Statement says that she continues,

“to work with Members across the House to do everything we can to help build a country that works for everyone”.—[Official Report, Commons, 12/2/19; col.732.]

If that really is the aim, persisting with a no-deal route, keeping business in the dark about its future and risking people’s jobs and livelihoods by refusing to listen even to Parliament’s instruction that we must not leave without a deal is totally inconsistent with those aims.

Yes, it is true, as the Prime Minister says, that opposing no deal is not enough to stop it. But securing a deal is not the only way to stop us crashing out without one. We have the unilateral power to revoke Article 50. It is within our control. The Prime Minister says that public faith in our democracy will be damaged if Parliament ignores the result of the 2016 referendum. How could anyone seriously pretend that we have ignored that result? What is being ignored, to the detriment of trust in our Government and parliamentary leadership, is that the promises made at the time of the referendum cannot and will not be delivered. Yet the premise of the course that we are set on is that this is the will of the people. How do we know that this is what the majority of the country actually wants?

The Prime Minister says we must all hold our nerve to get the changes Parliament requires and to deliver Brexit on time. But the EU has made it clear that it will not drop the backstop. Indeed, if border checks are solved by technology, as the ERG has repeatedly suggested, what is the fuss about the backstop? It will never be needed.

Plan B, the Malthouse compromise, has been roundly rejected by trade experts. They have had to explain—as has the parliamentary Library, as the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, pointed out—that WTO law does not allow the UK and the EU to keep trading as if the UK were still in the EU.

[Baroness O’Neill of Bengarve (CB)]

The noble Lady asked what the fuss was about the backstop. Perhaps I may explain in one sentence. It is a constitutional point, not a point about customs. Any change to the constitutional status of Northern Ireland has to respect the terms of an international agreement, the Good Friday/Belfast agreement. That agreement specifies no constitutional change without consent. I do not know what conversations are going on, but if the noble Baroness reads the present version of the backstop agreement, she will discover that it does not respect the Good Friday agreement. This, in my view, has been an error both by our Government and by the EU.

[Baroness Altmann]

I bow to the noble Baroness’s superior knowledge. However, it has been constantly and consistently the issue that, unless there is a frictionless border in Northern Ireland, there is a problem.

[Baroness O’Neill of Bengarve]

Nobody is arguing for a return to what is somewhat confusedly referred to as a “hard border”. There is agreement between the EU, the UK and the Republic of Ireland that there should be what is confusedly called a “soft border”. That is not the problem. The problem is about the constitutional status of a part of the United Kingdom. That is why people are so angry and so worried about the backstop, and why there have already been a good deal of incipient attempts at violence in Northern Ireland, which mercifully did not kill anybody.

[Baroness Altmann]

Perhaps we need to pursue this further but my understanding is that if there is technology which can ensure a frictionless border, the practical problems could be dealt with.

However, the Malthouse compromise—plan B—also falls foul of this problem: that it is impossible under WTO law for the UK and the EU to keep trading as if the UK is a member state while negotiating a free trade agreement for the future. On that basis, I am afraid that my noble friend Lord Cathcart appears to be mistaken.

Like many other countries we are in the grip of populism, whose success is based on promoting beguilingly simple soundbites and solutions to hugely complex problems. Populist leaders know that they cannot actually deliver these simplistic slogans. All that they need is for people to believe slogans such as, “Take back control”, “More money for our priorities”, “Free trade deals, easy peasy”, “Make Britain great again” and “Have your cake and eat it”. The referendum promises were never honest; they were designed to seduce people into a fantasy world of sunlit uplands, and they succeeded, but those running the leave campaign had no actual plan for how they would manage the country after Brexit. Indeed, the whole Brexit programme is based on a fundamental misunderstanding and misrepresentation of how the commercial world operates. Is this naive ignorance by politicians who have never run businesses or conducted trade negotiations, or do they just not understand or care about the legal realities?

