House of Lords Reform

Baroness Crawley Excerpts

Tuesday 12th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Crawley (Lab)]

My Lords, in a debate where roles and conventions have been constantly referred to, I know my role as the penultimate Back-Bench speaker: to get on with it.

I support my Government’s policy and Lords reform, and I congratulate the Leader of the House on her elegant introduction. However, as the third member of the Lord Speaker’s Committee on the Size of the House —we have already heard from the chairman the noble Lord, Lord Burns, and the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham—I have to say that I am disappointed that, as a House, we could not have taken this reform into our own hands years ago. The report from the Lord Speaker’s Committee on the Size of the House was published in 2017 and has been updated every year since. As noble Lords have said, it concluded that, if the House agreed, we would work to

“reduce the size of the House”—

two out, one in—

“and maintain a cap of 600 members into the future”.

It went on to say that the proposal would have provided

“sufficient turnover of members to refresh the House and rebalance it in line with general elections over time, while also guaranteeing a sizeable fixed proportion of independent Crossbench peers”,

as well as a beefed-up HOLAC.

These proposals were supported by a significant majority of the House and would have gradually reformed it without the need for legislation. However, the then Conservative Government’s response was unenthusiastic, to say the least, and ultimately unhelpful. With the honourable exception of the noble Baroness, Lady May of Maidenhead, Conservative Prime Ministers were unwilling to open up the discussion on the prime ministerial prerogative in appointments to this House. I really do think that, had the previous Government agreed to support the logic of the Lord Speaker’s proposals and my noble friend Lord Grocott’s Private Member’s Bill, we would not find ourselves in the present situation, as my noble friend Lord Murphy said.

We all have friends and colleagues across party and non-party lines in this House. We will of course be sorry to see people whom we like, respect and look forward to seeing each week leave us. However, the Labour Party’s manifesto, on which a decisive electoral victory was won, could not have been clearer, as was alluded to by the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington: it was to introduce legislation immediately to remove the right of hereditary Peers to sit and vote in the House of Lords. I hope that, despite feelings running high—I understand this—the Government’s right to enact that manifesto commitment will be respected in this House.

I acknowledge that the noble Lord, Lord True, said that he respects manifesto commitments. Looking to future legislation, I say that it will be important for this House to work together, across party lines, on new reform; this was said by the noble Lords, Lord Jay and Lord Norton of Louth. I look forward to that collaboration very soon.

Afghanistan

Baroness Crawley Excerpts

Wednesday 18th August 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Crawley (Lab)]

My Lords, in this chaotic endgame in Afghanistan, we cannot simply clamour for something—anything—to be done; we must learn. As the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, said, those torn between washing their hands of it all and wringing their hands help no one, least of all the Afghan people, in these perilous hours and days.

Today, every honour and gratitude must go to our service men and women, who put their lives and limbs on the line over the last 20 years to give the Afghan people a fighting chance of a decent future, and to those Afghans who have supported and worked alongside us as interpreters and in the NGOs and whose lives are now in terrible jeopardy.

A humanitarian disaster looms, as many have said, and the question so many of us are asking is: why? The speed with which the Taliban marched through that country and took that control was so miscalculated by the UK and our allies. Why was the Foreign Secretary on holiday in the last few days? Why did our intelligence collapse? How did we not realise that behind the cover of the Doha peace talks the Taliban were, month by month, doing deals and paying off local warlords and officials in order for the city gates to be left open when they came knocking this August?

What did Ben Wallace—and I respect what he has said in the last few days—mean when he said that, for those who do not get out immediately,

“we will have to do our best in third countries to process those people”?

Which third countries? How will we negotiate the conditions for that to happen? Is the NATO allies’ stance to negotiate with the Taliban locally while not recognising it nationally? The Taliban may have state-of-the-art mobile phones now and employ press officers, but they are still the same women-hating, drug-trading, murderous thugs they always were—who cut off the tips of women’s thumbs if they wore nail varnish and stoned them to death if they refused loyalty.

