European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Lord Bragg and Lord Hannay of Chiswick

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

[Lord Bragg]

I thank the noble Countess. I have a short speech—about as third as long as the previous speech—and I have nearly finished it. I was wondering why the Prime Minister did not lead the remain campaign after we had become a minority. Why did she not fight on, as so many other minorities have successfully done, to achieve what they honourably and passionately think is best, as we all do, for this country? It is outside the democratic development of our history that a single-issue vote should be allowed to change the course of that history for ever so dramatically and, in my view, so potentially disastrously.

Finally, one major aspect of the disaster is to turn our backs on those who have come here and given their talents and skills to the United Kingdom, settling here and transforming us in so many ways for the better. They are now reduced to pawns in a government strategy which, to many observers here and abroad, seems largely clueless and without any response, save bluster, to any critical questions. The answer to the question of foreign nationals, for our own national pride in who we are, is to tell those who are here now that we want them to stay here and be welcome.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

My Lords—