European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Flight Excerpts

Monday 20th February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Flight (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the Prime Minister and the Government on the professional, cautious and polite way in which they have managed Brexit proceedings. It is no surprise that the Prime Minister clearly has a substantial proportion of the country behind her. We all know that this is a short, very simple Bill about enabling the Prime Minister to give the European Commission notice of our intent to quit. I therefore ask myself why there have been so many speeches—and so many speeches to come—in both our Houses. What it is about is this: all my lifetime the big political issue, which was often lurking and not discussed, has been the right relationship between the UK and Europe. For 20 years I said to Conservative friends that this should not just be pushed into the corner; it needed to be faced up to and addressed. They would often say: “No one is interested in it: they care about the National Health Service”. I always said: “Give them the opportunity to be interested and you will be amazed”. Look what happened: people were eventually given a referendum and we had a turnout that we had not even seen at a general election.

That is why both Houses of Parliament have reflected the wish of people to express their own thoughts and perceptions about our relationship with Europe. I am pleased that none of the opposition political parties intends to disrupt and frustrate the calling of Article 50. It would be clearly inappropriate to do so—tantamount to telling citizens that they did not know what they were doing and being offensive towards them. I voted Brexit because I objected to the gradual removal of the democracy we had spent 1,000 years establishing. However, the obvious, huge issue for the EU going forward is the terrible mistake of adopting the euro. If you try to share the same currency among very different economic areas, particularly with no transfer payments, you will eventually get an explosion. In 1988, I wrote a book called All You Need to Know About Exchange Rates. Even then I made the point that, unless Italy had the steam valve of being able to devalue periodically, a financial collapse there would lead to the destruction of what people were trying to build. That is still the great risk facing us.

Everyone knows that the referendum was an entirely legitimate way of seeking the view of citizens and that it was intended that the Government would follow whichever way the people voted. However, I have never had a satisfactory answer to the big question of why, unlike the PR referendum, its result was not legally binding. It is a rather strange situation: everyone understood that the Government would do whatever people voted for, but there was no requirement so to do. That has, to some extent, caused problems. It is correct that Parliament should authorise the Prime Minister to go ahead and activate Article 50. One thing I have always been uncomfortable about in the way the EU has pushed a lot of law into our legal system is the use of the royal prerogative. I would have found it rather ironic if the prerogative had been used by the Brexit camp. I was pleased and surprised at the 384 majority in the Commons. That reflected, first, the fact that no one wanted to be seen to be thwarting the will of the people and, secondly, the popularity of the May Government. I think that people are quite clear that the Bill is not about whether we leave or not—the vote was about that—but is about enabling the Prime Minister to implement people’s wishes as expressed in the referendum.

There is an irony in that the judicial review that the remain camp sought and achieved has actually served to, if anything, strengthen the Government’s position. It is also somewhat ironic that the supporters of remain have argued that they were keen on parliamentary democracy here, but they have been fairly happy for it to have been eroded by the EU over the past 30 or 40 years. Those supporting leave have supported the democratic cause but part of the whole process of having this vote is to fall in with the parliamentary case.

We are where we are: we all know that this Bill is just about the mechanics. It has to be successful for Article 50 to be activated. It also has this extraordinary involvement of Euratom. I read with interest the Library’s comments on it, where it seems to take the view that the legal cases on the one side or the other are equally strong and that it was, therefore, safer to include Euratom rather than to ignore it. I am also pleased that the Commons voted 6:1 to put the Brexit decision directly into the hands of voters and it has been the correct decision. Finally, there has always been a lack of clarity over Article 50 and it is, perhaps, a good thing that that has been resolved.