Brexit: Negotiations

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Thursday 7th September 2017 Grand Committee

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for initiating this debate. I do not think that any of his speech touched on the subject of the debate, which is about information being given to the House. What we are facing, of course, are very different traditions in Brussels and London. When I held office in the European Parliament, I had a good system for getting documents read: stamp “Confidential” on the top of them and they would be read by every office in the European Parliament within a day.

We have to look at the dissemination of information because this is incredibly complex. I want to stick to the subject of the debate. I do not think that there is any central body in Britain that is actually running what I would called a Brexit website. There are such things in Brussels; in fact, Brussels is overflowing with information. Every day I get two briefings from an excellent outfit called Politico, which tells you everything that is going on. It is thorough. It tells you every bit of news that you need to know, including the fact that today is the birthday of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, which I got from that website. Also, at midday I got a thing about Barnier’s statement on Ireland. In other words, the information flow is better co-ordinated, and the Government need to look at how they can co-ordinate ours better.

The Government need to have a contact system for the Lords. When the Minister was at the FCO, she had regular meetings of interested groups. I am always reluctant to put forward solutions that work elsewhere, because generally in this place the reaction is, “British democracy is best and Brussels is rubbish”. I will just mention that the system being used in Brussels, which is working very well, is that the Parliament has a rapporteur—that is aside from M Barnier: it has Guy Verhofstadt. He has what is called a contact group. Every week he meets with a group of parliamentarians representing virtually all of Parliament, although, demonstrating the skill for which it is famous, the Conservative group has managed not to be a member of that particular group—the only group in Parliament that has achieved this. There are two Labour members on it, incidentally. The group meets and Verhofstadt brings it up to date.

The purpose of the contact group, because there are 750 MEPs, is for them to then go away to their political groups and committees and brief them. It is a two-stage process and it happens every week. The second stage is open to anyone who wants to follow what is going on. I would like the Minister to look at that, because making Statements to the House, where you get the usual people jumping up and down with no order and no organisation, is not going to do what we want. We need a structured briefing system for this House. In other words, we need the Minister to look at the system she had when she was a Minister in the FCO, and adapt it to make it work in this way.

My final point is that there is a tendency to rubbish the European Parliament. We should not fall for that. It is following these negotiations very carefully. Ultimately, it has a veto. If it feels that it is not even being considered or taken seriously, it is not going to be as friendly as it might be if it felt that we were fully engaging with it. I have never heard the Minister associated with this negativity, so this is not a criticism, but I ask her to tell her friends in Government to pay proper respect to the elected European Parliament, which contains elected representatives of this country, who, frankly, the Government need to keep on side.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister of State, Department for Exiting the European Union (Baroness Anelay of St Johns) (Con)]

My Lords, I add my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, for securing this debate. His exposition of the last year and why he regrets the decision of the British people dominated his speech, but that shows his passion. We understand that. What I want to do, as my respect to Parliament, is to base most of my remarks on the core issue of the Question on the Order Paper. But I will, in doing so, seek to cover many of the issues rightly raised today.

One of those, of course, was from the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, who joined in the reminiscing of what might have been if there had not been the result in the referendum. He asked a question specifically about legislation. The Queen’s Speech gave an outline of that. Since then, we have been giving greater detail about which Bills are published, and they are now beginning to be debated not only in the House of Commons, but in this House. I waited for 13 years in opposition for the Labour Government to tell us what Bills were about to come: answer came there none. We have given more of an answer about how these Bills will develop. It is important—the noble Lord was not asking an improper question—because as we set out White Papers, as we have said we shall, on immigration and trade, those will be a core part of the discussion in this Parliament about how we proceed after we have left the European Union.

Therefore, Parliament will have a scrutiny role and there will be, I am sure, from my colleagues across departments opportunities to participate in meetings, as I shall do, not only when the withdrawal Bill reaches the House, but in advance. For example, next Tuesday I am having a drop-in meeting for all Peers, not only to hear a brief introduction from me about the Bill, but to be able to hear directly from the Bill team. I felt it was essential for this House to hear that shortly after the finalisation of Second Reading on Monday evening. That is really core to the way I like to operate and I shall continue to do so. I shall return to some of those very helpful comments made by my noble friend Lord Balfe later.