What plans are there for an ongoing Berlin-style airlift? The interpreters’ relocation and assistance programme finally being expanded is to be welcomed, but who will it cover and how long will it last? How are our refugee policies going to meet the needs of fleeing young Afghan men and women? Why, as many noble Lords have asked, is there a 20,000-person cap? Why have we been told about this only today? Does it cover those already in the UK? Was the “get the girls out” policy written overnight?

In the years after 9/11 I stood at that Dispatch Box and I honestly believed that our presence and investment would stem al-Qaeda terrorism and help lay the foundations of a new civil society in Afghanistan. Some might say I should have paid more attention to my history lessons. Call me old-fashioned, but I still believe that, given all the sacrifices in lives, aid and investment, the West cannot ultimately abandon Afghanistan to the Taliban.

Leaving the European Union

Baroness Crawley Excerpts

Monday 21st January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I am surprised that the noble Baroness is not welcoming the guarantee that we will not only not erode protection for workers’ rights and the environment but ensure that the country leads the way. We have been saying that and it is absolutely true. In fact, noble Lords have raised that in numerous ways and we will work with Members, Peers, businesses and trade unions to develop proposals to do this, including looking at legislation where necessary. I would have thought the noble Baroness would strongly welcome that.

[Baroness Crawley (Lab)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lady Smith of Basildon is right to say that this Statement really takes us no further forward. In fact, it could be summed up as the dog that did not bark at the elephant in the room. I welcome the fact that the Prime Minister has made it clear that she has no intention of reopening the Belfast agreement, especially in the light of the very serious news from Londonderry over the weekend. However, I doubt that the Government have any idea what a no-deal Brexit would mean, not only for our country but for our nearest and most important trading neighbour: Ireland. Will the Leader think again about the situation of not taking no deal off the table?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I can certainly reassure the noble Baroness that the issue of the border has been absolutely paramount in our minds, which is why the Prime Minister has worked so hard to make sure that we and the EU can come up with a solution that works to ensure that we keep our commitments to the people of Northern Ireland. That is what we are absolutely determined to do.

Brexit: Withdrawal Agreement and Political Declaration

Baroness Crawley Excerpts

Wednesday 5th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Crawley (Lab)]

My Lords, I refer noble Lords to my entry in the register as a former MEP. What can I say? What can any of us say now that we are in the end game of this miserable national predicament called Brexit? We have seen the Prime Minister’s deal, which I am afraid gives us even less than Chequers did, especially when it comes to the ambition for frictionless borders. The Government’s latest economic analysis, after all the modelling, assumptions and hedging, adds up to only one thing: leaving the EU on March 29 means that we will be poorer than we are now, or staying in the EU, as noble Lords have said.

Of course if we leave without a deal, the impact on trade means that we could lose up to 9% of GDP and could experience an 11.8% drop in real wages. That is to say nothing of the emergency measures needed when it comes to food and medicine shortages, drinking water and disruption in travel, transportation and energy supplies. The Bank of England, which has become something of a pantomime villain for the Brexiteers, has also warned that under the worst-case scenario, house prices could fall by 30%, employment could rise by more than 7% and GDP could fall by 8%. The list goes on, is frightening and must not be allowed to happen, as our Motion tabled by my noble friend Lady Smith of Basildon outlines. A Canada-style free trade agreement means a shocking drop in GDP and real wages, according to the Government. Even an EEA Norway-style Brexit sees GDP drop by 2.3% and real wages drop by 2.8%. The Prime Minister’s deal means that we lose up to 2.2% of GDP and could experience a drop of 2.7% in real wages. Of course, as noble Lords have said, these losses will be felt by the poorest people, the marginalised and the left behind. Is this not where we came in? There are no happy stories here; no reasons to celebrate this December.

