European Council

Baroness Smith of Newnham Excerpts

Monday 26th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

As I have said, we remain committed to what was in the agreement. We will be working with the EU to move forward and to make sure that we get the proper and correct situation on the Irish and Northern Irish border that we are all seeking.

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, the Prime Minister suggested that many are, frankly, tired of the old arguments. I confess that my heart sank slightly when the Leader suggested that there would be the opportunity to discuss all these issues all over again in the withdrawal agreement and implementation Bill. Clearly we have many opportunities to keep rehearsing the same issues, but surely the point is to move forward. One point that the Prime Minister made, which seemed so important, was that she had found great solidarity from our friends and partners in the European Union—and, admittedly, from our NATO allies—over the situation with Russia. What are Her Majesty’s Government doing to work through how we retain close relations with the EU 27 assuming we leave on 29 March, or whenever, in 2019? It is by being in the room, discussing and getting to know our partners, that we have been able to get the sort of response that we achieved last week.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

These are exactly the issues we will be discussing in the next phase of the negotiations now that we have the EU guidelines and have set out our position.

European Council

Baroness Smith of Newnham Excerpts

Monday 18th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I am afraid I do not agree with the right reverend Prelate that progress has not been made. We have made a lot of progress in phase 1, not least in giving clarity to UK citizens living abroad and EU citizens here about their status. We have discussed a financial settlement. We have discussed the very important issue of Northern Ireland and have all agreed that we do not want a hard border and have thought about how we might achieve that. In terms of where we go next, I think we are in a good position. The EU Council conclusions state:

“The European Council reconfirms its desire to establish a close partnership between the Union and the United Kingdom … The European Council reconfirms its readiness to establish partnerships in areas unrelated to trade, in particular the fight against terrorism and international crime, as well as security, defence and foreign policy”.


These things are the basis for a good deal.

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, I am sure we welcome the good news brought by the noble Baroness from the Prime Minister, but I think many in your Lordships’ House share the confusion about how we are to get to the Panglossian outcome in Ireland without remaining part of the single market. Is the noble Baroness able to explain that, and how having the Government,

“work closer than ever with all Northern Irish parties”,

fits with the Prime Minister’s confidence and supply measures with the DUP? Has she asked Arlene Foster?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

My Lords, I am afraid I can say only what I have said already today and several times last week. Everyone has pledged that there will be no hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland. We have always said that details of how to maintain an open border will be settled in phase 2 of the negotiations. If we do not achieve that outcome, which we believe we will, we will look to negotiate specific solutions for the Northern Ireland border.

Brexit: UK Plans

Baroness Smith of Newnham Excerpts

Monday 9th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I entirely agree with the noble Lord that this is an extremely important area. As I said, it is very encouraging that the European Council’s negotiating guidelines also identify the importance of partnerships against crime and terrorism. The specific details will obviously be for the negotiations but I say again that no pre-existing model of co-operation between the EU and third countries replicates the scale and depth of the collaboration that exists between the EU and the UK in this area. We want to maintain that, which is why we want to work towards new arrangements that go beyond any arrangements the EU has in this area at the moment.

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, commented on the Prime Minister’s consistency in her view of what Brexit ought to look like, but at times it has looked as if the EU 27 have one position on Brexit and the UK Government have 27 positions on it. One of the issues for Monsieur Barnier is that he has been given a negotiating mandate by the EU 27 and cannot exercise flexibility, because that is not within his gift. As we look towards the next European Council meeting and beyond, what bilateral work are Her Majesty’s Government doing behind the scenes, with the ministries and Heads of Government of the other 27 member states, to look at how they could try to persuade the 27 that a different, more flexible mandate might be helpful for Monsieur Barnier going forward?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I am sure that the noble Baroness will be aware that the Prime Minister has had regular conversations with other leaders at the events she has been to and at other stages, and that departments are of course working closely with their counterparts. We all understand that getting a good deal for both the UK and the EU is in our best interest, and that is what we are all working towards. There is a lot of engagement going on, through companies and business, on the ground to try to make sure that we can move together towards a position that we both want.

