Brexit: Preparations

Lord Carlile of Berriew Excerpts

Monday 21st October 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan]

The noble Baroness is correct that we want to see a best-in-class free trade agreement. That should be relatively straightforward to negotiate, and we believe that it can be done before the end of 2020. We want to see that done and in place so that we can move on to the next phase of our relationship.

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)]

My Lords, given that the Minister has told us in no uncertain terms that we could be 10 days away from a no-deal exit from the European Union, can he now assure the House that steps have been taken to ensure that the data this country requires to protect itself from terrorism has been protected so that it will not be diminished after 31 October? Can he also assure us that steps have been taken to ensure that what we will lose from leaving the European arrest warrant has been substituted by improving the sometimes difficult measures that are applied by Interpol?

[Lord Callanan]

I can certainly assure the noble Lord that we have had extensive discussions and that planning has taken place with the security services to ensure that they have all the data available to them to enable them to do their job. It is the case, of course, in terms of national security, that many of these discussions go on outside the European Union, and those good relationships will continue. With regard to law enforcement data, we are putting mitigation steps in place to make sure that we can still take full advantage of the procedures.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Carlile of Berriew Excerpts

Committee: 6th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 12th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)]

Can the noble Baroness clarify her constant references to Clause 7? As I understand the clause, it is intended to allow Ministers for a period of two years to introduce regulations to remedy deficiencies that come to light during that two-year period. But if we know patently, as has been illustrated in this debate, that there is a severe deficiency that we know about before Brexit, Clause 7 is not designed for that at all and the noble Baroness should not be relying on it. She should instead accept an amendment of this general kind.

[Baroness Goldie]

Clause 7 is designed to address identified deficiencies post Brexit where our existing clinical trials regime may include references to EU bodies and institutions, but those would no longer be correct or competent and an amendment would be necessary. In response to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, it goes back to what may be, and I hope will be, a very positive outcome to the negotiations. In that case, many of these fears will be assuaged, but I cannot second guess the negotiations and I cannot give premature guarantees that might be completely inappropriate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Viscount Hailsham]

I am very grateful to the noble Lord and I am sorry if I misunderstood him, but I understood that he sought to suggest that a charge that creates a surplus in effect amounts to a tax. However, I am bound to say that if he is right and these things are essentially the same, that creates a very major problem. Paragraph 2 of Schedule 7 says that an instrument that allows the imposition of a fee by a public authority can be created only by affirmative resolution. But then, I ask rhetorically, what about a charge? If the fee is governed by the affirmative resolution procedure and a charge is not, we are in an extremely difficult situation. What is a charge? Incidentally, I am not sure this really helps the noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, but if one goes to paragraph 6 of Schedule 4, one finds the phrase “fees or other charges”, which rather suggests to me that there is a distinction between a fee and a charge.

I have a number of specific questions for my noble friend the Minister. First, what is the difference between a fee and a charge? Secondly, related to that, does the provision of paragraph 2 of Schedule 7, which insists that a fee can be imposed only after the creation of a power by an affirmative resolution, also apply to a charge? If it does not, we have a wonderful situation whereby the fee can be imposed only if the power is created by a statutory instrument of the affirmative kind but that is not true of the charge.

[Lord Carlile of Berriew]

May I throw another word into this taxation Scrabble? What about the word “contribution”? Most of us in this House have paid national insurance contributions for most of our lives. Is that a tax, a charge, a fee or a contribution?

[Viscount Hailsham]

The point is a very sound one, although of course most of us no longer pay national insurance contributions. There is of course another word that one could use, which is “imposition”, as in a financial imposition. The real truth is that we are entitled to a proper definition.

Having focused on some specific narrow points, I would just like to look at one or two general ones. The first is the point that I made on Wednesday, and I shall keep a firm grip on it: any power given to Ministers and officials will be abused. That is an absolute cardinal rule of politics. Secondly, the degree of ministerial and parliamentary control on any statutory instrument is minimal. I speak as one who has considerable authority for saying that: for 10 years I was a Minister and I do not know how many scores of statutory instruments I signed off, but it must have been a very large number.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord McNally (LD)]

My Lords, my name has been added to a number of the amendments in this group and I appreciate the Minister’s intervention, which should make this debate fairly short. I want to take up an earlier point made by the noble Viscount, Lord Ridley: he said that he thought some of the speeches were too long and bordering on filibustering. That set a little alarm bell ringing in my mind. I have sat in on some of the debates and I have read others, and I think that this Bill is being handled by this House in the appropriate way that it deserves. Some of the speeches, from all the Benches, have been among the best I have heard in parliamentary debate.

The Minister, in referring to his Privy Council Bench, said that they were poachers turned gamekeepers. I say, en passant, that I look on them as sinners turned penitents, but that is a matter of taste really.

