European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 27th February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

The noble Lord is uncharacteristically inaccurate; he normally does his homework before intervening in this way. He is quite right that I and many on the remain side argued against the EEA being the right solution but he is quite wrong to suggest that any of us argued that it was the worst solution. On the contrary, throughout the campaign I always said while it was a very bad solution, it was the least bad solution of all those on offer. I am on record as saying that and probably said it in debates in which the noble Lord took part. Indeed, that is my strong view today and is the case I now argue.

I wish we could stay in the EU—period, as the Americans say, or full stop—but if we cannot we must try to mitigate the enormous damage. That is the argument I have been making. The way to do that is to try to find a way to stay in the single market, and one way we could certainly do that is to rejoin EFTA, as my noble friend Lord Lea set out. It is extraordinary that the Government have excluded that possibility and I now come to their extraordinary behaviour.

The Government have not only revealed that the benefit for which they are prepared to pay this high cost is nothing like as great as it was always made out to be, but not even considered negotiating on the single market regime provided by the EEA and using that as a basis for trying to get some concessions on freedom of movement. My two noble friends suggested a way forward that might be possible. I do not think that we on this side of the House will be able to take over these negotiations but we want to know—it is important that everybody in the country knows—why the Government did not even think it worthwhile to sit down with our European Union partners and say we would like to stay in the single market but we would also like to curb freedom of movement at least to some extent. We could have a negotiation on that basis.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

Could my noble friend refresh the House’s memory on what success the previous Prime Minister had in having this as an objective in his renegotiation of our terms of membership of the European Union?

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

I think the previous Prime Minister was a completely incompetent negotiator. The way to make progress in European affairs—it is extraordinary that after all these decades the Tory party has not learned this—is to adopt a communautaire approach and the language of one’s partners, to say that what one is seeking to do is in the interests of everybody and not purely in the selfish interests of this country, and certainly not just to get a good headline in the Daily Express or Daily Mail. We make it clear that we share the long-term objectives of our neighbours and partners for the future of western civilisation, as well as for prosperity, competitiveness and employment and these important economic but ultimately subsidiary objectives. Then we say pragmatically, as we have a reputation for being pragmatic, “Would it not be a good idea to do X, Y and Z which would strengthen our common purposes and take further forward our common ambitions?”. That is the way to make progress but it is the opposite of the confrontational approach the last Prime Minister adopted. It is not surprising that he did not get very far.

I am glad that my noble friend made this brief intervention because it enables me to say that I am extremely worried—I am not alone in this—that the Tory party has learned nothing at all from this experience or from any other experience over the last 40 years of the European Union and so will make the same mistake again. It will find itself not achieving what it ought to in the national interest in these negotiations. They will be a disaster, and a largely avoidable disaster, precisely because the Tory Government have not learned the obvious lessons of the past which my noble friend was kind enough to give me the opportunity to remind them of this afternoon.

If you have somebody negotiating on your behalf—a solicitor, an accountant or some representative, agent, trustee or whoever—and you watch carefully what they are doing, you are entitled to get worried should they do something that goes quite counter to normal human common sense. I pointed out three ways in which the Government are behaving in an extremely irrational fashion. I will repeat them so that the Minister can address them when he sums up. First, why are we pursuing this particular objective with the same kind of intensity and passion when we have acknowledged that the objective that we are trying to achieve—what we are trying to obtain in exchange for the high price of giving up our membership of the single market—is not anything like as great it was previously made out to be?

Secondly, why have we not decided to negotiate on the basis of the available option, which we know exists, of our potential membership of the EEA and see if we can perhaps do a little better and achieve some additional concessions? We have not even tried to do this—why not? Thirdly, why are we proceeding in this negotiation by giving up options in advance, before we have even explored them and before we have even started the negotiations? It is a very extraordinary thing to do.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, this simple amendment would require the people to ratify in a referendum any agreement reached by the Government pursuant to triggering Article 50, and I thank my co-signatories from across the House who support it.

I set out the arguments for such a confirmatory referendum in my Second Reading speech. Fundamentally, we believe that the people, having initiated the Brexit process, should have the final say. It is clear that the Government’s preferred option is that they should have the final say. Under pressure, and no doubt as a result of votes that we shall have in your Lordships’ House, they will be dragged slowly but inexorably towards giving Parliament a final say on all the options. However, while that is better than the Government simply taking the final decision themselves, it simply will not do.