European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Baroness Smith of Newnham Excerpts

Monday 20th February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, it will come as little surprise to Members of your Lordships’ House that, on 23 June last year, I voted to remain. I am speaking today not to advocate reopening the debate on seeking to remain, the decision having been taken; rather, what I want briefly to reflect on—it is a different voice and a different perspective—is that, in the debate being held today and tomorrow, I believe that only five Members of the House who are to speak in it are part of what the noble Lord, Lord O’Shaughnessy, has called “Generation X”, those of us who were born in 1969 or later. So the demographic of the speeches is perhaps a little unbalanced. The average age in the United Kingdom is 40, but I do not believe that any of the speakers in this debate are 40 or younger; five of us fall between 40 and 50. So the demographic is somewhat different from that of the United Kingdom where the majority of people of my age and younger voted to remain. These are people who cannot remember life before the United Kingdom became part of the European Union. They believed that their future was as part of the European Union and their identity is European at least as much as it was British. They felt that our future was as part of a mobile European society.

Over recent days and weeks, many people have emailed me and other noble Lords demanding that we should try to thwart Brexit and amend the Bill, and a lot of those calls are coming from people who were disenfranchised in the referendum: EU nationals resident in the United Kingdom and UK nationals resident in the rest of the European Union who had been abroad for more than 15 years. They are citizens who would not, if there were to be a further referendum or a general election before the UK leaves the European Union, be any more enfranchised then than they were last year. There are many people currently living in the United Kingdom whose rights need to be thought about and secured.

In my remaining minutes I want to touch on two key areas: peace and security, and the rights of EU nationals. The former does not feature at all in the 12 principles outlined in the Prime Minister’s speech or in the White Paper. A reference is made to dealing with crime and terrorism, but there is nothing about the defence of the realm, something that as a sovereign country which has sought to “take back control” one might have expected to be important. While I have no intention of tabling an amendment to raise the issue of the European foreign and security policy, I would be grateful if the Minister could reassure the House that the Government fully intend to do what they have implied by going global, that they are going to work even more closely with other international organisations than they have in the past—the UN, the Commonwealth and NATO and with our erstwhile European partners.

We have an excellent reputation for bilateral and multilateral co-operation. Last week I was in Norway visiting the Royal Marines. Considerable training takes place on a bilateral basis with the Norwegians, the Dutch and the Americans, and that is clearly something we should be doing more of in the future, not less. Yet if inflation and a change in the economy weaken the UK’s economic situation, can the Minister also reassure the House that that it is not going to create a hit on defence? The UK’s global security questions are not going to change because of leaving the European Union, and the situation of Trump and Putin makes European security co-operation more important than it has ever been. Peace was the underlying value of the integration process in the 1950s and 1960s, and for me it was the fundamental reason to vote remain; nothing about the economy changes the importance of that and nothing about voting to leave means that we should do anything to weaken the security of Europe.

One of the things the White Paper does talk about in the first chapter is providing certainty for EU nationals resident in the United Kingdom. That is surely something on which we all agree. For the last six months, Members of your Lordships’ House and Members on the Benches in the other place have been united in their wish that the UK should secure the rights of EU nationals resident in the United Kingdom on the day we voted to leave. However, in recent weeks there seems to have been a shift. The uniting of the country that the Prime Minister has called for really seems to be seen more as a uniting of the Conservative Party. The enthusiasm of those Members on other Benches, who had echoed Members on the Labour, Liberal Democrat and Cross Benches in wanting to secure the rights of EU nationals resident here, seems to have been dimmed in recent weeks. I am sure that the unity of the Conservative Party is important for the Conservative Party, but once this Bill goes through, it would be enormously beneficial to all for certainty to be granted for EU nationals resident in the United Kingdom. That is because our economy relies on them.

We can take the moral leadership. Reciprocity sounds wonderful, but the UK has a bad reputation with our European allies given that we do not always reciprocate. We need to take the lead on this one, because if the idea put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Lawson, that no deal is better than a bad deal takes hold, it will mean that at the end of two years the rights of EU nationals will not have been secured in any way. Surely we cannot possibly condone such a situation.

Informal European Council

Baroness Smith of Newnham Excerpts

Monday 6th February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I am telling you she is influential because you are asking me.

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, is not the point of a negotiation or a package of negotiations of the sort we will see with withdrawal that we will start the negotiations but nothing will be agreed until everything is agreed? Is not the danger of looking at reciprocal agreements on the rights of EU and UK citizens that nothing will be decided until the day we leave the European Union, which will be far too late to give certainty to EU nationals currently resident in the United Kingdom—something that we could do unilaterally?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I can only repeat what I have said in answer to all the questions on this, which is that we are looking for an early agreement.