As I say, there have been some magnificent debates, but I worry where we are going on this. Sometimes I wonder whether the Ministers are adopting the tactics of the great boxing champion Muhammad Ali. His “rope a dope” strategy was to take all the punishment in the early stages and then have his own way in the later stages of the fight.

I hear what many noble Lords have said—the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, among them—that of course the House of Lords can go only so far with its opposition in the face of the Commons. The contribution from the father of the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, who warned of an elected dictatorship, comes into play here. So too does something I have mentioned on a number of occasions over the past 20 years that I have sat in this House: this House has the right to say no. We must ask ourselves why successive Governments, some with very large majorities in the House of Commons and some who have reformed this House from time to time, have left it with the right to say no. The reason is that unless we retain the right to say no, we would become a debating Chamber and the Government could simply use their Commons majority to force things through willy-nilly, regardless of whether or not we oppose them. I realise that, in some areas, we bow to the wishes of the elected House, even when we do not want certain things to go through.

As happened in the past two sittings of this Committee, we have discussed in great detail two very important constitutional issues: the right to impose taxation and, now, with this group of amendments, the right to create criminal offences. The proposals go to the very heart of our constitutional settlement and, in my opinion, to the very heart of the responsibilities of this House. Therefore, although I appreciate that a considerable promise was made at the opening of this debate, I say this to Ministers and to colleagues who have made outstanding speeches: regarding our red lines about the right to impose taxation and to create criminal offences, somewhere down the line, if what the Government come up with is not satisfactory, in our responsibility to defend the constitution this House must reserve the right to say no.

[Lord Carlile of Berriew]

My Lords, I want to add one short point to what has been said about sentences of imprisonment. It is likely that if the Government think it necessary to introduce new criminal offences, they are not going to be offences of assault or anything of that kind, but offences that relate to the conduct of business between the United Kingdom and the European Union. What we are talking about here are possibly mainly regulatory offences, for which sentences of imprisonment may not be necessary at all. However, such offences may affect severely the conduct of companies and the relationships between them, the conduct of local authorities and so on. Therefore, I ask that included in the scrutiny that the Minister has very helpfully promised is a slightly more sophisticated test that bears in mind the effect of potential new offences on the business community and the economy.

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords, I support what the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, has just said and ever so slightly disagree with my noble friend Lord Hailsham. Whatever the nature of the offence, it is wrong that it should be created in this way. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, that custodial sentences are highly unlikely, but that is not the point. To create any sort of offence in this way is fundamentally wrong and we should not have anything to do with it.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Carlile of Berriew Excerpts

Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Wednesday 28th February 2018 Lords Chamber

I suggest to the Minister that, because of the ambiguities inherent in the phrase “of a kind”, it would be very helpful if the Government could bring forward on Report an amendment that clarifies exactly what they mean so that there is no doubt. I beg to move.

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)]

My Lords, when I was a young barrister doing cases in strange places such as Caernarfon Crown Court, nobody at that time thought of bringing charges under the Justices of the Peace Act 1361, but some time in the 1970s somebody had that bright idea. The Justices of the Peace Act 1361 applies to certain public order issues. Suddenly, charges of affray started appearing before those courts, and nobody questioned the efficacy or applicability of the Justices of the Peace Act 1361 in that context. Noble Lords may well be thinking: it is bedtime and that is a good story, but what on earth has it got to do with this amendment? I venture that it has something to do with it.

I am not a member of the Constitution Committee but I admire everything it has done and I support what my noble friend Lord Pannick has just said. This is about the clarity of the law. Normally, if we in this Parliament enact a law and nobody questions its efficacy for years—such as, for example, the Justices of the Peace Act 1361—we tend to pat ourselves on the back and say, “For once we’ve got something right. It’s not troubling their Lordships and Ladyships in the Court of Appeal or the Supreme Court, so we can be well satisfied with our legislative process”. What seems to be being said here, at least to the ordinary reader, I suspect, is that if a particular provision, though it exists, has not been tested and questioned before a court, in some circumstances it should not apply. But if it has given rise to difficulty and has had to be tested in court, that is a kind of imprimatur of quality. I just do not understand it. I hope that your Lordships, at least at 9.20 pm, tend not to understand it either.

Whichever version of this particular law we have—which has, I say to the Minister, the commendable virtue of retaining existing rights and allowing us to presume that we can act on our retained rights—please may we have clarity on what is intended and, if necessary, an explanation of why the Government wish to disapply certain rights that exist?

[Lord Krebs (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 28, in my name and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, and my noble friend Lady Brown of Cambridge. This amendment, which seeks to replace Clause 4 with a new clause, includes the same intent as that of Amendment 26 but goes further. It aims to preserve, more comprehensively than the existing Clause 4, the rights, powers, liabilities, obligations, restrictions, remedies and procedures derived from EU law and incorporated into domestic law via the European Communities Act 1972. Where such rights, powers, liabilities, obligations and so on are incorrectly or incompletely transferred, it also imposes a duty to make regulations to remedy the deficiency.