As we saw with Parliament’s votes in advance of last year’s referendum, the Government’s track record in judging the public mood on this issue is poor. While as a general principle it is accepted that parliamentarians should exercise their own judgment and not simply echo that of public opinion on this issue, Parliament has already said that our membership of the European Union is for the people to decide. Trying to take back power at the end of the process having ceded it at the outset is both devoid of principle and likely to stoke further public dissatisfaction, whichever way the decision goes.

Secondly, and flowing from this, is the fact that in contradistinction to what the Prime Minister asserted in the White Paper, the country is more divided than ever over Brexit. That is largely because those who were in favour of remaining in the EU were relatively passionless in advance of the referendum because they complacently thought that they would win it. They were wrong, of course. Now many of them are angry about the issue for the first time. No small part of that anger is caused by the fact that they believe that many people were decisively influenced in the way that they voted by what they see as a number of misrepresentations, most notably on NHS spending, which were assiduously asserted by the leave side, including of course a number of members of the current Cabinet. They are also angry that, by leaving the single market and customs union, the Government have chosen a particularly harsh form of Brexit. As a result, they believe that the people should have a vote on the final deal, when it will be impossible to conceal the real consequences of leaving the EU—as happened last summer.

At Second Reading, the Minister asked me why such a vote would help to bring the country together. The answer is that such a vote, conducted in the full light of the facts of the deal, would produce a result that could not be questioned, in the same way as last June’s vote, on the basis that the people were misled. I believe that that would apply to the losing side as well as to the victors. At Second Reading the noble Lord, Lord Butler, asked why,

“those who base their arguments for Brexit on the will of the people are now opposed to consulting the people on the outcome of the negotiations”.

As he said:

“Do the Government regard the views of the British people on the outcome of the negotiations as irrelevant to our departure?”.—[Official Report, 21/2/17; col. 208.]


In reply, the noble Lord, Lord Bridges, said that the Government opposed a referendum on the terms on the grounds that it would dash the certainty and clarity that we need. I agree that we need that too, but nothing would give greater certainty and clarity than the people having expressed the final view on the deal. The Government’s attitude is that if the views of the people were to change significantly against Brexit over the next 18 months, the Government would still ask Parliament to ratify any deal it reached, or simply crash out of the EU. How could that be justified? They are saying in effect that the people are not allowed to change their mind—an approach that is the antithesis of democracy, which is that the people are regularly asked to express their preferences and do indeed regularly change them. This is from a Government with many members who have very publicly changed their minds from being convinced remainers to being cheerleaders for Brexit.

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, the noble Lord may be coming to this in his speech, but the first requirement of his amendment is that any agreement must be,

“laid before and approved by”,

both Houses of Parliament. I ask him: if one House says, “Yes, we agree with the agreement that has been negotiated”, but the other House says no, what happens next?

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, we will spend a lot more time on Wednesday discussing the role of Parliament. The point I make in my amendment is that Parliament will want to express a view before the vote goes to the people again. We will talk in great detail on Wednesday about how it might do that. That part of the amendment is not its most central part.

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords—

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Wheatcroft]

My Lords, I have just said that I have no intention of defying the will of the people; I am giving the people a chance to exercise their will, which some noble Lords may not wish to do. I do not believe that we should not give the people the final say.

When a majority of those voting voted to leave the EU, they had different visions of what that would entail. In answer to my noble friend Lord Lamont, I do not think that the original referendum was, with the benefit of hindsight, drafted as well as it might have been, because I think that people were voting for different things. Some might have favoured an arrangement that continued to give us strong trading links with Europe while others might have voted with a view that we could remain very close to the single market. Some might have hoped that our students would be able to continue their education throughout Europe while others, particularly those in the financial services sector, would almost certainly have been hoping that what they were voting for was an arrangement that would allow their products to be passported into Europe so that they could continue doing business as they do now. That looks increasingly unlikely to happen, with dire consequences for our Exchequer. The one thing on which most voters would surely have agreed is, as others have suggested in this debate, that they were not voting to get poorer.