European Council

Baroness Smith of Newnham Excerpts

Monday 24th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

As I have said, we still hope that the EU will be able to sign a trade deal with Canada. We want to get a good trade deal with the EU. We have also been clear that we will not be following an existing model; we will have a bespoke arrangement. My noble friend is absolutely right that we need to be looking outwardly to countries across the world—the Commonwealth and others—with whom we can develop even stronger relationships than we have now.

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, there has been a lot of talk about the great repeal Bill, which is supposed to repeal the European Communities Act 1972—all well and good. This is supposed to liberate us, perhaps, from the European Union and all the legislation. Is it not the case that the great repeal Bill will simultaneously enshrine all existing EU law that is presently on the statute book and regulations, which currently have direct effect, will have to be enshrined into UK law as well? This is not a great repeal Bill; it is a great enshrinement of EU law, and the Bill is perhaps a great deceit.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

The noble Baroness is right that we believe that that is the right approach, because it provides stability and certainty, and gives us time to look in huge detail at the rules and regulations we want to keep and those that we perhaps want to repeal.

G20 Summit

Baroness Smith of Newnham Excerpts

Wednesday 7th September 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

The G20 summit focused on the need to develop a sustainable framework for the global management of migration. By reducing the incentives to make dangerous secondary journeys and stopping organised immigration crime groups from exploiting the vulnerable, we can achieve better outcomes for migrants. As my noble friend will be aware, the UK is a major contributor to Operation Sophia. We are also looking ahead from the summit to two high-level migration events at the UN General Assembly later this month: the UN Secretary-General’s high-level meeting on large movements of refugees and migrants and President Obama’s leaders’ summit on refugees. They will build on the work that was undertaken at the London Syria conference in February.

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, the Prime Minister’s Statement is a little perplexing. She says that,

“we will make a success of Brexit”,

but that follows:

“By building on existing partnerships”.

Surely the point of Brexit is that we are leaving our most important partnership—the European Union. Can the noble Baroness explain how we plan to become a global leader in trade when, at the moment, all our trade negotiation is done through that most important partnership of the European Union and we do not have our own trade negotiators?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

As I have said, we are not turning our back on Europe. We want to be a global leader in trade and we are negotiating a new relationship with Europe.

European Council

Baroness Smith of Newnham Excerpts

Wednesday 29th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

As the noble Lord knows and the House understands—we all understand—the people of the United Kingdom were offered an opportunity to decide whether we should remain in the European Union or not. They have made their decision; we are now in a period of having to transition between that decision having been made and the next steps being taken. At the moment, what the Prime Minister is doing, and what I am doing, is setting out the information that we have—recognising of course that there is much more that needs to be established. That is something that the next Prime Minister will have to take forward but, in the meantime, the Government are doing quite a bit in order to prepare for that stage.

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, I am almost minded to ask—given that Vote Leave promised us that we could “take control”—whether anybody is in control at the moment. However, I want to point to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s comments in the Bundestag yesterday when she said that she was concerned about German citizens living in this country who are concerned about their future. We have not even triggered Article 50 yet. The noble Baroness suggested that nothing changes until we leave, but, actually, things have changed already. People are aware that we have taken that vote and that decision. We need some leadership from the Government and we need to know that the rights of EU nationals resident in this country will be secured. That is for the Government to do, not for negotiations.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

I am afraid that I can only say what I have already said, which is that the rights of all people from the European Union living in this country are unchanged at this time. As frustrating as it may be for the noble Baroness to hear me say it again, their rights are completely unchanged. It is of course something that we will need to clarify, but it is not something that I am able to do today.

Outcome of the EU Referendum

Baroness Smith of Newnham Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

It sounds as if the noble Lord is trying to suggest a second referendum at a later point. This has been a once-in-a-generation decision. The people of this country have been clear. When we trigger Article 50 the clock on the two-year process will start. The Prime Minister has not triggered it now because he believes that it is right that when going into that process the Government are clear on what kind of relationship they want with the European Union in future. That is why he is not doing so himself but is leaving it to his successor.

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Lawson, I welcome the creation of an EU unit in Whitehall, although one wonders why it did not exist already—I think that in some incarnations, it did. In particular, the idea of bringing together policy expertise is welcome. What provision is there for cross-party and non-party involvement in setting the mandate for those civil servants? After all, Vote Leave was a cross-party thing—it even had a Liberal Democrat on its board—and the remain campaign was also cross-party. Surely in the national interest the new Prime Minister should be looking across the spectrum to get the best input so that whatever deal we get really is the best for the whole of the United Kingdom and not just something that narrow parties can bring about?