I cannot believe that the principles of the Conservative Party—pragmatism, supporting business and jobs—are being sacrificed on the altar of an ideological fantasy, with its sacred duty to break 40 years of success. We have reckless brinkmanship and there is a reliance on railroading Parliament into acquiescence, even with the prospect of no deal. The path we are on is conducted by people who have got everything wrong so far about Brexit, about how the EU works and about how international trade operates. David Davis claimed that he could get a free trade agreement by going to Berlin, where they would be desperate to protect BMW. Liam Fox claimed that he would have 70 deals ready to roll on 30 March, on the same terms as before. The public were assured that we could have a final deal on the future relationship agreed in two years. The ERG insisted that we could leave the customs union and single market, and still have no hard border in Northern Ireland. None of these was ever realistic. Even the claims that the withdrawal agreement and political declaration will mean taking back control of our borders, laws and money cannot be relied upon, with all the difficult decisions being left to future negotiations after we have left.

The only aim seems to be to leave the EU, whatever the cost. The Government’s own figures prove that leaving the EU will make the country poorer, while leaving without any agreement will demolish our industrial success. We will lose thousands of businesses and jobs. It is not too late to go back to the British people with an honest reassessment of the false promises which they have been led to believe. It is not too late to give the country the chance to confirm that people are happy to proceed or have changed their minds. This is about not just trade but our whole way of life: our children’s future, our freedom and rights, our national security. So much is at risk. I am in favour of co-operation and partnership. But we must take care that at this crucial stage in the negotiations we are not just railroaded into leaving the EU, come what may, without checking back with the British people.

Brexit: Parliamentary Approval of the Outcome of Negotiations with the European Union

Baroness Altmann Excerpts

Monday 28th January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Altmann (Con)]

My Lords, as always, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, who speaks with such wisdom on these matters, and to follow the excellent contributions made by noble Lords from across the House. I concur with the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, that we are indeed the warm-up act for tomorrow. Nevertheless, I hope that the debate this afternoon will produce some interesting insights for the other place.

The Prime Minister’s withdrawal agreement and political declaration were roundly rejected last week by both Houses, but no plan B has been put forward. The current position is a serious threat to the unity of our United Kingdom. The noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford, insists that an invisible solution exists for the Irish border, and the ERG has insisted that technological solutions are available and that this is a manufactured excuse from those who want to stop Brexit. If that is the case, why the fuss over the backstop? Either they do not believe that such a solution exists, or this is merely a delaying tactic to edge the country closer to a no-deal cliff edge.

As the noble Lord, Lord Hain, said, how is it that the EU is drawing a stark red line to protect the border and the Good Friday agreement, while the Conservative and Unionist Party seems willing to sacrifice it? To leave the customs union and single market is, in almost everyone’s opinion, simply incompatible with the Good Friday agreement in practice. Border controls are required. Leaving with no deal likewise abandons the Good Friday agreement. It is essential to rule out no deal; it should have happened long ago. I will therefore be voting, in sadness but in absolute good conscience, in favour of the Motion in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Smith. I join her in encouraging my noble friends on the Front Bench to support it, too.

No deal is an option that no reasonable Government could support. Walking wide-eyed into a course of action while knowing that it will be damaging—and contrary to an international treaty—is against all the principles of representative democracy. As George Orwell said, political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

My noble friend the Leader of the House said in her opening remarks that the Government have a responsibility to deliver the result of the referendum. Will the Minister, when he winds up, tell us how many of the 17.4 million leave voters actually voted for this withdrawal agreement and political declaration—or indeed how many voted for no deal?

There is a loud, extreme group of Brexiters who believe that the referendum gave carte blanche for any action that delivers the cherished Brexit. This is not democracy. A quarter of the population voted to leave, but we have no idea what each of them expected. The only deal on offer is the Prime Minister’s deal, but that does not command parliamentary support. Equally, it does not provide certainty, and it puts at risk our economy and national security.

The promises of the leave campaign in the EU referendum have not materialised. The “easiest trade deal in history” is nowhere to be seen. Brilliant new trade deals, and even rolling over the existing deals that we have via the EU, are just pipe dreams. Assurances given so confidently by my right honourable friend David Davis in 2017 that the European Medicines Agency would not leave the UK have proved wrong, as we sadly saw yesterday when the agency left the UK. The Brexiters have been wrong about the EU all along, and are still wrong—catastrophically so—when they claim that leaving on WTO terms can be managed reasonably.

