European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Lord Finkelstein and Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean

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

[Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean]

My Lords, I do not know what people will feel like in two years’ time. We know that the demographics will have changed and that young people will be coming on to the electoral register and, as we all know, young people have taken a very different view about our leaving the EU to that taken by older people who will no longer be able to vote.

I have two specific questions to ask the Minister. The noble Lord, Lord Lawson, said that the Supreme Court’s judgment was that Article 50 was irrevocable—a view just reiterated by the noble Baroness, Lady Deech. I thought that the Supreme Court judgment was rather more nuanced than that: that because the parties to the action were prepared to use that as the basis for forming their judgment, they had not tested the arguments on the irrevocability or otherwise of Article 50. So there was a clear statement that they had not tested that argument.

On Second Reading, I asked the noble Lord what the Government’s views were on that. In a very skilled response at the end of the debate, he said that it was the firm policy of the Government not to turn back having triggered Article 50. The noble Lord knows that that was not the question I asked. We are not asking about the firm policy. What we need to know is the Government’s legal view on the revocability or otherwise of Article 50. That is a crucial question because if the issue does come back to Parliament, we will be in a very different position if it is revocable. I ask the question, and hope that this time I might have the answer.

My second question is about the position whereby the Government have sought to bypass Parliament, as indeed they did, by saying that the prerogative powers were sufficient to trigger Article 50. It did indeed take private individuals, represented by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, to go to court to prevent the Government going beyond their powers and bypassing this Parliament. The Government had assumed they had powers by using the prerogative, and the Supreme Court was able to disabuse them of that.

[Lord Finkelstein]

Does the noble Baroness accept that the reason the court made that judgment was that both parties had agreed that it was not unilaterally revocable? That is the reason why both parties had to agree, otherwise the court would have ruled differently. It ruled that this was a parliamentary decision of authorisation. That is the reason why it had to come back to Parliament. It would change the law.

[Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean]

The point that the Supreme Court made was that it had not tested the point about revocability. I say to the noble Lord, who knows what the outcome would be if it were asked to do that? The political position now is that the Supreme Court has not made that judgment, and it took going to the court to get the views that we have.

When we get to the end of this whole discussion, I wonder what the Minister will be able to say about our ability to trust the views of Ministers. I am not saying that we do not believe that Ministers really want to come back to Parliament, but the only assurance we will have is putting it in the Bill. The Government do not have good form over this. They foolishly went on to the Supreme Court after the High Court had told them what the judgment should be. We need this in the Bill because the Government have form for bypassing Parliament, and we need to know that that will not happen again.

We need the best legal checks and balances we can get—not to stop Brexit but to make sure that we obtain the best this country can get from it. That is why we need to vote for this amendment today. It is also why, if the amendment is successful in this House, I hope it goes on to be successful in another place. Britain relies on parliamentary sovereignty and now is the moment for it to be fully asserted by this House—not in six months’ time, not in 18 months’ time, not at the end of the period of negotiation. We have to make sure legally that Britain’s best interests are protected and safeguarded. That is the job of this Parliament. It is our job here today and I urge this House to vote for the amendment.