European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Lord Grocott and Lord Newby

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

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, it may be downhill all the way from this point.

This is a very straightforward amendment, which would require any Brexit deal to be put to the people to approve or to reject. It is based on the principle that, having asked the people whether they wish to initiate the Brexit process, only the people should take the final decision.

In asking the people to do this, we are not sidelining Parliament. Clearly, Parliament should debate and vote on all the options at the end of the negotiating process, as we will discuss later, but Parliament was completely at odds with the views of the people in advance of the referendum. If Parliament took a decision that went against the majority popular view, having given the people the initial decision-making role in the process, we would be faced with widespread and justifiable anger that would be corrosive to our national life for many years to come.

I begin by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, for his drafting advice, which he so generously gave me in Committee. I hope that he feels that, even if he cannot agree with the amendment before us, it at least avoids some of the shortcomings he saw in its predecessor.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

I am grateful for that generous tribute. Will the noble Lord advise us as to whether the referendum he proposes would be an advisory or a mandatory one?

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, we have already seen the referendum being taken as decisive. Parliament did not decide that it should look at it as merely advisory. I think that any referendum has to be seen as decisive, to the extent that it requires Parliament to act on the basis of it.

European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Lord Grocott and Lord Newby

3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 7th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, the idea that by speaking and voting, as we will now do, we will block this Bill is, of course, fantasy. It has been abundantly clear that the Opposition in your Lordships’ House will vote for the Bill, as will the Government. I simply repeat—

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

It cannot possibly be honourable for the noble Lord to say that he is going to vote against the implementation of—to kill—the Bill, which has been overwhelmingly passed by the Commons and which is, of course, the result of a referendum, in the full, secure knowledge that the Bill will in fact pass. If he is voting on his amendment I hope he can assure the House that it is with the full intention of trying to kill the Bill. Anything else could be interpreted only as complete cynicism.

[Lord Newby]

Like everybody else, I have got to live with my conscience on this Bill, and I am going to sleep easy tonight. I repeat what I said earlier. We are voting now to record our opposition to the damaging course on which the Government are set and their refusal to allow the British people—

European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Lord Grocott and Lord Newby

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

[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—