European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Hamilton of Epsom Excerpts

Monday 20th February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, I addressed this House in a Question on 24 February last year, when I asked for Article 50 to be moved through Parliament at that stage. The Government slapped that down because they thought that they could probably get it through as an order and that it would not have needed to go through as a Bill. The timing was probably a bit early at that stage and I congratulate my right honourable friend the Prime Minister on sticking to her guns in saying that she should wait to the end of March. It has allowed tempers to cool a bit because there was certainly a great shock in the system, which lasted for some time after the referendum.

There have been voices in your Lordships’ House today saying that we are all individuals, that we should use our judgment and that at the end of the day we can override a referendum which gave a not enormous but quite clear majority in favour of leaving the EU. There are great dangers in that. I do not think this is just an option that people can exercise. If Parliament is not seen to reflect the result of a referendum, it puts itself in a very difficult position. As my noble friend Lord Blencathra said, you give people no option but to take to the streets. People have to move away from Parliament if Parliament no longer reflects their quite clearly expressed views. There are enormous problems in that.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, said that he is definitely going to support the Second Reading of the Bill, but he expressed quite extensive distaste for referenda. He has friends who would agree with him on that all over the EU. They hate referenda too. So what happens? If I happen to be a French, Dutch or German citizen who does not like the EU very much, which is not actually a crime, I am given no option but to vote for the Front National, Wilders or the Alternative für Deutschland, which has become a rather nasty anti-immigrant party. What actually happens is that you shove people who have a quite respectable distaste for the EU and its institutions into extreme parties. What we have done in this country—and it is the object of a certain amount of admiration—is that the established parties have absorbed the wishes of the people as expressed in a referendum. That is surely one of the remarkable things that we have succeeded in doing.

I have to say to the noble Lord, Lord Newby, that I am deeply suspicious of all this second referendum stuff, particularly coming from the Liberal Democrats. They have always claimed to be so keen on referenda, yet when they do not get the result they want, they then seem to be deeply dissatisfied and call for another one. That is very EU, as we know. A number of times when there were referenda in the EU, the so-called wrong result came through and everybody was asked to vote again until they came up with the right result, but I do not think that is very British, and it is totally out of step with public opinion in this country.

The noble Baroness, Lady Royall, and the noble Lord, Lord Campbell, raised the issue of EU citizens in this country. The leave campaign made it a point that we want to see the rights of people resident in this country preserved, and I was quite keen that that should happen. We have been hearing in endless different speeches today that the EU is not going to let us carry on with life just as it was before. It wants to punish us for leaving. So if we take unilateral action and preserve the rights of the 3 million EU citizens living in this country, we are exposed to the EU doing something rather unpleasant to the expat Brits who live in Europe. It is not a question of a bargaining chip, it is just sensible that we should negotiate this on both sides. Once we have moved Article 50, I am sure it will be a very high priority to do that and then we can reach agreement on both sides; I am sure that will happen. It is quite significant that these negotiations have, to some extent, already taken place. Who is blocking any deal on this matter? Chancellor Merkel in Germany, who says that no agreement should be reached on this until Article 50 has been moved. That shows enormous compassion for the quite large number of Germans living in the UK, who she thinks do not really matter as long as the rules are followed. Anyway, let us not focus on that, but that is where we are.

The most remarkable speech we heard today was from the noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport, who raised a very interesting question. He said that the eurozone, as we all know now, is a complete disaster. It is only a matter of time before it collapses, but in the meantime, it is totally impoverishing working people in the south of Europe. He asked why leftish parties are so much in support of an organisation that, for some political experiment, actually impoverishes very large numbers of people on the continent. Why should this get the support of Labour members and the Labour Party in this country?

There is the threat as well, of course, that the EU would like to have a trade war with us and not give us the free trade we already enjoy. Well, they sell one and a half times as much to us as we do to them, so presumably they are going to crank up unemployment even further, for political reasons. If these are not good reasons for leaving the EU, I do not know what is.