We need to know how many people still want to leave the EU, and the only way is to ask them. That is respecting the will of the people. My noble friend Lord Dobbs called this a “loser’s charter”. That misunderstands its purpose. If people confirm that they still want to leave, they have the option and we will honour it—I will accept it. Not even to ask, however, when what is being delivered is so different from what they may well have voted for, is irresponsible.

My noble friend the Leader also suggested that we must command support across the political spectrum. No deal, however, certainly does not do that. Why, therefore, is this kamikaze course still on the table? As the noble Lord, Lord Hain, said, the leave enthusiasts are holding our party hostage and refusing to give up the no-deal threats. Why are they doing so? Is it because this was their one and only plan right from day one? Having watched the actions of the honourable and right honourable colleagues in the other place, I say that this is a wholly consistent explanation. Was their plan, all along, to just keep threatening no deal until 28 March and wait for the EU to surrender to the cake-and-eat-it promises made to voters in the 2016 referendum and the 2017 election? They still refuse to accept that it is simply not possible to leave the EU single market and customs union and protect the Northern Ireland border within the UK.

If this giant game of poker is all that they can offer, it is going to fail. The EU will not cave in to what we want—it has made that clear. The House of Commons Library has produced an excellent report on the full impact of no deal. It was released today, and I strongly commend it to all noble Lords. Indeed, I ask my noble friends on the Front Bench to suggest that both this House and the other place dedicate time to a proper debate about it.

I will quote selectively from the report. The Permanent Secretary of HM Revenue and Customs, Jon Thompson, said:

“We cannot give you or Ministers any assurances whatsoever of what will actually happen in the event that there is no deal ... I cannot say it will all be fine. I absolutely cannot tell you”.


Those who say that many other countries trade on WTO terms and we trade on WTO terms with other countries seem to ignore the fact that the US, Brazil, China and India all have trade agreements with their closest neighbours. Even with the US, the UK already has trade regulated by more than 100 sectoral agreements derived from EU membership that go well beyond WTO provisions.

On medicines, we are told that there is not enough cold-chain warehousing available to build the stockpile that the industry has been asked to hold. Air freight is not an option for medicines that cannot be X-rayed. On Northern Ireland, the WTO rules are clear: there needs to be between two separate customs territories the possibility of checks, and contemporaneous forms need to be filed to ensure that, when goods are passing across the border, the right tariff has been applied.

On security, Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, has said that no deal would have to replace the mechanisms we currently have with others that are “costly, slower” and potentially put the public at risk.

“There is no doubt about that”,


she said.

On pensions—I declare an interest—there is a promise that overseas residents who are UK citizens will have their pension uprated in the country in which they live as long as there is reciprocity. There are 70,000 British pensioners living in Spain and 62 Spanish pensioners living in the UK. The cost to Spain would be significant. The temptation for it not to offer reciprocity would leave 70,000 British pensioners—and other pensioners in other countries—at risk of no uprating: more frozen pensioners.

As to the managed no deal that we have heard about, we are told that any side deals if we leave with no deal would require the maintenance of goodwill between both sides, which inevitably would require settlement of our financial obligations and the rights of EU citizens, as well as protection of the Northern Ireland border.

The House of Commons has roundly rejected this deal. At the moment we have no agreed way forward. We are approaching the cliff edge. I know that many noble Lords share the concern that the no-deal outcome is unconscionable. I echo the call of the Commons Brexit Select Committee for Article 50 to be extended, as so many other noble Lords have said, because we are simply running out of time.

The British people have been misled about the impact of leaving the EU. Whether we leave with the current agreed deal or with no deal, there will be casualties. In all good conscience, I hope that we can support the words of Benjamin Disraeli:

“Power has only one duty—to secure the social welfare of the people”.

Brexit: Withdrawal Agreement and Political Declaration

Baroness Altmann Excerpts

Monday 14th January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Altmann (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria. I would like to support this withdrawal agreement and political declaration, and I would like to support our brave, determined and dedicated Prime Minister, who has worked so hard to try to deliver the promises of the leave campaign, but in all good conscience I am afraid that I cannot do so.