The Government’s ambition for the withdrawal Bill is for the same rules and laws to apply after the UK leaves the EU as they did before. This ambition has been repeatedly stated, including in the Government’s great repeal Bill White Paper. As the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, reminded us in Monday’s debate,

“the Prime Minister said that this Bill is not an occasion for changing the law, it is an occasion for ensuring that on exit day we have a workable, certain, continuing system of law”.—[Official Report, 26/2/18; col. 550.]

However, the Bill as drafted fails to retain all EU law and therefore does not meet this objective which has been set by the Prime Minister.

I am approaching this from the point of view of environmental protection. The problem is not exclusive to environmental law, but because 80% of environmental law stems from the EU it is particularly important in this area. I would expect the Government to welcome this amendment as it will help to support their ambitions for protecting the natural environment. As the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs reaffirmed recently:

“It is this Government’s ambition to leave our environment in a better state than we found it”.


It is widely accepted that, over recent decades, the state of our environment has improved in many respects, due primarily to the introduction of EU laws. Amendment 28 will therefore support the Government’s ambition to go further in protecting and enhancing our environment by addressing four problems with the current Clause 4.

The first problem is the one identified by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, in his Amendment 26. As the Explanatory Notes explicitly state,

“any directly effective provisions of directives that have not been recognised”—

that is, by a court—

“prior to exit day … will not be converted”.

I do not propose to say more about this because the noble Lord has explained, in better terms than I could, the ambiguity created by this clause.

Secondly, the proposed new clause in Amendment 28 imposes a duty on the Government to make regulations that will remedy any cases in which there have in the past been an incorrect or incomplete transfer of EU law. If the Minister considers this to be unnecessary, perhaps we could understand why. The powers to do so are contained in Clause 7(2)(f) but, surely, she would agree that there is a significant difference between a power to do something and a duty to use that power.

The third point that the amendment aims to rectify is that a number of provisions of directives are relied on directly, rather than via transposition into UK legislation. The status of these provisions is unclear as the Bill stands. An example is the Government’s current environmental reporting obligations. Can the Minister confirm that these will be put on a domestic footing as a result of the Bill?

The fourth point, on which I do not intend to elaborate because it is dealt with in Amendment 58, is that the current Clause 4 does not include the preambles to EU directives, which are important in interpreting existing EU legislation. I shall not say more about that today.

Without the amendment to Clause 4, which I am proposing with others, the Bill puts at risk EU law provisions such as the requirements to review and report on the adequacy and implementation of laws such as those in the marine strategy framework directive, the air quality directive and the habitats directive. It does not place obligations on the Government to report and send information to the European Commission —not surprisingly—which is then able to aggregate this information and use it in its consideration of the appropriateness of laws and their implementation.

Without Amendment 28, the Bill omits the aim and purpose of directives, such as the habitats directive specifying that its aim is to contribute towards biodiversity conservation, while some obligations incumbent on member states that have not been transposed into UK law will be lost—for example, the water framework directive’s requirement that water-pricing policies provide adequate incentives for users to use water efficiently. Without Amendment 28, the requirement for regional co-operation in transboundary environmental matters—for example, in article 6 of the marine strategy framework directive—would be lost.

As I have already mentioned, these problems will not only be felt in the field of environmental law. There are other examples of where directives have been incompletely or incorrectly transposed, and which would therefore be lost because of the current drafting of the Bill. These include article 15 of the e-commerce directive and article 4 of the employment equality directive, to name but two.

Finally, I would like to give one practical example of why Amendment 28 is needed. Article 6 of the energy efficiency directive requires member states to ensure that central governments,

“purchase only products, services and buildings with high energy-efficiency performance, insofar as that is consistent with cost-effectiveness, economical feasibility, wider sustainability, technical suitability, as well as sufficient competition”.

This obligation is currently implemented through a procurement policy note. The legal basis for such guidance is article 6 of the directive. No statutory obligation exists in UK domestic law. This means that the article 6 obligation on the Government to purchase highly energy-efficient products, services and buildings will disappear from our law after exit day. The procurement policy note has no legislative status and could be revoked by a Government at any time, without any form of parliamentary scrutiny.

I hope that the Minister will address my points in her response and, if she is not prepared to accept Amendment 28, will explain what additional steps the Government intend to take to ensure that the environment is protected by law and that this Bill ensures that we will have a workable, certain and continuing system of law on exit day.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Carlile of Berriew Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 21st February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, I speak in support of Amendment 6, one of the earlier amendments in the group. It would simply require that a report be laid before Parliament,

“outlining the effect of the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the single market and customs union on the United Kingdom’s economy”.