Everyone in the country is worried and people are looking for certainty for themselves, their families and their workplaces. To many, the Prime Minister’s deal looks like a kind of solution, as in, “Please make the pain stop”. We have to acknowledge that fear and anxiety in the country and offer a feasible and positive alternative. The clamour is growing, especially among our young people, for a people’s vote on the terms of our leaving. At the time of the referendum, none of us could have imagined those terms, and that vote would be an opportunity to change our minds, should we wish to. Like many on my side of the argument, I am often asked whether I want the referendum to be a neverendum, as they say in Scotland. In other words, do I want as many people’s votes as it takes to deliver the result called remain? Here is my answer. The wording of the question put to the British people in 2016 ran as follows:

“Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union, or leave the European Union”?


They were not asked: do you favour Boris Johnson’s version of Brexit? Are you happy with Labour’s six conditions? Does the thought of Norway-plus appeal to you? Or Canada-plus? Or Papua New Guinea-plus? How about Mrs May’s Chequers plan, as opposed to her most recent plan? Is full access to the EU’s Galileo satellite navigation system something of a red line for you and your family? What about freedom to immigrate low-skilled workers into the UK, or special provisions for our friends in the DUP when it comes to the very serious issue of the Irish border?

It occurred to me the other day that most people, who do not spend their lives looking at economic analysis and reading policy papers as we do, probably imagine that the Irish backstop is a new rugby move for the forthcoming Six Nations.

Even if I were a fervent Brexiteer—which, thank the Lord, I am not, sir—I would have to conclude that since 2016, Brexit has grown as many heads as the Hydra of Lerna. No general election or referendum result binds the people’s hands forever. It is bogus constitutionalism to argue that anyone, in any one spasm of time, should be bound. The bald truth is that no version of Brexit currently available can possibly claim to be the settled will of the country. So, in the week when the Government have been found in contempt; when the Advocate-General of the ECJ has advised that Britain can unilaterally cancel Brexit; and when Parliament has voted to wrest control from the Executive in the event of no plan B beyond 11 December; I have to say that it is a case of back to the people.

Brexit: Negotiations

Baroness Crawley Excerpts

Thursday 15th November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

We will end free movement when we leave the EU, which means that we will develop our own independent immigration policy. We will bring forward a White Paper setting out those thoughts shortly.

[Baroness Crawley (Lab)]

My Lords, there is consensus across the House that this deal will not get a majority in the other place. What is the Government’s plan B? As we see it, a no-deal scenario happens automatically, unless the Government and Parliament decide to stay in the EU until a deal can be reached or decide to organise a second referendum. What do the Government make of the more hysterical claims of Brexiteers about Northern Ireland, which has been the pinch point all along? I am thinking especially of the claim that there are no trading, constitutional or legal differences between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK, when we all know that there are already significant differences on agriculture, animal checks, future corporation tax, abortion and same-sex marriage—I could go on.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I am not going to prejudge what the other place does in relation to its decision on this deal. As noble Lords have rightly said, it will have a vote on this deal. We believe it is the best deal and we will be encouraging the other place to support it, and I believe that it will.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Baroness Crawley Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 31st January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Crawley (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, who has always been a steadfast pro-European. I refer noble Lords to my entry in the register of interests as a former MEP.

So, Brexit—how do we think it is going? No unparliamentary language, please, from my noble friend Lord Foulkes of Cumnock in answering that question. According to the Government’s own economic impact report this week, we have to hold up our hands as the political establishment in this country and admit that we have probably scuppered people’s economic prospects for the next 15 to 20 years. This Bill, which our own Constitution Committee described as “constitutionally unacceptable”, comes to us at a time of unique instability in modern British politics. Half of Ministers and Conservative MPs want what my noble friend Lady Smith, the Leader of the Opposition, called a “buccaneering Brexit” that hauls us out into the mid-Atlantic, as far away from Europe as possible, and they want it to happen now, today, and with no transition. The other half, the Hammond half, want to shadow the economic and trade benefits of the European Union as closely as possible. My own party is not exactly free from criticism either. How can we answer Mr Barnier’s question—what does Britain want?—when we do not know ourselves?

