European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Hamilton of Epsom Excerpts

Committee: 6th sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Monday 12th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall make a brief broader point. For all the reasons we heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, and the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, I strongly support the objectives of these amendments. So, apparently, does the Prime Minister, judging from her speech last week. Is the reality not that it is also in the interests of all the airlines, the aerospace industry and the airfreight industry across the whole of Europe to retain the present situation? Was that not obvious from day one of Brexit discussions? Why did the Government’s negotiating strategy not recognise that this was one deal which we could have done very quickly and very clearly which would not have interfered with any of the rest of the negotiations and one which almost the rest of Europe would have greatly welcomed? There would have been no cries of “kein Rosinenpickerei”—“no cherry-picking” —from Europe on this one. A bit of common sense at the beginning of these negotiations would have parked aviation. We would have agreed aviation.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

Was it not the EU that said that nothing was agreed until everything was agreed?

[Lord Whitty]

It was both the EU and Mr Davis and they were both wrong because in all negotiations whenever you enter negotiations you agree some things and you then park them. We could have agreed this. It is ridiculous that airlines are now faced with selling tickets in three weeks’ time not knowing whether they can deliver on them. I just make that more general point because the Minister keeps saying it is all down to the negotiations, but the negotiations went wrong from day one, and this is one example where we could have delivered something, albeit it would need to be part of a total package at the end of the day.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Hamilton of Epsom Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Wednesday 21st February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

I think I was behaving exactly like the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes. I was using the procedures of the House to make an argument against what I thought at the time was a very bad Bill—and which only this week has meant that people like me are now the highest taxpayers in the United Kingdom, as we predicted would happen. If I may say so to the noble and learned Lord, his point is completely irrelevant to the amendment before us.

The noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, talks about tensions being created in Edinburgh between this Parliament and the Scottish Parliament. There will always be tensions between this United Kingdom Parliament and the Scottish Parliament, as long as it is run by people who wish to destroy the United Kingdom. That is what they are about: using their powers to break the United Kingdom. The notion that we should move in a direction and get ourselves into a position where we need lots of legislative consent Motions simply provides more opportunities for everything to be turned into a constitutional crisis, which is the nature of the SNP. We will come to that later in our consideration of the Bill.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

Does my noble friend think that the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, was briefed by the Scottish National Party before he tabled this amendment?

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Hamilton of Epsom Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 21st February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

My Lords, as I have explained, I do not accept that we are in any way under instruction from anybody. I have heard the word “instruction” and it deeply shocks me. As a matter of fact, I heard it from the then Leader of the House in the days following the referendum. For the reasons that I have already set out and I do not need to repeat, that is a pernicious doctrine that is extremely dangerous in its constitutional ramifications and should be rejected.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

I will not give way for the moment; I would like to make a bit of progress.

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, that even if you were to believe that we are under some kind of instruction relating to Brexit it certainly could not apply to the issue of our remaining in the customs union or the single market. I do not remember that issue being mentioned at all in the referendum, certainly on the customs union. As we all know, there was nothing on the ballot paper about it. The noble Lord, Lord Robathan, intervened to say that he remembered some mention of it by certain people during the campaign. I would be very interested if he could put on record the particular dates, times and places where those comments were made, because I reckon I was pretty alert to what was being said during that campaign, in which I took an active part. I never heard the issue of our remaining in the customs union being dealt with at all, let alone seriously analysed and considered. I do not think that the British people had any chance on that occasion to express a preference one way or the other on that matter. As the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, said, that is a matter of practical fact. Parliament must be sovereign and must take what will be a very important decision.

We all know the potential damage that this country will suffer from Brexit. A lot of it will be from our leaving the single market. Admittedly, some of that damage can be mitigated by our signing a free trade agreement with the EU, but that will not cover financial services, which is such an important part of the country’s economy. There will be great damage from our leaving the EU, even if we are able to sign such a free trade agreement.

On the issue of the customs union, an enormous range of businesses, sectors and companies see this as an existential threat to their continued survival in this country. That goes across all kinds of people, from automotive to aerospace, pharmaceuticals, the nuclear industry and the airline industry. Noble Lords are familiar with the arguments and the very depressing projections made by people from those industries about the costs that they would incur if we leave the customs union.

What is extraordinary is that we have not really heard any of the benefits. It is extraordinary that you can make a proposal for something involving undoubted costs—we can all disagree about the costs and what their extent might be, but we cannot possibly disagree with what sign is on the variable in the equation: it is a negative. The idea that we should incur costs and risks without really knowing what the potential countervailing benefit is seems extraordinarily perverse. No business would manage itself on that basis.

