European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Baroness Smith of Basildon Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 1st March 2017 Lords Chamber

It was under this policy that the big three EU members—France, Germany and the United Kingdom—took the lead on nuclear negotiations with Iran and it is through this that we play our part in the quartet in relation to Israel and Palestine. We face the continued challenges on Europe’s borders of Ukraine, where the EU has played a key role in stabilising its economic situation. We have worked together with our EU allies on restrictive measures against Russia. We all have an interest in the resolution of conflict in Syria. We hope that the rest of the EU will see that close co-operation makes sense but, as others have pointed out, the Brexit negotiations—on either side—are not necessarily putting interests, whether economic or security, at the forefront. If we are not, why should the EU? Therefore, we must redouble our efforts to work with our current EU partners and ensure that we stay in the common foreign and security policy. I commend this amendment to your Lordships’ House and look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say on the matter.

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 20, in the names of my noble friends Lady Hayter and Lord Lennie and the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, and also to comment on the other amendments that have been spoken to already. This amendment is on the conduct of negotiations and the key issues on which we believe the Prime Minister should give an undertaking to have regard to the public interest as she negotiates. Those issues are,

“maintaining a stable and sustainable economy … preserving peace in Northern Ireland … trading”—

and tariff-free trading—and co-operating on a number of issues, including,

“education, health, research and science, environmental protection … domestic security, and … crime and … maintaining all existing social, economic, consumer and workers’ rights”.

I suppose it was inevitable that, during the week of the Oscars, there would be one group of amendments that would remind us of a famous film. As much as I would like to cheer the Minister up, I am afraid that I am not going to cast him as some dashing hero in a “Superman” film—I can see the disappointment on his face—but instead refer to the political and satirical comedy, “Monty Python’s Life of Brian”, specifically the “Before the Romans” sketch, which some noble Lords will recall. We can all picture the scene: the People’s Front of Judea is meeting to plot its campaign against the Romans. In a rhetorical question, Reg—otherwise known as John Cleese—shouts, “What have the Romans done for us?” After numerous suggestions of what the Romans had done, he has to conclude, in some exasperation,

“All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?”.


One lone hand goes up: “Brought peace”.

So, having listened carefully to our debates so far on this group of amendments, perhaps we should film a new scene: “What has Europe done for us?” We have heard from noble Lords who have spoken and in other debates that we have had on the Bill about the benefits that have been gained through our participation in the Europe Union in education, employment rights, the economy, consumer protection, science, the environment, women’s rights, business, trade, tackling organised crime, and of course—as in Rome—peace and security. But perhaps we will leave filming the scene for another day—I can ask the Minister which character he would like to take the part of.

One aspect of the referendum campaign that always concerned me was the notion that somehow Europe was something that was done to us, almost as if it were without our consent and that somehow we had no say. Yet in so many of these issues, it has been UK negotiators, UK commissioners and UK Members of the European Parliament who have taken the lead and at all times have been fully engaged.

We have already heard some articulate and persuasive speeches on the impact that our participation has had on our citizens, and on wider Europe. Our amendment and the others in the group seek to ensure that in the negotiations that follow invoking Article 50 we do not, as my grandmother would have said, throw the baby out with the bathwater. It is all very well for those who have campaigned for our withdrawal from the EU to claim that we can maintain those protections, but we all heard the noble Lord, Lord Lawson, when, speaking of the consequences of leaving the EU on Second Reading, he said:

“First among these is the consequence of the promised great repeal Bill, which will enable us to repeal or amend damaging EU regulations, which is of particular importance to our smaller businesses. I know that the party opposite”—


that is us—

“is concerned that this may adversely affect workers’ rights but less than 10% of the vast corpus of EU regulation concerns workers’ rights. It is the other 90%-plus that needs to be judiciously culled”.—[Official Report, 20/2/17; col 45.]

Those are chilling words.

I do not ascribe those motives to the Prime Minister, the Secretary of State or even the Minister here, but he will know that that is exactly what many of those who advocate the hardest and fastest form of Brexit seek. When we get to the great repeal Bill process, I trust that the Government will hold to their promises and not seek to weaken existing EU legislation that applies in the UK, including in the areas I have mentioned and all those listed in our Amendment 20. If in the future the Government want to bring forward any such changes, that should be done only in the normal way, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, outlined, through primary legislation allowing appropriate parliamentary scrutiny.