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

Clearly the campaigns for leave and remain were cross-party, but there is one party in government. It was elected last year and this elected Government will have the responsibility, albeit very much, as I have already indicated, wanting to draw on expertise and knowledge from a range of different sources, of deciding what precisely they are going to seek to negotiate with Europe in terms of our future relationship.

Government and Parliament

Baroness Smith of Newnham Excerpts

Thursday 9th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, for bringing forward this Motion for debate and I welcome many of the comments she made. I intend to focus my remarks on the balance of power between the Executive and the legislature and between your Lordships’ House and the other place, leaving the more detailed discussion of statutory instruments to those with rather more experience in your Lordships’ House than I yet have.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, has already noted, one issue is uncontested—the primacy of the elected Chamber. We all agree on that. It is the basis on which the Salisbury convention rests and the reason why your Lordships normally hold back on matters that were clear manifesto commitments of the governing party, even if we on these Benches have not formally subscribed to the Salisbury convention. This inevitably leads to a degree of executive dominance in a way that does not occur in the US, where the separation of powers is strictly observed, or in many European countries, where coalition Governments, consensus Governments and minority Governments often render legislatures relatively more powerful than in the United Kingdom. Coupled with the large payroll vote in the United Kingdom, there is a tendency to executive dominance, for the Government to lead the process of legislation. Parliament sometimes appears to be silent.

In its excellent briefing on the Salisbury doctrine, however, the House of Lords Library reminds us that the doctrine argued that,

“the will of the people and the views expressed by the House of Commons did not necessarily coincide, and that in consequence, the House of Lords had an obligation to reject, and hence refer back to the electorate, particularly contentious Bills, usually involving a revision of the constitutional settlement, which had been passed by the Commons”.

But what of those rare occasions, which seem to be becoming increasingly familiar, of national referendums? The Conservative Party’s manifesto pledge was clear in its intent that there should be reform, renegotiation and then a referendum on whether or not the United Kingdom should remain a member of the European Union. Hence, Members of your Lordships’ House worked in the spirit of the convention, with due care and attention, to pass the European Union Referendum Act 2015 expeditiously, even if some aspects have not worked out as we intended. I will not refer further at this stage to the Electoral Commission.

The decision to hold a referendum was intended to allow the people of the United Kingdom to decide a contentious issue that divides political parties. It goes to the core of democracy and offers one person, one vote. Can the Leader of the House confirm that in cases where the Government and Parliament have, in their wisdom, offered a referendum, the results of that referendum must stand whether or not Members of Parliament—elected or otherwise; of the other place or your Lordships’ House—like them? As the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, noted earlier, certainty in politics is a luxury. We on these Benches want a vote to remain, but we are also clear that the views of the citizens must be respected whatever the outcome in two weeks’ time. Neither the Government nor Parliament should seek to circumvent the will of the people on this matter. Does the Leader of the House agree?

I turn to cases where manifestos are perhaps silent. Proposals came forward in the last Parliament that were not in any party’s manifesto. A case in point was the legislation introduced by my noble friend Lady Featherstone, which was given considerable support in your Lordships’ House by the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, in a previous capacity. What arrangements could or should be in place for such initiatives coming forward from the Executive in the absence of any manifesto pledges? Are the current arrangements fit for purpose? Perhaps they are.

Conversely, and more significantly, what provisions do we have and envisage for cases where there is a strong voice from Parliament—usually in both Chambers —that legislation is needed or may need to change but the Government do not agree with that position? In particular, I am thinking of the case in the last Session relating to genocide, particularly the genocide in Syria of the Yazidis and Christian Syrians. The other place voted unanimously for a resolution on genocide but, so far, there has not been a clear response from the Government to that resolution. This issue is the subject of a Private Member’s Bill which is to be brought forward by the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, next Monday. The Bill reflects, in part, a concern that the United Kingdom is failing in its duties under the 1948 Convention on the Prevention of Genocide. This is not a manifesto commitment of any political party but it reflects the views of Members across all parties in both Chambers.

Will the Leader of the House comment not on the merits of that specific Bill but on the general principle of how the Government might respond in a timely and measured fashion to initiatives—not necessarily brought forward in Private Members’ Bills but in cases such as the resolution in the last Session—where there is clearly a strong will particularly in the elected Chamber and also in your Lordships’ House? Is there a way that the Government can listen and respond to widely held positions in order to re-empower Parliament and rebalance Executive/parliamentary relations?