European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Lord Foulkes of Cumnock and Baroness Royall of Blaisdon

Monday 20th February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab)]

My Lords, compared with when we started nearly seven hours ago, we are a bit thin on the ground. However, we make up for it in quality, tenacity and, of course, fortitude. Let me put my cards on the table: I remain totally opposed to Brexit. I am not going to throw in the towel: if we go ahead, it will be a total disaster economically, socially and in every other way, and it was sold on a false prospectus. I will oppose it by any legal and constitutional means. As my noble friend Lady Crawley said, we have a long, long way to go. I say to the Ministers on the Front Bench in particular—and I am not threatening them in any way because all six of them are good friends of mine; I hope that does not do them any harm—you ain’t seen nothing yet.

We are just at the beginning of the beginning. We still have the Committee stage, the Report stage and the Third Reading, and then, of course, we have the great repeal Bill and, I am told, at least 7,500 statutory instruments to be dealt with as a result of that. That is going to keep this House busy with a lot of scrutiny, and I am sure that we will do it properly. Of course, there are a lot of hurdles ahead: we have heard about Northern Ireland; no one has mentioned in detail the problems relating to Scotland. I know there are one or two members of the Front Bench who know some of the problems there. We have heard about the need for approval by 27 national parliaments and the European Parliament. It is a long, long way to go, and there is many a slip ‘twixt cup and lip.

Today, however, I just want to concentrate on one thing very seriously, and that is our form of parliamentary democracy. I was in the other place for 26 years, so I am very sensitive about our parliamentary democracy. Winston Churchill said:

“We believe Members of Parliament are representatives, and not delegates”.


He also said:

“We believe that Governments are the guides as well as the servants of the nation”.


Therefore, Governments should give the lead. I liked a quotation from Edmund Burke, to the effect that,

“a representative ought always to rejoice to hear; and … most seriously to consider”,

the opinion of his constituents. But,

“authoritative instructions; mandates issued, which the member is bound blindly and implicitly to obey, to vote, and to argue for, though contrary to the clearest conviction of his judgment and conscience,—these are things utterly unknown to the laws of this land”.

That was Edmund Burke. That is our parliamentary democracy. We do not have a direct democracy here in the United Kingdom; we have a parliamentary democracy. That is why I was disappointed in the debate in the House of Commons, where they ought to know better.

I was going to mention that someone said, “This Brexit is going to be a total disaster, but I’m going to vote for it”. Incidentally, I have the greatest of respect for them. The noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, outed that person earlier on, so I cannot be blamed for doing that. However, when these Members of the House of Commons took the decision, did they think about their judgment and their conscience, or did they just feel that they had to do what they believed the referendum told them to do?

Let us look at that referendum. First, as others have said, it was advisory. All pre-legislative referenda are advisory. The only one that has not been advisory is the AV referendum, post-legislation, where we knew exactly what we were voting for, and thankfully, we voted it down. In addition, 16 and 17 year-olds were not allowed to vote, as they were in Scotland. Some of them are 18 now, and all of them will be 18 if we finish these negotiations. Some of the old cod—oh! I am chair of Age Scotland, so I had better be careful. I should say some of the elderly people who voted against remaining are, sadly, no longer with us. That is one of the ironies. EU citizens, who work in this country in the health service and the financial sector, were not allowed to vote. They are taxpayers. Whatever happened to “no taxation without representation”? They are being taxed, but they were not able to say anything.

On the threshold, which my noble friend Lord Rooker, and the noble Lords, Lord Kerr and Lord Norton, raised on earlier occasions when we discussed this, it was 40% in the first Scottish referendum, yet this referendum was supported by only 37% of the electorate. It would not have got through if we had had the Cunningham amendment. Even—the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, will know this very well—for Muirfield golf club to admit women, it has to have a two-thirds majority. We are making a major change to the United Kingdom constitution, not just a question of admitting women.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Lab)]

However important that is.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

I am sorry—that was of course implicit in what I said. Finally, there were the lies on which Brexit was sold, not just different interpretations of the facts which we get at general elections, but manifest lies. I will not go into that in more detail.

I will finish with a little story, which goes back to my original point about parliamentary sovereignty. Many years ago, when I was an MP for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley, we were having a vote in the House of Commons to change the law on abortion. I am not a religious person and I did not feel strongly about it one way or another. I therefore went to my constituency party—we had a large turnout, with more than 100 people—and I told them that I did not feel strongly about it and asked them for their advice. We had a fantastic debate, which lasted over two hours, and it was about 50:50. However, they resolved unanimously to leave it to me, their elected representative, to listen to the arguments and decide how to vote. That is parliamentary democracy for you. If we do not stick to that, not just the House of Lords will be redundant but the House of Commons as well.