Meanwhile, alongside that process, the Government will be negotiating with the EU and the other 27 countries, and will need to, in the words of our amendment, “have regard to” these key issues. That is the undertaking that we seek from the Minister. I am not asking for detail at this stage, because all the amendments, like the Bill, are concerned with the process. That is why we are seeking undertakings from the Minister on behalf of the Prime Minister.

Let us look specifically at some of the issues raised. Consumer protection is not even mentioned in the White Paper; it has not been highlighted in any way as a priority for the Government. Yet it is a key issue for many—probably most—of our citizens. It has also been clear since the referendum that trade is a concern. Then there is environmental protection—clean air, clean rivers, clean waters. There is a huge issue about air quality. We appreciate that the Government are not achieving the appropriate standards—but it is not the standards that are wrong, and the answer is not to reduce those standards, or to cease being committed to them, but to do more to meet them.

Another issue mentioned in our amendment is security and peace. On Monday we had a long and fruitful discussion on Northern Ireland, also on one of our amendments. Now we are talking specifically about UK domestic security and tackling serious and organised crime, including terrorism. In some ways, I am surprised that we even need to have a debate on this issue. Some noble Lords will recall—I see the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, in his place, and he will recall this as well as I do—the many hours that we spent debating this subject in your Lordships’ House, when the coalition Government made great play of the idea that they were opting out of all EU police and criminal justice measures, and would opt back in only to those that were effective and useful.

I thought that was quite a bizarre exercise, and it caused enormous concern—but in the event, quite rightly, we did not opt out of anything that applied to the UK and was in effect. All we opted out of were defunct and non-relevant measures. That is relevant to this debate because even then, the Government’s conclusion was that those measures were important to tackling serious and organised crime, to protecting our national security, and to our role in doing so, both within the EU and more widely.

My noble friend Lady Drake made some powerful comments about violence against women and girls, particularly with regard to trafficking. Those are exactly the sort of reasons why we needed those measures then, and we need them now. We need some assurances about how the Government are going to approach this matter. It has to go beyond mere co-operation.

I do not know whether the Minister has had the opportunity to speak to Rob Wainwright, who I heard on the radio a few weeks ago. He is the director of Europol and was formerly head of the Serious Organised Crime Agency. He has a lifetime’s experience in wider security issues as a civil servant and with the agencies. With his leadership, the UK has been taking a lead on these issues; we have an extraordinarily important role here. In the interview, his comments from a measured and professional position made a powerful and irrefutable case for continued co-operation and engagement, as close to the level we have now as possible. Any reduction of or drawing away from that only goes against what, two or three years ago, the Government said was essential and in British interests.

My noble friend Lady Drake covered the issue of women’s rights particularly eloquently and powerfully. Her speech explained why there are concerns about employment and social protection for women. I hope the Minister will be able to address her questions. In her remarks on transitional arrangements, particularly for trade and business, the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, took a reasonable and measured approach. She wisely described a safety net so that we do not have the cliff-edge fall which noble Lords have spoken about in other debates. I look forward to the Minister’s comments on that.

I know that the Minister and his ministerial colleagues do not like to refer to “transition” and that the preferred term is “implementation phase”. I do not really care what we call it, but I have an image in mind. Noble Lords of a certain age, like me, may recall the Road Runner cartoons. “Beep beep”, he goes as he runs, hurtling towards the cliff edge. Only when it is too late does he look down and find there is nothing there. At that point, he plummets hard and fast to the ground. I do not believe that the Government want us to replicate Road Runner, but if we are not going to do so they have to have a plan. Whether it is called “transitional” or an “implementation stage” that plan must be brought before Parliament. The Minister may recall that my noble friend Lord Liddle asked a similar question on Monday evening about arrangements for trade. The Minister may not want to respond on this immediately, but I ask him to reflect on it. The consequences of a cliff-edge Brexit—the Road Runner Brexit as it should now be known—are real and dangerous.