When you press the Government they say, “We need to leave the customs union because that enables us to sign customs agreements or free trade agreements with other countries outside the EU and outside those countries which have themselves free trade agreements with the EU at the present time”. When you actually look at the prospect of doing that you see that it is a mirage; it does not exist at all. Let us take the United States, which spent eight or nine years failing to negotiate the TTIP with the European Union, as the Committee knows very well. Those negotiations broke down partly because of disagreement about the investment guarantees that the Americans were demanding and partly because of the demands being made by the Americans about access for their agricultural products to the single market. Anybody who knows anything about America knows perfectly well that it is inconceivable that an American Administration, let alone a Republican Administration backed by so many Senators and Congressmen from the prairie states and farm states, would ever ratify a free trade agreement with anybody that did not include agricultural products. If it includes agricultural products, of course it includes hormone-impregnated and antibiotic-impregnated beef and chlorinated chicken. Are the British people any more likely than their continental partners and neighbours to accept such products on the market? Would they accept the very appalling animal welfare standards which the Americans have? They have virtually zero grazing for well over 90%, if not very close to 100%, of their cattle at the present time. The idea that you can go through Texas and see lots of longhorn being herded by cowboys as you could 100 years ago is wrong: you will not see a single Texas Longhorn now out in the open air. Those problems will remain and in practice I believe they will be insuperable for us, just as they have been for the rest of the European Union.

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[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

Can the noble Baroness tell the House what happened before the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom joined the EU? At that stage there was a seamless border between two separate countries.

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws]

Is the noble Lord at all aware of the number of times there were bombings of customs posts? Is he aware of the number of times there were attacks on those who policed the border? Do we really want to revisit that past? It seems that many do.

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[Lord Tyler (LD)]

My Lords, I do not wish to emulate either the forensic skill or the eloquence of those who have already contributed to the debate but rather ask the Minister a very specific question. He will be aware that in Clause 14—the interpretation clause—there is a specific reference to exit day, which is spelled out in subsection (4):

“A Minister of the Crown may by regulations—


(a) amend the definition of ‘exit day’ in subsection (1) to ensure that the day and time specified in the definition are the day and time that the Treaties are to cease to apply to the United Kingdom, and


(b) amend subsection (2) in consequence of any such amendment”.


As the noble Lord, Lord Hain, said, that is secondary legislation. The Minister will be only too well aware that the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, on which I serve on behalf of your Lordships’ House, is already very critical of the number of powers that Ministers are taking under this Bill, not least because it sets a precedent for powers that will be expected by Ministers under subsequent Bills in the series that relate to Brexit. Therefore, it is important for your Lordships’ House to be told very clearly at this stage by what process the Government intend to put that secondary legislation before the two Houses of Parliament. Will it be by the negative resolution, the affirmative resolution or, indeed, the super-affirmative resolution, as that completely changes the way in which Parliament will be able to exert its control, as noble Lords have suggested? If the process is to be undertaken by negative resolution, that is very limited and the powers of the two Houses of Parliament would be so undermined as to be laughable. If it is to be done by the affirmative resolution, there is more opportunity for discussion and either House can decide what should be done in those circumstances. However, I suspect we will be told that this has to be done with such speed that it will have to be done by an accelerated process, which will inevitably mean that there is no proper opportunity for either House to decide whether we agree with this process.

The super-affirmative process may well be selected. The Minister may be better informed than most Ministers on the Government Front Bench but I defy him to spell out to the House this evening which of these options will be put in place. This is of critical importance. We should not just sweep away this opportunity to take this decision. As all noble Lords who have spoken in this debate have said, it is an extremely important one which will colour the views of your Lordships’ House when we look at some of the other powers that Ministers seek to take under the Bill. Again, I refer to the recommendations of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. If we really are taking back control, here is an early opportunity for the Government to show who exactly is taking back control.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

My Lords, I am somewhat confused by this debate because it has been suggested that the Government have taken a hard line in saying that a decision should be reached on our future relationship with the EU by 29 March next year. It is not the Government’s date; it is the Article 50 date as drafted—as the noble Lord, Lord Hain, acknowledged —by the noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, one afternoon in his garden in Brussels, when he decided that it should be two years from the moment when Article 50 was moved. Therefore, it is not our date, it is the EU’s date, or, more precisely, the date of the noble Lord, Lord Kerr. I do not quite know why we are now saying that somehow this is the Government taking a hard line. When the House of Commons voted by an overwhelming majority to move Article 50, surely that was on the understanding that the negotiations would be completed in two years from when it was moved. Therefore, we now seem to want to go against the other place and tell it that it has decided on the wrong date.