We have heard today the lively, informed, rightful interest in this House on the progress of the negotiations. We are reminded by many that the clock is ticking. It ticks for both sides. As it goes faster, it is faster for both sides. It is important for the European Union also to recognise that they need to be more “flexible and imaginative”. Those are words from the European Council, not made up by us. David Davis is simply reminding our colleagues across Europe what our joint enterprise is. We have always undertaken that we would wish to provide for the greatest possible transparency that is consistent with maintaining our ability to negotiate successfully. In that, we are guided by the Motion that was agreed by the House of Commons that the process should be undertaken in a way that does not undermine the negotiating position of the Government, but there is still much that we can do. We are doing that and we can learn from the debate today, and others, about how we can do more.

In looking at the issues today, I try to set out what we have done so far to report to Parliament, our plans to continue to update Parliament in the wake of future negotiating rounds, including, of course, our support for invaluable scrutiny by Select Committees. and our written publications. In reporting to Parliament, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union has committed to update the House after each round of negotiations. Naturally, I will do so in this House, with the leave of the House, as I did earlier this week. Of course, as noble Lords have pointed out, the dates of the negotiation rounds do not always align well with parliamentary sittings. That is a matter for the House to determine but it is a matter of practical fact and I recognise the difficulties it can raise. Of course, it will occur again as the September round takes place, but we have sought to ensure that Parliament was kept properly informed over the summer. That is why the Secretary of State wrote to all colleagues to give details on the progress made during the second round of negotiations. Noble Lords can be assured that they will have an opportunity to scrutinise the Government on the next round of negotiations when we return in October.

Of course, Statements to Parliament are a powerful method of reporting. I appreciate that they are not the only method, although I note in parenthesis, thinking back to the question asked this morning by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, that when we had the Statement on Tuesday, I was astonished that Back-Bench time was not taken up. There was time at least for two, if not three, further questions at the end. That was a little disappointing.

In the European Parliament the position is different. Of course, there is a constitutional relationship with the Commission; it is a unicameral Parliament. As a result, it has a different way of operating. Therefore, when Monsieur Barnier appears before the European Parliament, as he has just twice, he takes no questions. He appears, speaks and goes. Guy Verhofstadt has been nominated the Brexit co-ordinator there. He does report back and has a role in that respect. It is a different hub: Barnier and Verhofstadt. There is the Brexit steering group, which is more or less a self-appointed group and does not represent all the parties there. That is the group to which Monsieur Barnier goes and has some discussions with on a confidential basis and therefore nobody knows what goes on.

[Lord Balfe]

Everybody knows what’s going on.

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

I have to say, I listened with belief to what my noble friend said on that. I am glad that he said it, not me. We are going to maintain our undertaking to serve Parliament as well as we humanly can.

My noble friend Lord Balfe made a point about the problem with information. Everyone wants it but there is a huge amount of it and how do we get it, particularly in the recesses? I do have an answer. My own department arranges that there is information on its website. It is the go-to place for everything that we do on Brexit. I do not want to put my noble friend off but at GOV.UK/dexeu there are 133 announcements, seven position papers, five future partnership papers and two White Papers. Of course, the European Commission site updates its papers.

The advantage of our website is that after each negotiating round we update the papers. As I mentioned on the Floor of the House this week with regard to the citizenship paper, it means that the joint EU-UK position paper—the annexe that has been published, which shows the red/amber/green system—actually shows how that has been advanced at the latest negotiating stage, not only the further agreement that has been reached but where each of the negotiating groups has agreed that it needs to do more. It is not just us, it is the Commission as well, but we are more forward-leaning. For example, on citizens, after the August round a further 20 lines of detail were added. More than half of those are where we are making more of an offer than the European Commission is.