To summarise, I have made two key points. First, we need an assurance that, on the key issues in this group of amendments, there is no attempt to use Brexit in any way to water down or reduce benefits and protections for UK citizens. Secondly, that cliff-edge, Road Runner Brexit is to be avoided at all costs.

[Lord Balfe]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a former Member of the European Parliament and all sorts of other things that the Daily Mail gets very worked up about us not declaring. We are debating the negotiating priorities and it is becoming very clear how absolutely complex that exercise is. Whatever people were supposedly voting for, I—who was strongly for remain—interpreted it as voting to take back control. I do not agree with them, or with their definition of control, but apparently that was what was happening. The Bill takes back control because it puts it back into the Government’s hands to negotiate a sensible settlement. Taking back control does not mean repudiating every single international institution and body connected with the EU. Quite apart from the Commission, the Council, the Court of Auditors and all the rest, there are 22 different agencies listed in the amendments, all of them providing specialist functions of one kind or another.

Two of those agencies are based in the United Kingdom and I want to speak about them tonight: the European Banking Authority and the European Medicines Agency. They are different institutions in different fields, but what they have in common is that both of them are here and are EU institutions. I was involved very much—at the margin—with the European Medicines Agency, which was an achievement of John Major. It was not quite as big an achievement as getting written into the treaty that the European Parliament would always meet in Strasbourg—which also came out of that package—or that the Patent Office would move to Munich.

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[Baroness Smith of Basildon]

The point that I was making was that they are not in the list of priorities. They may feature down the list, but consumer protection is not one of the Government’s 12 priorities.

[Lord Bridges of Headley]

The rights of consumers are very high in our minds. My noble friend Lord Balfe made an eloquent and passionate speech about the position of UK nationals in EU agencies and about the role of the agencies themselves. I absolutely repeat what I said at Second Reading: the Government would indeed like to thank all those UK nationals for the contribution that they have made and continue to make. I hope that my noble friend will forgive me if I do not go into great depth and detail now on each of the agencies—there are 16 of them. They are important and are referred to in the White Paper. We will be looking for ways in which our relationship with those agencies might continue in some shape or form.

Ireland was mentioned but not discussed in this debate. Obviously, it was debated on Monday. I shall simply repeat that we will stand by the commitments in the Belfast agreement and its successors.

I will turn first to the issue of higher education and our world-class universities, which is the subject of Amendment 29. In the White Paper, a priority is indeed for us to ensure that the UK remains the best place for science and innovation. With regard to student fee support, we of course recognise the significant contribution that EU students make to the UK’s world-class universities and have already made commitments that we will give existing EU students and those due to start courses in 2017-18 certainty with regard to both their student loans and their home fee status. This is not just for the short term but for the duration of their courses. I can also confirm that research councils will continue to fund postgraduate students from the EU whose courses start in 2017-18. It is worth noting in passing that no similar commitment has been made to UK students currently studying in other member states.

A number of noble Lords referred to collaboration and co-operation in higher education. I entirely endorse the importance of this in the years ahead. The noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, who is not here, spoke about this. I should like to say for the sake of the entire Committee, though, that as regards Horizon 2020 and Erasmus, the Prime Minister has made clear that we will continue an agreement to continue to collaborate with our European partners on major science research and technology initiatives. There may be specific EU programmes that we want to participate in.

With regard to the Bologna process, it is important to underline the fact that this is an intergovernmental agreement among countries in the European region and, as such, it is not tied to EU membership. I can therefore assure noble Lords that UK participation will not be part of our negotiations as it will be unaffected by our departure from the EU.

Next, a number of your Lordships spoke about rights, especially on employment and equalities. In a number of areas, the UK Government have already extended workers’ rights beyond requirements set out in EU law. For example, women in the UK who have had a child can enjoy 52 weeks of statutory maternity leave and 39 weeks of pay, not just the 14 weeks under EU law. That said, and importantly, we have already made—as a number of noble Lords have noted—a clear commitment that there would be no erosion of workers’ rights as a result of the UK leaving the EU and to ensure that those rights keep pace with the changing labour market. The great repeal Bill will make provision for this legislation.