This is a starter for 10 for the Minister, which he should be able to agree to—because such an analysis already exists. The EU Exit Analysis—Cross Whitehall Briefing explicitly does what the amendment requires. This analysis is not desperately long—only about 30 pages —but it would undoubtedly help Parliament if it were made more widely available. It is, of course, possible for Members of the other place or of your Lordships’ House to see the document, if they go through a rather demeaning procedure and go to a curtained room— curtained, I was told by the civil servant who was invigilating me, because the document is so secret that the light of day, far less outside scrutiny, cannot be brought to bear on it.

I wrote to the Minister asking whether it would be possible for the Government to make the document public on two grounds. First, the document already is public, because Laura Kuenssberg has got it and has tweeted about it. Secondly, the argument for keeping it secret advanced by the Government—namely that if it were public it would undermine our negotiating position—is clearly false; it is a factual economic analysis and one that has been widely replicated by other think tanks and economic forecasters. I am very grateful to the Minister for the reply he sent me on 20 February. However, I was rather disappointed that he repeated the point that it was impossible for the Government to make this public because of their obligation to ensure security of negotiation-sensitive material. Most assuredly, this document is not that. He also said that it could not be published because it did not represent the Government’s view and that publishing it would likely be misleading to the general public.

Let me remind the House what the general public would discover if they had the opportunity to read this document. It sets out three scenarios, one of which is too appalling, I am sure, for the faint-hearted to contemplate—including, possibly, the maiden aunts of the noble Lord, Lord Lisvane. It says that if we exited on WTO terms, in 15 years’ time the economy of the north-east would have fallen by 16% below that than would otherwise be the case. You do not need to be of a sensitive nature to be somewhat frightened by such a prospect. It shows that if we had the sort of deal that Canada is negotiating, the economy of the country as a whole would fall by almost 5% and in the north-east by 11%. It states that if we had the Norwegian model, which is the closest model that anybody has contemplated, we would still see a fall in GDP of 1.6% and of 3.5% in the north-east.

There are those in another place who say that this analysis is far too pessimistic and who have castigated civil servants for deliberately including unrealistic assumptions in it. There is one very narrow respect in which I agree with the suggestion that some of the assumptions are questionable: they are far too optimistic. The analysis assumes that the UK will, over this period, have entered free trade arrangements with the US, China, India, the TPP, the Gulf Cooperation Council, ASEAN, Australia and New Zealand. There is not a single soul who knows anything about trade negotiations who believes that that is possible. In that respect this analysis is too optimistic.

If this document were published, it would at least allow people to see the likely range of consequences and to discuss them. They would also discover that in a Canada-type arrangement, which is nearest to what the Government’s centre of gravity seems to be:

“There are over 550 individual restrictions on the services trade”.


That is a quote from the document, which means fewer jobs across the board in the services trade, not here, there and in odd little places, but across the entire board. So is it surprising that the Government do not want to publish this document? Will it be surprising if the Minister, when he replies to this debate, says that they do not intend to do so? I suspect that it will not, but I hope that he will follow the advice of his colleague in another place, the former deputy Prime Minister, Damian Green, who only two days ago said:

“If analysis is being produced then publish it”.


I agree: he should.

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)]

My Lords, to take up the theme of the noble Lord, Lord Newby, yesterday I went to 100 Parliament Street to read the EU exit analysis papers to which he referred. I will not break the rules by revealing, even though some of it has been leaked, what was written in them. It is a bit of an otherworldly, Kafkaesque environment. I was there with two retired Supreme Court judges and watched by very courteous young civil servants who ensured that we placed our mobile telephones on a desk in the corner of the room. But we were allowed to take our notebooks and pens with us so I have some notes that ensure that what I say is correct.

For those noble Lords who, like myself, have a maths education does that not go beyond ordinary-level additional maths, I recommend before you turn up that you look up the term “computable general equilibrium” or CGE modelling as it is known. It is a form of prediction that may be marginally less ignorant than any other form of prediction of the economy.

As a criminal lawyer who has been in practice for the best part of 50 years, I have seen quite a lot of suicide notes. I have seen real suicide notes and fake suicide notes. This was most certainly not a fake suicide note; it is most certainly a real suicide note. I read it with enormous concern. I am absolutely astonished, and indeed rather insulted, that Her Majesty’s Government do not regard the documents—30 pages of slides, effectively—as essentially disclosable in the public interest. Every member of the public should have the opportunity to read them to understand what I mean by a suicide note.

It is very pleasant over there, if a little dark in a tiled basement. There are beautiful Victorian brick tiles on the walls. It is an architectural gem, so it is a pleasure architecturally. Noble Lords should just go there and read that document because I do not think we are well informed unless we do.

