Brexit: Negotiations

Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts

Thursday 7th September 2017 Grand Committee

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, we heard from my noble friend Lady Smith of Basildon and indeed from the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, and other noble Lords, in Questions this morning and here this afternoon, of dissatisfaction with the Government’s record of reporting back on negotiations. In that light, our Motion on Tuesday will call on the Government to lay before Parliament a Statement of the strategy and principles which underpin the negotiations on withdrawal, transition and future relationships, accompanied by a plan for the full involvement of the devolved Administrations, together with consultation on consumer, employer and trade union organisations.

It must be clear to everyone who reads the papers that Parliament, business and wider society do not feel they are being listened to. We saw the CBI’s statement this week and the London Chamber of Commerce warning that,

“business confidence has been hugely impacted by uncertainty”.

The telecoms industry is dismayed at being classified as a “low priority” for the negotiations. Those sorts of concerns from outside Parliament are legitimate for us to raise with the Government. Beyond us, there is almost anger from the Welsh Government for their exclusion. There is an absence of any forum for consumer representatives to voice their concerns. All of this points, as the noble Baroness has just said, to a Government who seem unwilling to level with the very people whose futures depend on the specifics of the outcome of the talks.

Indeed, as well as wanting engagement with consumer bodies, the Chartered Trading Standards Institute is concerned that the Government’s hierarchy of priorities may fail to pick up detailed areas where maintaining legislative arrangements in day one of Brexit will not deal with the co-operation between agencies and across networks that currently keeps consumers safe and treated fairly. To raise those sorts of questions is not to question the outcome of the referendum; it is to challenge how the Government are proposing to move us out of the European Union. So it is time for the Government’s “no questions please” approach to stop. Indeed, if I could make one recommendation to the Minister it would be to listen to her noble friend Lord Balfe, because some of his proposals for that dialogue would benefit the whole House.

I also feel that the Government have to stop giving more information to the press than they seem willing to give to us. The leak of the immigration paper may simply be a leak. Harold Wilson said, “You leak, I brief”; it may have been a briefing rather than a leak. Aside from that, we heard from Sky News and the Guardian that Cabinet Ministers, speaking directly to them, seem to accept that the EU will not be able to say in October that sufficient progress has been made in phase one to open talks on the substantive issue of Britain’s future relationship. That may not even happen until Christmas. If that is the case, why not tell Parliament, rather than Sky News and the Guardian, and spell out what this means for a transitional period, as well as for the final agreement, rather than pretend that all is going swimmingly well, in the wonderful definition of optimism?

My plea, to add to that of the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, for regular reporting to Parliament, is for meaningful reporting to Parliament. There will be the meaningful vote at the end, though just as I think the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, said—sorry it may have been the noble Lord, Lord Teverson—if you treat the European Parliament correctly, then it is more likely that it will respect what goes to it. That goes for our Parliament too. We need to be treated with respect so that our meaningful vote at the end is based on the results of good dialogue.