European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 5) Bill

Lord Fairfax of Cameron Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 4th April 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Fairfax of Cameron (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Howarth. I want to adopt many of his points, which I would have made myself. Speaking in this temple of remain, one often feels like a Spartan facing the 100,000 Persians. I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, appreciates the analogy, given the part of the world his family originally comes from.

I must say, Parliament and the majority in this place are out of step with the country. I was going to refer to several statistics, but they have already been referred to by previous speakers so I will not. However, I have one that I think has not been mentioned. A recent poll—in the past week, I think—said that 55% of all voters believe that Parliament is trying to stop Brexit. That is worrying. The reason for that is obviously the great disconnect between the current constitutional make-up—of the House of Commons, in particular—and what happened in the referendum. We all know the referendum numbers but, apparently, about 500 MPs in the House of Commons voted to remain and only about 160 voted to leave. That is the reason for the disconnect we now face. I am afraid to say that, in accordance with that poll, Parliament is perceived as seeking to steal Brexit from the people; that is many people’s perception.

The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, referred to palpable anger in the context of the earlier debate. There is palpable anger out there, outside this place, from people who believe Brexit that is being stolen from them. In this regard, 15 days ago, Justine Greening—a prominent remainer, of course—said:

“We can do a clean-break, hard Brexit, which I know many MPs want, and I respect that. Indeed, the millions of people who voted to leave had that kind of Brexit as their expectation”.—[Official Report, Commons, 20/3/19; col. 1117.]


That supports the point I have been trying to make.

I will also make a point about no deal that is not related to Brexit at all. Anybody in this House with any experience of life, particularly of business or negotiation, would tell you—common sense also tells you—that in any negotiation, your counterparty should always know that you could walk away. Take away that credible threat and—similar to what the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, said earlier—you are naked in the arena and have effectively raised the white flag of surrender. I am afraid to say that, in my view, this Bill does exactly that.

One or two noble Lords have spoken about the possible economic consequences of a no-deal exit. I will make just a couple of points. No one expects there to be no consequences of a no-deal Brexit—I want to make that clear—but many, including many businessmen, consider them manageable. Also in regard to no-deal planning, I refer to the resignation letter yesterday of Chris Heaton-Harris, the Minister in DExEU responsible for no-deal planning. He said that there has been an awful lot of no-deal planning by the Government and that, if anything, the Prime Minister appeared not to have been properly briefed about the extent of it. By implication, what she was saying in the public domain did not reflect that position.

A few speakers, including some from the Front Benches, have spoken about how a no-deal exit—a WTO exit—would be a disaster for business; the noble Lord, Lord Stern, referred to evidence, and so on. It depends where you choose to take your evidence from. We all know what the CBI, representing big international business, says, but that is not the evidence from the Alliance of British Entrepreneurs or from an entrepreneurial businessman I know, who told me, “Despite some disruption, especially initially, business will sort out its problems pretty quickly. That’s what business does”.

Closer to home, I pray in aid my youngest brother, who employs more than 100 people in manufacturing in the West Midlands. He exports to more than 30 countries worldwide, including several EU countries, and is the recent winner of the Queen’s Award for Enterprise: Innovation. I asked him what he had to say on this subject. He said, “A little short-term inconvenience is a small price to pay for a healthy long-term economic structure”. There are different points of view here; it is quite wrong to suggest that business generally thinks that it will be a disaster. That is a gross misrepresentation and distortion of the position.

I was going to go on and make a point that the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, made before I spoke: in fact, business fears not a no-deal exit but uncertainty. Ask any businessman about that. It is about uncertainty. I am afraid that a prolonged and substantial extension would only aggravate that.

I have just a couple more points to make. I would like to say something about the position of the House of Lords, as one or two speakers in the debate have already touched on. In view of the admitted democratic deficit we have in this House and its delicate constitutional position, you might think that this place would tread carefully in opposing a majority decision of the people in a referendum. However, I am afraid that that does not appear to be the case. As I think someone else said, this place does not appear to have the self-awareness, to use that phrase, to look at itself. Outside this building, the Westminster bubble, central London and so on, everything looks rather different.