The most logical solution is that, once the terms of departure are clear, the public should be able to weigh them up and decide whether they want them. Do those who oppose such a suggestion not believe that the British electorate are capable of examining a deal and judging it on its merits? To take that view certainly would be to show contempt for the electorate and I do not. I am not a fan of government by referenda, but nevertheless once one has embarked on that route, it seems that only a referendum can complete the process. This is about listening to the will of the people, not defying it.

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, I had not intended to speak but I need to, because so far no one has addressed the specific terms of the amendment that is before the Committee. There is no element of sarcasm in this when I say that that is uncharacteristic of the noble Lord, Lord Newby. I asked him a specific question about his amendment. Also uncharacteristically, the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, has made a speech that is not based on the terms of the amendment. So let me remind the Committee briefly of what the amendment states. Three conditions are set out:

“No agreement with the European Union … may be ratified unless … it has been laid before and approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament”.


I do not know what meaning that has other than that it has to be approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament, which the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, said is not a problem because we always defer to the lower House. If that is the case, it needs to be in the amendment.

[Viscount Hailsham (Con)]

Perhaps the noble Lord would be good enough to look at Amendment 32 tabled in my name, which will be debated on Wednesday. He will see that this point is addressed in the proposed new clause by using the phrase “both Houses”. I take the point that the noble Lord is making with regard to “each House”, but does he agree that if the phrase “both Houses” is substituted, the point is made?

[Lord Grocott]

I am a long way from reaching Amendment 32, but I shall certainly look at it in good time. Before we get to any question of consulting the people on an agreement, which was the thrust of the comments of both the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, and the noble Lord, Lord Newby, it has to clear the first hurdle of being passed, or I should say approved, by both Houses of Parliament. We need to know what happens if one House says yes and the other no, because it occurs to me that there is a considerable possibility that the House of Commons, with a Conservative majority, might well, on the recommendation of the Prime Minister, agree to approve the Prime Minister’s recommendation. There is also a considerable possibility that this House, not being so bound by recommendations of Prime Ministers of whichever party, will decide that it does not agree with the recommendation made by the Prime Minister and the Government. That is the question: what happens if one says yes and the other no?

That is the first hurdle that would have to be cleared before there can be a referendum, but there is another. New paragraph (b) says,

“the Prime Minister has obtained authority to put it to a national referendum”.

That would require a Bill and an Act of Parliament. That is the second hurdle that would have to be cleared by the House of Commons and the House of Lords before we could reach the third stage, which is the referendum itself—new paragraph (c) provides that it should have been,

“approved by such a referendum”.

I say to those who have spoken so far that unless there are rather better answers to the question, particularly about the two Houses—

[Lord Rooker]

On the issue of the two Houses, I agree with the amendment, although I will vote against it.

[Lord Rooker]

No—the amendment’s flaw is: are we seriously going to attempt to send an amendment to the other place that requires the accession of some 15 to 20 Conservative Members of Parliament to vote with the rest of the Opposition to keep it in the Bill? That is the only audience we have. It is not ourselves or the people; it is the 20 Tories in the other place who would be prepared to vote for what we send. They are not going to vote for this, so why are we going to try to send it there?

[Lord Grocott]

After the best part of 40 years over which my noble friend and I have been in Parliament, we do not disagree on much. I am delighted to see that we clearly do not disagree on this amendment either. In the absence of any satisfactory answers to the questions I have put, I hope that the House will decide against the amendment, should it be put to a vote.

[Viscount Hailsham]

My Lords, I intervene briefly in opposition to the amendment. In fact, referring to an amendment coming down the track that I hope will be discussed on Wednesday, I have tabled a new clause that would enable Parliament to direct a referendum. The amendment that we are discussing would require Parliament to hold a referendum. That seems to be fundamentally different in kind. If two years down the track the public mood has changed after the negotiations, I for one believe that the public’s opinion should be tested in a referendum, which Parliament would then decide. Alternatively, if in two years’ time Parliament decides not to approve agreed terms, I fancy that Parliament would decide that its decision had to be underwritten by a referendum.

That is different in kind to this amendment, which would require Parliament to direct a referendum, whether there is a change in opinion or not. That seems fundamentally undesirable, because we know that referenda are profoundly divisive mechanisms. They are the policy of last resort. If there is not a perceptible change in public opinion, or if Parliament is not minded to vote down the agreed terms, I see no need to require the holding of a referendum. This is a mandatory amendment; I am against it for that rather narrow reason.