Having said that, I turn briefly to another subject that, because of time, was deliberately not mentioned other than in passing by the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, in his eloquent opening of this debate. That is the internal border within Ireland. This is in the context of the customs union. I was Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation for nine and a half years until February 2011 and I have been carefully following the events and politics in Northern Ireland as a fascinated and interested observer since then. The Good Friday agreement was a remarkable document and has had stunning effects. It has brought together, in a democratic forum, people who used to kill each other. It has meant that people who used to behave in that way have been prepared to put aside their very strongly felt traditions—in many respects, hereditary, visceral traditions. It has led to the economies of both Northern Ireland and Ireland improving considerably. Above all, it has led to the saving of life.

We are not talking just about the saving of life in Northern Ireland. There are some residual terrorists who are still trying to kill people and occasionally succeed, but the numbers have been reduced dramatically. It affects all of us. Let us not forget the plaque above the doorway of the other place recording the murder of a very distinguished Member of that House as he drove out of the House of Commons car park, which some noble Lords also use to their advantage. Let us not forget that soldiers—British soldiers including some from Northern Ireland and indeed from the Republic—died as a result of bombings in London because of that dispute.

There is absolutely no way in which intelligent people could sit down to discuss customs union, be they UK politicians or EU negotiators, without the determination that the one thing which cannot be negotiated away is the liberty of the citizens of Ireland to pass in and out of Northern Ireland and the citizens of Northern Ireland to do the same vice versa. If by the time we get to the Report stage, either by a special provision in the negotiations or by a new treaty, the future of the Northern Ireland border as close to its current state is not guaranteed, I will be voting for amendments of this kind and I would expect a responsible Parliament to do the same.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Carlile of Berriew Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Wednesday 21st February 2018 Lords Chamber

That is why it seems to me that, as other noble Lords have said, the sensible way forward is that at best we should seek to withdraw our Article 106a notification. If we cannot do that, we should not in any circumstances leave Euratom until we have the voluntary offer agreement, recognition by the IAEA and our nuclear co-operation agreements with the key nations. If we have those we might be okay, but I see the decision that we have made as pretty reckless and pretty unnecessary. We still have time to repair it, and I hope we will.

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)]

I agree entirely with what has been said already by the noble Lords, Lord Hunt, Lord Warner and Lord Teverson, so I shall try to reduce the length of my remarks. I am puzzled about why we are here, and why we are here today at all. As to why we are here, we do not have to leave Euratom when we leave the European Union. There is absolutely no evidence that Euratom has performed other than well. It may well be that the Court of Justice of the European Union is the shibboleth, because it is related to Euratom and has jurisdiction over it, and our Government feel that because there is that connection our membership can be no more. But there are no cases about Euratom in the European Court of Justice, so Euratom has operated incredibly well.

I am puzzled as to why we are here today because there is another Bill before Parliament, the Nuclear Safeguards Bill, and, as has already been said, the first Committee day on it is tomorrow. I had assumed that we would be able to debate these issues as part of that Bill. After a three or four-day negotiation with the Public Bill Office I had to accept that that was not the case—so here we are today discussing Euratom, but not in the Nuclear Safeguards Bill, which deals with the nuclear safeguards relating to the products dealt with by Euratom. Alice could not have invented this situation.

I drafted Amendment 221, which is part of this group. There is nothing particular about the new clause in that amendment; it tries to do the same as all the other amendments and new clauses now being debated. It is clear that medical nuclear and radionuclear devices and products are extremely important. They save lives. For example, in University College Hospital and the Royal Free Hospital in London—I cite them because I have witnessed the process in those hospitals—every day of the week consideration is given to using these products to save the lives of patients suffering from cancer. All the arrangements for bringing those products into the United Kingdom are carried out under the umbrella of Euratom. It was not absolutely necessary for that to be done under the umbrella of Euratom, but it is what has happened. The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, mentioned the European Observatory on the Supply of Medical Radioisotopes. That is the umbrella organisation that supervises all these arrangements.

The noble Lord, Lord Henley, has been extremely helpful. As I have said in other debates, I am the patron of the Society for Radiological Protection, which contains more than 2,000 professionals who are engaged in various activities, including the use and safety of radioisotopes in the health service. The noble Lord, Lord Henley, as Minister, has answered many questions and had the courtesy to see the two senior members of the Society for Radiological Protection last week. He very kindly produced for me a list of questions with the Government’s original commentary and their additional commentary. It contains some gems, such as:

“We agree that continued engagement with ICRP”—


that is the International Commission on Radiological Protection—

“and IAEA will be important following UK exit from the EU and EURATOM”.

The trouble is that nothing has been done to ensure that that importance is translated into a process. The Government have said in one of these answers that they,

“will seek to maintain close and effective cooperation with Euratom on nuclear safety. This should include future discussions concerning development of Article 34 policy and cooperative structures”.

Well, hope springs eternal. Nothing has been done about that. I was told that,

“the Government is committed to ensuring that the UK regulatory regime covering radiation safety remains effective post-exit and can be updated in the future, including to take account of international best practice”.

Amen to that. Indeed, the Government are, “considering available options”—this year, next year. This is the flavour of the responses.