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, does the noble Lord not think that we should take our lead from the House of Commons, which is of course elected and sent this Bill to us?

[Lord Fairfax of Cameron]

As I tried to say earlier, there is a massive disconnect between the current composition of the House of Commons and the outcome of the referendum. Earlier, someone—the noble Lord, Lord Willoughby, I think—quoted the Government’s pamphlet before the referendum; I was not going to repeat it. It said, “This is your decision. The Government will implement what you decide”.

[Lord Adonis]

Is the noble Lord saying that the House of Commons should not be expressing a view on the conduct of Brexit either? That is quite a fundamental revision of our parliamentary democracy.

[Lord Fairfax of Cameron]

I am saying that 55% of voters at the moment apparently thinking that Parliament is attempting to steal Brexit or stop it is not surprising in view of some of the things that have been going on recently.

Moving on from what I was saying, the majority of the country feels betrayed by what is happening. The contract between the elected and the electors has been fractured, and the consequences for democracy and the constitution of this country are potentially very serious. The Brexit genie is out of the bottle and will not be put back in again. At the moment, it looks to people like me as though the battle for Brexit may be lost, but as Monsieur Barnier would say, “La lutte continue”. Speaking as a Conservative, I regret to say that the Prime Minister is presiding, and has presided, over a national humiliation. In my view, I am afraid that this Bill will serve only to aggravate that humiliation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Fairfax of Cameron]

I am looking at this from the perspective of the 17.4 million people who voted to leave.

[Lord Liddle]

I understand that, but you would think that they are the only people who count. What about the 6 million people who in the past two weeks have signed a petition to revoke Article 50? That is one of the biggest demonstrations of support for remaining in the European Union that we have seen. What about the 1 million people who went on the march? Are they just part of the London bubble and do not represent anyone outside London?

[Lord Adonis]

I thank my noble friend for giving way. How many of the 17.4 million does my noble friend think voted for a no-deal Brexit, six weeks’ worth of medical supplies, the M20 becoming the largest car park in Europe, the ports not working, international driving licences having to be introduced and so on? Does he think that more than perhaps a few hundred thousand voted for those particular horrors?

[Lord Fairfax of Cameron]

Is the noble Lord inviting me to respond? Of course I will if he wishes me to do so.

[Lord Liddle]

My noble friend, as always, has taken the best parts of my speech. However, he is right.

We are in the gravest political and constitutional crisis that this country has seen since the Second World War. I am troubled by the tone of the debate this afternoon. There seems to be—certainly on one side of the argument—little realisation of how serious the crisis is. This might be a flawed Bill, brought here by an extraordinary process, but nevertheless it is part of the solution to the crisis in which we find ourselves, and that is why it should be supported.

The idea that Britain could leave the European Union credibly with no deal has always been a fantasy. The popular view was that coming out of Europe would be like bargaining about buying a house or a second-hand car and that unless you are prepared to walk away you will never get anything. This is a complete fallacy about the nature of our relationship with the European Union.

We have been in the European Union for 45 years and in that period the depth of integration across whole fields of our national life has been huge. It started mainly as a customs union, developed into a single market and in recent times there have been important developments in the security field which are vital to the safety of people on the streets in this country. The idea that we could simply walk away from all of this without any consequences or massive disruption is a complete nonsense.

I say with a heavy heart that I blame the Prime Minister for the fact that this argument has gained strength. I greatly admire—perhaps it is a false view—her sense of dogged public duty, but she made a terrible mistake in her Lancaster House speech in January 2017 when she allowed her chief-of-staff, Nick Timothy, to insert into that speech the populist line that,

“no deal … is better than a bad deal”.

That has been the driving force for the argument that has grown about no deal being a credible alternative for coming out of the European Union.