European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Boswell of Aynho Excerpts

Monday 20th February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Boswell of Aynho (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute as chair of your European Union Committee. I thank the Leader of the House for her very generous remarks about our work, which I will certainly pass on both to my members and, more importantly, to our very hard-working and excellent staff.

To turn to the matter in hand, I will first outline the committee’s position. Individual members of the committee and its six sub-committees, who total 73 Members of your Lordships’ House, of course have their own personal views on Brexit. Indeed, many of them are speaking today and tomorrow in the debate. But as a committee we made it clear before the referendum last June that it was for the people to decide whether to leave. Our job as a committee is to play our part in ensuring that Brexit is achieved in the most effective way possible.

In seeking to fulfil this objective, the committee has done two major things since the referendum. First, it has been publishing a series of reports on the implications of Brexit for specific policy areas. Six were published on consecutive days before Christmas, another last week, and a series will follow in forthcoming weeks. Some of those reports have already been debated and I hope there will be further opportunities for your Lordships’ House to debate other reports in the weeks to come. Accurate information, analysis, scrutiny and transparency—and, of course, impartiality—are our watchwords. Those are the Government’s and the public’s best allies in making a success of Brexit. I ask the Minister to give us an undertaking that the reports of my committee, and of other committees of your Lordships’ House not necessarily within our family, will be taken genuinely into account as the negotiations get under way.

Secondly, we have consistently stressed the importance of full parliamentary accountability during the negotiations themselves. We all understand by now the principle of “no running commentary”, and as a committee we accept that parliamentary micromanagement of the process would be inappropriate. But neither is mere accountability after the fact sufficient. It is not enough that Parliament will get a vote at the end of the day in early 2019, presented with a “take it or leave it” offer—take the deal, however bad, or take the catastrophic consequences of a forced and disorderly Brexit. Consent must be earned over time and by dialogue, so the Government need to embrace scrutiny and provide a regular, appropriate flow of information to parliamentary committees throughout the negotiations.

To be fair, the Government appear to have conceded this point, though in slightly oblique terms, by offering Parliament at least as much information as is to be made available to the European Parliament, but how much information that will be in practice remains to be seen. We now need specific, concrete commitments. The Government should heed the words of Sir Ivan Rogers in his evidence last month to the House of Commons European Scrutiny Committee, when he described Brussels as “very leaky”, and said:

“You should all expect an awful lot of this negotiation to be conducted very publicly”.


The Government would be wise to make a virtue of necessity and involve Parliament fully in the process from the outset. To revert to our report, we also argued that both Houses should have an opportunity to approve the Government’s negotiating priorities before Article 50 is triggered. It does not appear that this will now take place. I regret that. It is a missed opportunity and I hope it is not to be the first of many.

The Bill, of course, has just one object: to authorise the Prime Minister to make a notification of withdrawal under Article 50. That objective is of course entirely consistent with the outcome of the referendum. Therefore, whatever my personal views of the outcome, I must support the Bill. As a non-affiliated officeholder, I have not voted in any Division since my appointment, nor will I take part in any votes on individual amendments to this Bill, the merits of which are matters of political judgment. But I repeat: the people of the United Kingdom have spoken and it is incumbent on all of us to play our part to ensure that Brexit is delivered in the most effective way possible. Therefore, as chairman of the European Union Committee, I feel obliged to support the Government in giving effect to the decision taken by the people on 23 June last year. If any material attempt is made to frustrate the Bill, I will vote for the Bill to prevail.