Then we have:

“The UK Government is seeking a bold and ambitious Economic Partnership with the EU that is of greater scope and ambition than any such existing agreement”.


It is Euratom plus, plus. The document continues:

“We want to have the greatest possible tariff- and barrier-free trade with our European neighbours”.


Noble Lords could have fooled me after the earlier debates this evening. It continues:

“The Government’s ambition is to maintain as many of these benefits as possible through a close and effective association with Euratom in the future”.


I mark that tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. So the document goes on.

“The Government is seeking a bold and ambitious Economic Partnership with the EU that is of greater scope and ambition than any such existing agreement. We want to have the greatest possible tariff- and barrier-free trade with our European neighbours”.


I mark that as to boldly go where none has been before. There is only a little more, but it is instructive. This is about standards:

“HMG are working with BSI to ensure that our future relationship with the European Standards Organisations continues to support a productive, open and competitive business environment in the UK and for the continued benefit of UK patients”.


I mark that as “where angels fear to tread”. Finally:

“There will be regulatory systems in place for both medicines and medical devices after the UK has left the EU”.


Then we come to the important part:

“The future arrangements are a matter for the negotiations and it would not be appropriate to prejudge the outcome”.


That sounds a little bit like those kids’ films I used to see on Saturday mornings which ended with the words, “That’s all, folks”, but no real conclusion.

What has happened is that, despite the great attempts at co-operation by Ministers, we have absolutely no system in place, in draft or even in vision for the efficient importation and export of radiopharmaceutical products. We should not allow this legislation to go forward unless we know what plans the Government have, and unless we know that those plans have been discussed, negotiated and are the subject of agreement. Otherwise, there is only one option: let us stay in Euratom, which works very well.

[Lord Adonis]

Could the noble Lord address the issue raised by the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, about the notice of withdrawal under Article 106a? As a distinguished lawyer, is he of the opinion that Her Majesty’s Government could withdraw that notice unilaterally, which could be an issue of some moment if the Minister who is open to persuasive arguments were to form the view that the right course for the Government now is simply to withdraw the notice of withdrawal and seek to stay in Euratom?

[Lord Carlile of Berriew]

If I could be allowed an ad majorem argument, I would recommend to noble Lords an article written on the Monckton Chambers website by the distinguished competition lawyer, George Peretz QC, which—as I understand it because I am not an expert on European law—provides the answer yes to the question put by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis.

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, I have two amendments which are grouped with Amendment 8. I am afraid that they probably should not have been included, but like the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, and my noble friend Lord Liddle, I was in Brussels today and did not have a chance to argue the groupings, so I am afraid that noble Lords are going to have to hear me speak on this issue tonight. My Amendment 114 makes a rather important cross-reference to Euratom.

The amendment seeks essentially to add a clause to the Bill after Clause 7, with an accompanying schedule. Before we understand what is happening to our whole regulatory system and therefore pass this Bill, and certainly before we leave the European Union, we need to know from the Government what their view is on future relationships with the EU executive agencies. The schedule lists those agencies which include two Euratom agencies. It lists the supply agency to which the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, referred. Its observatory plays a key role in dealing with supply chains of extraordinarily sensitive and potentially dangerous material. It lists also the Fusion for Energy agency which deals with some of the aspects to which the noble Lord, Lord Broers, referred in terms of the development of fusion as a new source of energy and the high-level, European-wide research programme at Culham and elsewhere. They are very important agencies. At this point we do not know what future UK participation, arrangements, observer status or links with those agencies are going to be.

In addition to those two Euratom agencies, there are 34 executive agencies of the European Union. I have noticed the time and I will therefore not go through the role and remit of them all, as well as the importance of knowing where we are, but they include a number of agencies of great importance to the lives of our citizens, to our industry and to our environment. There are agencies which deal with safety at work, food safety, environmental safety generally, and of course there is the EU Medicines Agency, which regrettably is moving away from Britain, dealing with medical safety. There is a whole range dealing with police and judicial procedures.

These agencies are not law-making bodies, but they are operationally very important to the sectors to which they apply. The UK has engaged very effectively with most of those agencies, to the benefit of our citizens, industries, sciences and judicial system. I have asked a number of Written Questions as to what the future arrangements are, with the standard reply being: “This will all be sorted out in the negotiations”. However, the negotiations are going on at the same time as we are dealing with the Bill. We need to know, in relation to the Bill, how those agencies will interact with the regulations newly transposed into UK law and the way in which we operate in those industries and systems.

My visit to Brussels in the last couple of days has underlined the urgency of the situation of knowing where we are with such agencies. For the first time, I carefully read the EU’s proposition on how we deal with transition periods. That document says that the UK will not only no longer participate in the institutions of the European Union but also,

“no longer participate in … the decision-making or the governance of the Union bodies, offices and agencies”.