On top of that, the EU has made it clear that it wants the negotiations to be completed not by 29 March 2019 but by October or November this year, so it is bringing the date forward. I do not accept the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, on deadlines. Perhaps he found deadlines inconvenient when he was a trade union negotiator, but it strikes me that they are the only thing which works when you are negotiating with the EU, and that everything seems to be decided at the last minute. It is important that we keep to 29 March next year and I would be very unhappy if that were changed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard]

I should like to respond briefly to what the noble Lord, Lord True, has said. He refers to the Article 50 date. Without deciding where we wanted to go, we chose to send in an Article 50 declaration on 29 March. That meant that we chose when the clock would start ticking. That is my answer to the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton—like Nelson, I cannot resist provocation from a Hamilton. However, there is not a single Article 50 date. There is provision in the article for the possibility of an extension and there is also provision for the exit date to be after the two-year period. If you read the article carefully, you will see that you are out after two years or when the withdrawal agreement comes into effect, so there is the possibility of a post-dated cheque.

In my view, the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, is exactly right. Flexibility in negotiation is extremely important. Giving yourself deadlines is crazy, as is surrounding yourself with red lines. The reading of Article 50 by the noble Lord, Lord Hain, is, in my humble view, completely correct. However, the big point in this debate is not that; it is the question of who takes back control. Who decides? Is it the Executive or the legislature? So the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, is extremely important.

I end by saying that I warmly welcome what the noble Lord, Lord True, said about the Good Friday agreement and the Belfast treaty of 1998, and in particular what he said about Prime Minister Major. To someone like me who was an observer at the time, it is completely correct. I remember when the leader of the Opposition, Mr Blair, went to Washington when I was the ambassador there. He was asked about Northern Ireland and what he would do if he became Prime Minister. His reply at my dinner table to assorted Senators and the Vice-President was that he would try to do exactly what John Major had tried to do and he would be very pleased if he could do it half as well. It is very good to hear that the solid voice of the Conservative Party is not that of the Patersons and Hannans but is in favour of retaining all the good work done by the Conservative Government and then by Mr Blair’s Government in that astonishing first year.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

If the House of Commons voted by an overwhelming majority to move Article 50, surely that was done on the understanding that the negotiations would be completed in two years. If the date was to be changed, surely that would need a vote in the other place.

[Lord Elton (Con)]

Perhaps I may ask a question for elucidation—I may have missed something. The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, and others have spoken as though Parliament is not to be consulted by the Minister making the order. However, paragraph 10 of Schedule 7 states:

“A statutory instrument containing regulations under section 14(4) may not be made unless a draft of the instrument has been laid before, and approved by a resolution of, each House of Parliament”.


It may not be sufficient scrutiny, but there is scrutiny—Parliament is not being completely bypassed.

Brexit: Negotiations

Lord Hamilton of Epsom Excerpts

Tuesday 30th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan]

One person’s sniping is another person’s constructive comments. I enjoy engaging with this House, sometimes on destructive comments, but we have considered appropriate contributions from all parts of this House.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, raised the issue of the Irish border. Is it not very difficult to get a solution to the Irish border issue that is separate from the trading relationship that we have with the rest of the EU?

[Lord Callanan]

We have made it clear that we do not want a hard border in Ireland. The exact structure of the border and customs arrangements will, of course, emerge from the end-state negotiations. Where we end up will clearly have an impact on the border arrangements, and we have made that very clear.

Brexit: Deal or No Deal (European Union Committee Report)

Lord Hamilton of Epsom Excerpts

Tuesday 16th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, I join the House in saying how sorry I am to hear about the noble Lord, Lord Jay. I hope he recovers quickly.

I wish I could go along with the customary congratulations that the House normally pays to reports and say what a good report it is, but I would be both dishonest and hypocritical if I said I thought this was a good report. It is a very weak report. The only thing I can say is that it is slightly better than one I debated some time ago, about the time of the referendum, which failed to address any of the issues that were coming up in that referendum. It was quite interesting that in that debate, unlike in this one, only one member of the European standing committee actually attended the debate, the noble Lord, Lord Boswell. Obviously all the others were so humiliated by the quality of the report that they did not bother to come.