I have agonised over this and respect colleagues who are so frightened by the outrageous threats of no deal that they will support the proposals, despite believing that they will damage our country, but I am convinced that this would not be in the national interest. It is truly alarming to witness the peddling of fantasies and misrepresentation of reality that have permeated our political discourse. I will support the Motion of the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, and that will be consistent with every vote that I have registered in the whole Brexit debate.

The red lines of leaving the customs union, single market and ECJ jurisdiction are totally incompatible with the Good Friday agreement unless we impose a border in the Irish Sea that disunites our United Kingdom. That is what the backstop is about. Ending free movement and being able to agree new trade deals outwith the EU are incompatible with protecting our integrated supply chains, manufacturing jobs and services sector. These are real-world realities not explained to the country at the time of the referendum or the previous election.

We are here today because 17.4 million British people —37% of the 2016 voter base—voted to leave the EU. Parliament was apparently instructed by this advisory referendum to obey its result come what may. We are asked to believe that the instructions given to Parliament by these 17.4 million citizens, out of a population of 67 million, on the basis of promises that cannot and will not be delivered, justify depriving 50 million fellow countrymen of their EU rights and citizenship. Working in pensions, I have seen many examples of mis-selling in my lifetime but never have I seen the scale of deliberate deception that has come to light in connection with the 2016 referendum.

If you make a decision to buy a pension on the basis of a false prospectus, you have the right to change your mind or to be compensated. Yet those who are shown to have been wrong on all the claims they have made about Brexit so far are allowed to peddle more myths today, such as that leaving with no deal is perfectly okay. It is not okay. It is just another Brexit falsehood. Yes, Parliament has a duty to honour the will of the British people, but how many of those 17.4 million would have voted for the negotiated terms if they had known what Brexit would truly entail? We do not know.

We are told the 2016 referendum was the biggest exercise in democracy this country has ever seen. I cannot agree with that. Actually, it was a masterly display of political spin and mendacity. Leaving aside the financial irregularities, fraudulent use of large companies’ logos implying they supported leave, and false claims that Turkey and even Iraq and Syria would soon join the EU, voters were also misled into believing the EU was the cause of our country’s problems and that leaving would make us wealthier, improve our free trade and provide all the benefits of membership without the burdens or costs.

Many people were encouraged to vote for the first time in their lives in 2016; we are told that failing to obey their instructions would be a betrayal of democracy. Really? Any voter who believes that our democracy is about ordering MPs to do what people demanded on a past date, regardless of changed circumstances or negative consequences, is surely misrepresenting democracy. Voters who believed the campaign promises and then find out they were deceived are hardly going to have faith in our democracy. I believe our representative parliamentary democracy is far more threatened by ploughing ahead on the basis of this agreement or no deal at all.

Yes, we must respect the referendum, but we have honoured the result. Anyone who disputes that has not been paying attention for the last two years. We have triggered Article 50, passed legislation to permit withdrawal and negotiated for over 1,000 hours to find ways to achieve an exit from the EU that will satisfy the British people. But the outcome is nothing like the promises they voted for. All the focus is on the 17.4 million leave voters, not the 16.1 million remainers or 13.5 million non-voters. Given the deliberate misrepresentation, outright deception and false promises, coupled with the flawed remain campaign, can Members of Parliament, hand on heart, know whether this withdrawal agreement or no deal reflect the wishes of the majority now?

How many believed leaving would make the country richer? The Government’s own figures show that even the withdrawal agreement will not do so, never mind no deal. How many were just protesting against the establishment and trying to make their voices heard because they are dissatisfied with the Government and feel left behind? Which of the problems facing our country, which leavers may have been complaining about, will Brexit and this withdrawal agreement solve? Will they solve lack of infrastructure investment, the housing crisis, education standards, the need to improve productivity or the social care crisis? EU membership has not stopped us addressing all these burning problems but leaving would make them all worse.

There is so much Alice-in-Wonderland thinking permeating this debate. Sovereignty, self-determination and freedom do not require isolating ourselves and withdrawing from international partnerships, which help bridge differences. Indeed, I fear that history may well conclude that never has so much harm been caused to so many by so few, and that we sacrificed their tomorrow for our today.