In other words, in approximately one year and 34 days, we will no longer participate in any of these vital agencies. It is possible, if the Government put their mind to it, to establish in that period new relationships. In some of these agencies, non-EU bodies are either observers or participants. At the moment, we have not a clue how the Government are approaching the future in all of these important areas. It is an urgent decision that we cannot delay until the end of the transition period, because unless the Government persuade the EU otherwise in the next few weeks and months, from the date of exit we will no longer participate. This will change the way in which we operate in a range of safety, environmental, scientific, judicial and police areas—including security and defence.

That issue arises for a whole number of areas well beyond Euratom. On Euratom, I agree very much with what virtually everybody else has said: it is unnecessary to come out of Euratom. It is still possible to distinguish our approach to Euratom and effectively rescind our resignation from it without changing our position on the EU. Indeed, all the arguments—from industry, science and environmentalists—indicate that we should do that. At the same time, I urge your Lordships, and the Government in particular, that before we get very far in the process on the Bill, we should get a clear indication, not only on the Euratom agencies, but on the rest of the agencies set out in Amendment 263 proposing a new schedule, so that we will know, well in advance of leaving the European Union and its agencies and well in advance of the beginning of the transition period, quite how we will operate with them in future. I ask the Minister to take seriously the list I have given him and, perhaps in writing or on Report, to indicate to us how the Government intend to deal with this very important tissue.

--- Later in debate ---

Before I conclude, I shall address the amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Whitty.

[Lord Carlile of Berriew]

I am grateful to the Minister for the explanation that he has given on the issue of medical isotopes. Can he give us one further piece of information? How many meetings have actually taken place so far in an attempt to negotiate with the EU the continuity of the system of importing and exporting medical isotopes from the UK and from the EU?

[Lord Callanan]

I am afraid I do not have those figures to hand. I cannot tell him how many meetings there have been.

[Lord Carlile of Berriew]

Have there been any?

[Lord Callanan]

I can say that there has been extensive dialogue and discussion with both our EU partners and international partners at official and ministerial level. I can write to him with the exact number, which I can discover.

European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Carlile of Berriew Excerpts

Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 7th March 2017 Lords Chamber

The truth is that the country was split down the middle on 23 June last year. Yes, leave won, there is no disputing that, and I am not seeking to dispute it, but the country was split down the middle. It is still split down the middle—perhaps even more so. This is the most divisive issue of my political generation. It will continue to be divisive. A referendum that will allow people to have the final say is a way of bringing the country together in deciding on that final say. A process started by a referendum should be completed by a referendum. That is why I support the amendment.

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hain. I remind him of one or two aspects of the Welsh devolution referendum. I was the leader of the Welsh Liberal Democrats from 1992 to 1997 and strongly supported devolution to Wales, as he did. It has worked extremely well. However, I remind him that nobody—certainly no Liberal Democrat I knew in Wales—envisaged that, if we did not like the way devolution was set up, we would have a second referendum. We would have considered that view completely idiotic and unconstitutional.

I have been on this side of the House for only the last two or three months, so my memory of being a Liberal Democrat is reasonably fresh. It is clear in my mind that at the time of the European referendum last year the starting point for Liberal Democrats was as follows: there would be one referendum. It was not suggested for one moment that there would be two, three or even four referenda. I see the logic of what the noble Lord, Lord Robathan, said earlier and think he was rather wrongly put down by the noble Lord, Lord Newby, because he made a perfectly fair point. It was envisaged by Liberal Democrats that there would be one referendum and that it would be in accordance with the law. The law provides that referenda are advisory and subject to parliamentary procedure thereafter. If a referendum result, for good reason, is rejected by Parliament then the result is rejected by Parliament. That is what Liberal Democrats expected—namely, the normal process. We would have heard had it been otherwise.

I want to make two particular points, one tactical and the other constitutional.

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon (LD)]

As I remember, to my cost, the noble Lord’s recollection of what positions Liberal Democrats took in the past has not always been entirely accurate. On this issue surely the difference is this. When the Wales referendum was put, it was put on a specific proposition, fully backed up with policy and detail. On this occasion, the proposition put to the British people was to leave or not. They decided to leave. That mandate is clear and the Government are entitled to enact it. But, unless the noble Lord might like to suggest what the mandate is for the particular form of exit the Government choose, there is no mandate to leave the single market, nor to leave the common customs union. Therefore, if there is no mandate for that, why have the Government chosen to use it and follow the most hard-line Brexit possible? If the noble Lord believes that there is a mandate for that, will he describe what it is, given that the majority of the people in this country in opinion polls have made it clear that they do not support this and the Conservative—

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach (Con)]

I do not wish to stifle debate but the noble Lord should know that we are on Report, and the opportunity to interrupt a speaker is not an opportunity to make a speech.