The Trade Secretary, meanwhile, fresh from the Derek Trotter school of international trade negotiations —its strapline being, “This time next year we’ll all be millionaires”—is touring the globe to drum up trade with deals that “could”, “might”, “possibly”, “maybe”, “sometime in the future”, come to fruition. On top of that we hear the business chorus, the cacophony coming from Davos, demanding certainty—a certainty, of course, that an embattled Prime Minister just cannot give.

Meanwhile, the money men and women in the City of London are packing their bags and will probably head for Frankfurt, as the noble Lord, Lord Higgins, suggested yesterday in his quite powerful speech. They have promises to keep, and miles to go before we sleepwalk out of the European Union—with apologies to Robert Frost. British businesses and their workforces cannot wait for the Government to decide what they want: equivalence or passporting; customs union-lite or not at all; regulatory alignment or compatibility; transition or implementation or maybe both. Then, of course, we have what 19th-century Peers in your Lordships’ House used to call “the Irish question”. Here I declare my Irish nationality. The new Irish question is of course: “How can you have virtually no border with the Republic of Ireland, an EU member state, and not be in the customs union and the single market?”. Paragraph 49 of the 8 December agreement, which supposedly answers this question, is written so ambiguously that Malcolm Tucker from “The Thick of It” would have been proud.

The purpose of the Bill before us is, as we know, to provide a functioning statute book on the day after we leave the European Union. But this Bill is not just a procedural device: it is not a cut-and-paste, drag-and-drop, pull-across-and-slap-it-down technical exercise to convert EU law as it stands at the moment of exit into domestic law. It is, in the words of our own House of Lords Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, a Bill that,

“contains unacceptably wide Henry VIII powers”,

or, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, said in his excellent speech yesterday, “Oliver Cromwell” powers.

Chris Bryant MP suggested at Second Reading in another place that in the history of the 20th century, and I understand that he looked into this, no Bill ever attempted to do this, even in times of war or civil emergency. The Fawcett Society said in its briefing to us that, notwithstanding the gains from the equality Bill in the other place, it fears Ministers’ excessive powers to be able to amend and repeal all manner of employment and equalities legislation through this Bill. It should never be forgotten that our EU membership has brought enormous protection to the women of this country—their working rights, family rights and equal rights—much of it to do with the legal underpinning from the European Union.

Our EU membership has brought great protections that now seem to be at risk, because those rights do not continue under the Bill with the enhanced status that the legal underpinning from the European Union has given them for the last 40-odd years. They survive in the Bill only in delegated form, as do the equally important environmental and consumer rights that the British people take for granted as part of a safe, civilised life. The Government can expect no let-up in our efforts to make this Bill somehow, against all odds, work in the interests of the British people as we leave Europe, but leaving Europe is an act of extraordinary political self-harm for which our grandchildren and their children will not forgive us.

House of Lords: Lord Speaker’s Committee Report

Baroness Crawley Excerpts

Tuesday 19th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Crawley (Lab)]

My Lords, as Ella Fitzgerald once sang:

“We can’t go on this way”.


A year ago this month, this House arrived at the same conclusion and agreed that reduction in our numbers into a sustained future was the way forward for our credibility and that methods be explored by which this could be achieved. The significant move did not come out of the blue. It came from the Campaign for an Effective Second Chamber, and thanks must go to its officers and members for their perseverance over many years. Thanks must also go to our Lord Speaker, who was determined there and then that a committee be set up urgently to explore the means by which we move forward. I was privileged to be a member of that committee, and I thank our chairman, the noble Lord, Lord Burns, for his leadership and his astonishing ability to resolve multiple complex issues before our very eyes. His membership of the Magic Circle must surely be imminent. Of course I thank my fellow committee members for their wisdom, patience and good humour. After lengthy and robust debate, the final report was approved unanimously.

