Brexit: People’s Vote

Baroness Kidron Excerpts

Thursday 25th October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kidron (CB)]

My Lords, two years ago a political party trying to settle an internal dispute set us off on this path, imagining that the result was a foregone conclusion. Meanwhile, an unscrupulous but impressively motivated alliance delivered a protest vote from a population suffering the uneven effects of austerity, globalisation and deindustrialisation, and then had absolutely no idea what to do next.

The referendum question did not ask if we wanted to leave at any price, or any cost. It had no footnotes about NHS staff, or the value of the European space programme, nor did it allude to the need for an Irish border backstop, or the just-in-time supply lines of Jaguar Land Rover.

But that is okay because, for all that, we have politicians. A representative democracy entrusts politicians on behalf of the electorate to balance a complex matrix of allegiance—to country, to party, to the latest manifesto or referendum result—with the needs of their constituencies and local businesses, alongside their responsibilities to the planet, human rights and children. Politicians are expected to turn big ideas into technical solutions, and find political consensus in pursuit of a prosperous society that delivers for all, particularly the most vulnerable.

The Brexit votes, with rare and admirable exceptions, have failed to deliver on that compact. The complex role of the representative has been denuded into the single idea of delivering on “the will of the people”. This is short-term party expediency to protect supposed electoral prospects.

No time limit was given on leaving. The result required thoughtful consideration and further consultation with almost every sector, stakeholder and citizen—we might even have taken the time to prototype a technical solution to the Irish border issue. Yet in spite of the wild claims of the leave campaign and a partisan media beginning to unravel, both Houses, heavily whipped, rushed through Article 50, blindly creating a cliff edge, without plan or parachute.

What of the will of the people? Theresa May effectively endorsed the view that the referendum was not definitive by calling an election to secure a mandate—a mandate that the electorate refused to give her. However, rather than think again or take into account the new will of the people expressed rather differently in the light of her minority Government, she made her plans entirely dependent on the values and interests of the DUP.

In spite of the volte-face, where the two main parties, once remainers, are now leavers, Parliament has failed to provide clarity, numbers, ideas, leadership or even the basic crisis management skills required to answer the urgent set of questions in front of us.

We are a divided nation: divided in the referendum; divided in the election; divided in the Cabinet; divided in the Government; the Opposition divided between its membership and leadership; divided between young and old. To suggest that a second referendum would divide us further is simply fantastical, and a general election cannot resolve a single-issue question when all parties are putatively on the same side.

Democracy does not mean asking the people once and sticking by it whatever the consequences. Democracy entails transparency and engagement with the electorate. No leave campaigner offered us the current scenario, and no remain campaigner had a plan for leave. And absolutely no one voted for a Canada-plus, a Canada-plus-plus, a hard, a soft, a Chequers, a blind or a brave or a bodged Brexit. That simply was not on the ballot or in the conversation.

We have to give the people another vote on the reality that is now on the table, to allow them to determine their own future, because all other democratic options have been squandered.

European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Baroness Kidron Excerpts

Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 7th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kidron (CB)]

My Lords, at Second Reading I set out an argument for a second referendum based on the principle of informed consent, a standard by which individuals are truly given and granted their opinion. I am not going to repeat that argument now, but it remains my primary reason for supporting this amendment.

Much of what I was going to say has been said, but I wish to make one brief point. We are being asked to have faith in the Government and their officers to secure this deal, but the reason given last week for not securing the fate of EU nationals was not that the Government were not willing, but that a small number of the remaining 27 would not play ball. Similarly, we have already been asked to accept that the Government cannot deliver the single market because the 27 have a red line on free movement. As the negotiation moves on from its visible red lines into the hundreds of thousands of details that will constitute this divorce settlement, the 27 will have a multitude of issues on which they do not wish to play ball. Yet by the Government’s own admission they have to accept, or are currently accepting, whatever is offered by the least interested of those 27 nations.

Meaningful parliamentary oversight and a mechanism by which the much-quoted “will of the people” can be tested are not automatic roadblocks to withdrawal; they are merely an insurance policy against a lousy deal.

[Lord Lexden (Con)]

My Lords—

European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Baroness Kidron Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Tuesday 21st February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kidron (CB)]

My Lords, I shall focus my remarks on a single piece of EU legislation. The EU General Data Protection Regulation, expected to become UK law in May 2018, imposes new responsibilities on controllers and processors of personal data. It affects every single one of us as it provides an essential arrangement with vast numbers of organisations and businesses, most notably the global companies of Silicon Valley, that is the very basis upon which our personal data are gathered, stored and sold. It is an arrangement that no individual nation state has achieved.

At the heart of the GDPR is the demand that the terms and conditions that sweep up all rights, all privacy and all ownership of our every move and transaction be transparent, secure and fair. It is immensely powerful information, fundamental to every transaction we make, which can be used to work out what brand of sneakers we like but can also assess our suitability for employment, our propensity to addiction, our sexuality, our mental and physical health and our political leanings. It can affect our finances, careers, reputations, arrangements for our health, insurance and so on.

The GDPR introduces the requirement of informed consent, provides more stringent definitions and standards of security, sharing and transporting of personal data and preserves some of the rights we currently give away when we habitually tick the “agree” box without reading. It seems to me a significant disaster not to be alongside the bull-headed bureaucrats at the EU as they put checks and balances on the world’s most powerful companies, who are, after all, based nowhere.

While the GDPR is only one of an unfathomable number of agreements that will need attending to, it provides a metaphor. By being asked to trigger Article 50 we are being asked to sign up blindly to terms and conditions we have no idea about. This is not informed consent. Just as the GDPR insists that it is undemocratic and immoral to be denied the right to understand what we are giving away, triggering Article 50 without provision to opt out of the actual terms of Brexit, which will determine every aspect of our future, seems equally immoral and undemocratic. Informed consent is a concept that we use in many arrangements and all areas of life, and it is now considered that consent which is not informed consent is no consent at all—it is coercion. Just as the global corporations of Silicon Valley need to be checked, so too do the Government.

The result of the plebiscite is clear on one binary question only: there is no detail on the face of the Bill. The priorities stipulated in the White Paper manage simultaneously to be too broad and to fail to cover whole sectors. There is nothing about cost and risk, and it includes a fantasy assessment of how the UK fits into the global landscape. Most importantly, the White Paper offers no impediment to accepting a lousy deal. As the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, said earlier in her excellent speech, this document would fail the “treating customers fairly” test. You could not sell someone a washing machine, let alone a pension on this basis.

It is not patronising to say that the electorate did not know what they were voting for: none of us do. It is not yet decided. In this House, we have one power only: to ask the Government to think again. So I ask the Government to think again and make certain that they have the informed consent of UK citizens on the exact terms and conditions of exit from the EU, even if that means a second referendum is a necessity.