[Lord Carlile of Berriew]

My Lords, as I think the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown, knows, I have enormous admiration for his skill and ability. He is at his best when he makes points with simplicity, but that point was not made with simplicity. I am totally confused by what he sought to say and I reject his argument completely. He knows perfectly well, as all the Liberal Democrats know, that what was put to the country was a referendum in the normal constitutional and legal form. No Liberal Democrat, least of all the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown—perhaps he was too busy eating his hat as a result of his comments on television during the general election—suggested for one moment that there was something different about the referendum that we faced last June. However, I am sure that noble Lords will want me to move on.

The truth of the matter is that we are facing this proposal for the second time—now rather better drafted, thanks to the intervention of the noble Lord, Lord Grocott—because unfortunately the Liberal Democrats do not like the result of last June’s referendum. Nor did I, but my advice to your Lordships’ House, for what it is worth, is: be careful what you wish for. The Liberal Democrats’ record on referenda ain’t so good. Noble Lords will recall the alternative vote referendum, as well as what happened in June. Indeed, I would say that Amendment 1 seeks to compress a huge quantity of extremely complicated issues into a simplistic binary question. It just will not work, and the Government do not need this kind of patronising advice in order to get on with the negotiations.

I now turn briefly to the constitutional issue. The noble Lord, Lord Newby, failed to answer the challenge from the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, as to whether it would be a binding or an advisory referendum. He sought to answer it by saying that he thought that, on balance, it would be a binding referendum. If that is the basis of this amendment, it is ridiculous, because there is no provision in the law for a binding referendum.

The whole debate we have been having in your Lordships’ House has been about how much respect we should pay to the referendum that took place last June. My answer is that we should pay a lot of respect to it. I do not want to leave the European Union, but I recognise that the referendum has taken us to Article 50, which we must get on with triggering as soon as possible. The Government know perfectly well what they have to do. They know that, if they produce a completely unsatisfactory result, they will face a Motion of no confidence in the other place and will fall. We can well do without messing around with the arrangements which should now be in action.

[Baroness Wheatcroft (Con)]

My Lords, I have no wish to get involved in Liberal Democrat internecine warfare but I put my name to this amendment and I support many of the speeches that have been made in support of it.

My noble friend the Minister has done a very skilful job in getting the Bill to this stage in this House, but in Committee he told us to be in no doubt that this country was leaving the EU—no ifs, no buts, and with no idea of the terms. I admire determination but not when it is blind to changing circumstances. I cannot see why any Government would be so adamant about a course of action with no knowledge of the circumstances in which they might take that course.

We do not know what the world will look like in two years’ time. Economically and politically it is at some of the most uncertain stages that I have ever seen in my lifetime. In two years’ time, the EU, the world and our economy could look very different—and, I suspect, not for the better. At that stage, we will be able to look at the deal that our Government have negotiated or, as others have pointed out, at the no deal that they have been handed. Although I am not an advocate of government by referenda, in this situation, having started the process with a referendum, as the noble Lord, Lord Hain, pointed out, it seems to me that the only sensible way to bring the process to an end is to put the terms to the public. I have listened to the arguments of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, and I do not dismiss the patronising advice that he gave the Liberal Democrats or those supporting this amendment, but I believe that the public need to see what is on offer.

During the course of this Bill, we have heard that, whatever people voted for on 23 June last year, it was not to get poorer. I cannot see that in the end the Government will be presenting them with a deal which does not mean that they get poorer. I believe that at that stage they should have a chance to vote on whether, having seen the future, it is the future that they really want.

Next Steps in Leaving the European Union

Lord Carlile of Berriew Excerpts

Monday 10th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bridges of Headley]

I say politely to the noble Lord as regards his second point: we are not going to have backsliding over the result of the referendum. The result was absolutely clear and we intend to deliver on it. As I said, there will be ample opportunity to hold me and my ministerial colleagues to account at this Dispatch Box and in the other place for the reasons I set out. As regards timing, I hear what the noble Lord says about the French and German elections and other events but I have to say to him: on the other side of the argument are those who say, quite rightly, that we need to have some certainty and some deliberate speed in getting on with this, and that we cannot be seen to be dragging our feet. That is why the Prime Minister has set out what I see as a very timely and measured approach to executing the instruction we have received.

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (LD)]

Can the Minister reassure the House that nothing will appear in the great repeal Bill that will undermine the improvements in civil and political society in Northern Ireland and Ireland? That reassurance is needed soon and must guarantee that the beneficial border arrangements on the island of Ireland will not be removed.

[Lord Bridges of Headley]

The noble Lord makes an extremely good point. We already have had extensive discussions with the Irish Government and in Northern Ireland. We are all absolutely determined that we will not see a return to the past or to the hard border. As regards the repeal of the ECA, I entirely take his point on that. I would be happy to meet him to discuss any specific points he has on that. I think we are all aware of the sensitivities surrounding the situation in Northern Ireland and the Republic, so thoughts from the noble Lord and others on how best to proceed would be greatly appreciated.