Not everyone in this Chamber will agree with every paragraph—some may not agree with any—but I sincerely hope that a majority of your Lordships will agree that we have a fair and sensible plan of action in front of us, within our limited terms of reference. Our challenge was to ensure respect for existing Members while laying sound foundations for a sustainable future for new Members. I believe that this is our best shot at reform for a generation, and we need to grasp this opportunity, despite it not being everyone’s perfect vision. Until we do that, as the noble Lord, Lord Burns, said, the Prime Minister, No. 10, the Government and the leadership of the political parties in the country will not hear their prompt to step on to the stage with us and be part of our reformed future. We should be proud of the detailed scrutiny we do in this House, yet that is often not as the public and the media see us. To put it mildly, we are not loved, and our willingness to embrace this report today may go some way to healing that disconnect.

In a nutshell, after listening to evidence from noble Lords and others, we recommend a future House of 600 Peers, its numbers capped, with 15-year terms for new Members, with the possibility of a five-year pause. New Members would be subject to a code of conduct undertaking to leave the House after that period. No party would have an absolute majority and a minimum of 20% of seats would be reserved for the Cross-Benchers. Parties would share political appointments in line with the results of the previous general election, based on an average of the parties’ share of the national vote and of the seats won in the House of Commons. The combination of this formula and the 15-year term limit would ensure that the future make-up of this House reflected the political views of the country over the medium term. This would be an historic first for us. To reach this point it is suggested that there be an accelerated “two out, one in” programme of departures. On page 3 of our report there is a chart showing how this would look until 2042, with a very gentle start in the first five years for existing Members.

That is what our report proposes. It does not propose new legislation. Our terms of reference were to identify practical and politically viable options that might lead to progress on this issue. Waiting for successful legislation to come along, as we know, is neither practical nor politically viable. The report does not propose a specific retirement age as society is moving away from that and, anyway, so many of our older active Members make a significant contribution to the work of Parliament. It does not propose an allocation of Peers via the nations and regions, as some noble Lords wish. We believe that it is the responsibility of the political parties to ensure that membership is not London-centric. The report does not alter the situation regarding hereditary Peers’ by-elections, despite the negative effect that has in terms of gender and background in a capped House, because that would require legislation; similarly, with the Bishops’ Bench. However, many of us believe that government support for a Private Member’s Bill, such as that of my noble friend Lord Grocott, may follow hard on the heels of this reform package being accepted. We can live in hope.

Christmas is coming and our best Christmas present to ourselves this year would be—no, not BB-8 from “The Last Jedi”—overwhelming support for the document in front of us.

European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Baroness Crawley Excerpts

Monday 20th February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Crawley (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, with whom I agree on many points. Making speeches is what we do, but this is certainly one speech I never wanted to have to make; not because I am still angry and upset that we have decided to leave the EU; not because I am a bad loser, as my leave friends might suggest; and not because I believe that leaving is the biggest mistake we have made as a country in modern times; but because we have prioritised issues of immigration—some valid, others definitely not—over the future strength of our economy; and because of the profoundly damaging effect that this decision will have on millions of vulnerable people in this country, possibly for decades to come.

Some 45 years of our country standing shoulder to shoulder with Europe, through good and bad times, have meant that our trade, our jobs, our aspirations for a cleaner world, our research and scientific activities, our rights at work, including our maternity rights, our safer goods and consumer protection, and our sense of security have become enmeshed with those of our fellow Europeans. In those 45 years, the UK has become immeasurably better off. That is why we joined Europe in the first place and, incidentally, why Mrs Thatcher was so keen to be godmother to the single market once we were in. Yet we are about to see those years of co-operation unravel as we go forward with the great divorce—what a great shame as we set out to unravel more than 7,000 pieces of legislation, statutory instruments, agency contracts and countless other decisions.

So we come to the decision of the Supreme Court of 24 January. The wording of the court’s judgment is quite stark and weighty. I will quote—briefly, your Lordships will be glad to know—what the court said:

“The 2016 referendum is of great political significance. However, its legal significance is determined by what Parliament included in the statute authorising it, and that statute simply provided for the referendum to be held without specifying the consequences. The change in the law required to implement the referendum’s outcome must be made in the only way permitted by the UK constitution, namely by legislation”.


Now we have the Supreme Court’s judgment, it is interesting to reflect that it would have been entirely possible for a majority of the electorate to have voted remain and for the Government subsequently to have brought forward legislation, as they are doing now, to trigger an Article 50 exit. Lewis Carroll himself could not have invented a better referendum: none will have prizes.

Everyone participating in this legislative exercise of the Bill’s Second Reading—and now that the Government have published the White Paper, which is not so much a starting pistol as a cry for help—must act according to his or her conscience as he or she answers this question: which course of action is best for our country in the light of the referendum result? For as they say in “Game of Thrones”, winter is coming. Inadvertently revealing her frayed nerves, the very first line of the Prime Minister’s introduction to the White Paper reads:

“We do not approach these negotiations expecting failure”.


The truth is, as noble Lords have said tonight, that nobody, including the Prime Minister, knows what to expect because the practical impacts of Brexit cannot be controlled by the UK alone. In addition, Brexit is now a joint venture between the Government and Parliament. Even with luck on our side, the mess can only get messier.

How did it come to pass that the Government, in trying to build a negotiating position, refused to affirm outright that, whatever happens, those EU nationals living here will have an automatic and inviolable right to stay? In effect, the Government are holding them hostage. In all humanity, it should have been our clear national position on the day after the referendum that there would be no question of altering the status of French, Polish, Spanish and other people living here. They are not bargaining chips. But Brexit-think loosens common sense and, I am afraid, sometimes common decency.

The Brexit Minister has listed the 12 pillars of our national position in the forthcoming negotiations—the 12 pillars of Hercules. I will try to sum one of them up: “Let’s leave the Common Market but then see if we can reinvent it under another name”. We are effectively saying to our European partners, “It’ll be OK if we leave one day and then come back the next wearing a new hat”.

Some people got euphoric about the resounding Article 50 vote in the House of Commons. Kenneth Wolstenholme used to say “They think it’s all over”. In fact, it has hardly begun and this match will be played over many years, in many stadiums, through many different competitions and with many changing team sheets and shifts in tactics. To those outside this House who say that the House of Lords has no right to amend the Bill, I say: “Stop threatening us and let us get on with our constitutional duty, the one we all try to carry out every day—to act and speak and vote responsibly, according to our consciences and in the best interests of the United Kingdom”. That is what we will do, my Lords.

G20 Summit

Baroness Crawley Excerpts

Wednesday 7th September 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I certainly assure the noble Lord that we are fully engaging with the Governments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to ensure a UK-wide approach to our negotiation. As my noble friend Lord Bridges made clear in his Statement on Monday, we have reiterated our determination that there will be no return to the hard borders of the past.

[Baroness Crawley (Lab)]

My Lords, were there any discussions with our European partners during the summit at either ministerial or civil servant level about the unfortunate but significant rise in hate crime since the vote on 23 June?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

Certainly, we take this issue extremely seriously, which is why we have produced a new Hate Crime Action Plan. This is something of which we are extremely mindful. I believe the latest figures show that the situation is still unacceptable but the spike that was seen has now gone. However, I assure the noble Baroness that this matter is at the forefront of our mind and is certainly something that we all take very seriously in discussions with other colleagues globally. We will focus on it because, as I said, we want to ensure that we are seen to be, and remain, the outward-looking, global international country that we have always been.

Outcome of the European Union Referendum

Baroness Crawley Excerpts

Tuesday 5th July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Crawley (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Balfe.

Speaking to a fellow Peer last week on the Lords Terrace, who I knew had a great interest in all things European, I said, “I suppose you’ve read Article 50”. He said, “Read it? I wrote it.” Only in the Lords.

A week is a long time in politics, as Harold Wilson once said, and two weeks is a lifetime. In that time, nearly all my adult certainties have dissolved around me. As a former MEP, like my noble friend Lord Cashman, representing Birmingham in the 1980s and 1990s, I wonder what it was all for. Were the last 40 years the high-water mark for our country’s environmental, social and workplace rights? As someone personally involved in the original EU maternity leave directive in 1992—one of its midwives, if you like—I am particularly angry that we are turning our back on such EU legislation, which has helped hundreds of thousands of British women each year, enabling them to enjoy substantial time off with their newborn babies and to get paid while they are on leave. They are entitled in law—that is, EU law transcribed into British law—to have their job back when their leave ends.

British Governments have not always been enthusiasts for EU workplace rights. In fact, they had to be dragged kicking and screaming even to abstain on the original maternity leave directive, as I recall. So what will future workplace rights look like for a Government now burdened by a slowing economy? Like so much else, we do not know. Will our major cities and conurbations see again the great surge of infrastructure projects and renovation that Birmingham and the West Midlands saw in the 1990s and 2000s—activities made possible by the partnering of EU funding with public and private investment, leading, as it did, to new road and rail infrastructure, the extension of the NEC, the new Symphony Hall, the indoor athletics arena and of course the complete restoration of the city’s 18th-century canal system? “More canals than Venice” was our boast—in a Brummie accent.

No, we will probably not see such partnership again, which is a pity because it was that surge in activity and the jobs that came with it that helped cities such as Birmingham recover from the recessions of the 1980s. It also brought new hope, new prestige and inward investment into that city from firms, many of them European, setting up their HQs there and using the EU rules of free movement of people, goods and services to do so: rules that we rejected on 23 June—indeed, which a majority of the voters of Birmingham and the West Midlands rejected on 23 June. Understanding the underlying causes of that rejection is a huge responsibility for those of us in political life as we move forward, listening ever more closely and acting on inequality and alienation.

The people have spoken and, as a democrat, I must accept the result. However, I am incandescent that such an important question as our membership of the EU, impacting, as it will, on our lives for many decades, was decided in such a simplistic, binary manner and that so many falsehoods and downright lies were allowed to become popular wisdom, leading to so much xenophobia in the campaign and giving a licence for it to continue beyond the campaign, with the police recording an alarming increase in race-hate incidents in the last 12 days.

Where do we go from here? I understand that Andrea Leadsom has called for Article 50 to be triggered as quickly as possible. This is a bit like Captain Smith telling the harbourmaster to let the “Titanic” sail from Southampton as quickly as possible. It is as if we have forgotten that we live in a globalised economy—an economy which may bring prosperity to us all in the UK but will also certainly bring some disruption and harm. We cannot deal with this global reality by declaring UDI for Milton Keynes—for that is precisely how so many global forces, such as China and the USA, will be interpreting Brexit. It will seem to them like an act of provincial suicide, cutting off our neighbours to spite our future and retreating into a cardboard fortress that will be of no help to any of those left inside. My belief continues to be that the EU is an economic NATO. Its much-derided officials keep us from harm while we work, just as our soldiers keep us from harm while we sleep.

In conclusion, I echo the countless questions being asked tonight in families and businesses up and down the country. Will there be an end to present financial uncertainty—Aviva’s decision today is a case in point—or is this merely phase 1? Are our mortgages, savings and pensions safe? Who is going to invest in all those UK businesses exporting to Europe? What is Parliament’s ultimate role in our leaving the EU? What is to become of London’s special financial status? What about the Brits living abroad? Can our farming communities remain robust? Will our young people’s opportunities expand or contract? Will those workers and their families from Europe who are here now be able to stay? Like many noble Lords, I most certainly hope that they will be.

As the daughter of an unskilled Irish immigrant who remembered those signs on the windows of boarding houses in the 1950s, “No blacks, no Irish, no dogs”, I feel particularly aggrieved at the whipping up of fear over immigration during the campaign. I hope that in the coming months we will take a calm, collective deep breath before rushing headlong into Brexit and get the very best deal possible for this country after the deluge. That will take leadership, which is lacking today in the Government and, certainly, in Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition, but I hope that I shall still be around to see a future Labour Government take us back into Europe—a Europe and a UK no doubt chastened and reformed by this searing experience.