The reason this is a very bad report is that at the end of the day, we are assessing the effect of no deal on the United Kingdom, but we should face the fact that no deal will affect not just the United Kingdom but the EU as well. As the EU sells one and half times as much to us as we do to it, if there are any adverse effects of no deal, they will be felt more powerfully in the EU than in the UK. In the absence of the noble Lord, Lord Jay, I would like to ask the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, when he winds up, why the committee did not call for evidence from, for instance, the German car manufacturers’ association. There is not a single German car that we buy in this country which is not assembled outside the United Kingdom. If we resort to the WTO, there will be a 10% tariff to pay on those cars. It would surely be interesting to know how German car manufacturers would react to that. Maybe they think we would pay anything for our German cars; maybe they think that because they already sell cars to us, despite the devaluation of sterling against the euro, they will therefore continue to do so. But it is a matter of interest, is it not, to know what the EU may actually feel about selling its cars to us?

[Lord Davies of Stamford (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. Would he not agree that in trade negotiations, the leverage of one side or another is a function of the proportion of the GDP of that party which is exposed to trade with the other country in question? I am sure the noble Lord is very well informed on these matters and knows that, in the case of the British relationship with the other 27 members of the EU, we have 14% of our GDP exposed to the EU—that is the proportion exported to the EU—while in the other direction, with the exception of the Republic of Ireland, no single member of the EU sells to us more than 4% of its GDP. So in fact our dependence on them is much greater than their dependence on us.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

That is one way of looking at the balance between the United Kingdom and the EU. But at the same time, I think the noble Lord, Lord Davies, would accept that if we are putting at risk 10,000 jobs in the United Kingdom, we are putting at risk 15,000 jobs in the EU; if we are putting at risk 100,000 jobs in the United Kingdom, we are putting at risk 150,000 in the EU. There are two ways of looking at this, and it would have been a good idea if the committee had also called some Commissioner—I am sure there is one—responsible for employment in the EU and asked how they would react to seeing very large numbers of their own citizens made unemployed by the fact that they cannot reach a deal with the United Kingdom. Would that not have been helpful? The noble Lord, Lord Davies, would be the first to accept that EU levels of unemployment are running at between 8% and 9% at the moment, compared with just over 4% in this country, so the EU has double the rate of unemployment that we do. You would have thought that in those circumstances they would think the jobs of people in the EU were quite important and would not want to sacrifice them by having no deal with the United Kingdom. It is important to ask that question.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (LD)]

One of the problems with the argument being made by the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, is that he sees the EU 27 as one unitary decision-making body. He may be surprised to hear that employment law is not an EU competence but a member state competence. I am a member of the committee, and the answer to his question about calling German car manufacturers is that we did not need to do it, for two reasons. First, we know what German car manufacturers say: the German chamber of commerce and the German employers’ federation both came out early and told the German Government that they stood behind their negotiating position and would not seek exceptional deals. So we knew the answer to that, which is why we did not call them. Secondly, when he is talking about these figures, the noble Lord also needs to think that there are 27 member states, not one.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

Certainly, there are 27 member states, but you could produce that argument for not calling anybody to give any evidence whatever to the committee. You could say, “We know what their position is anyway”. Come on, this is ridiculous! You have to call evidence from people just to have their position confirmed. You can also cross-question them and ask them what they think the significance would be for car sales to this country if a 10% tariff barrier was imposed under WTO regulations. They would tell you whether they thought their turnover was going to go up or down, or whether they thought they were going to sell more or fewer cars, and they might be able to tell you about the impact it would have on employment in Stuttgart. The noble Baroness is making an absolutely ridiculous claim, if she does not mind me saying so: that you do not call somebody because you know what their views are already.

The other thing wrong with the committee’s findings on all this is that at the end of the day we have only one ace card in our hand: if we reach no deal with the EU, we stop paying. We are under no obligation whatsoever to pay towards the EU’s budget. There are perhaps a few side-effects on pensions and things, but the main payment would stop on the day that we actually reached no deal. As we know, the EU is absolutely obsessed with getting hold of our money because it really does not know what it is going to do. Juncker has already made noises about others among the 27 nations of the EU contributing more. I will tell your Lordships what is going to happen: all the poor countries of the EU are going to say Germany should pay because it is the richest country, so the Germans are not very keen on this either.

It therefore strikes me that if we completely discard the idea of no deal we are completely undermining our negotiating position. On top of that, it is not inconceivable that we may be unable to reach a deal. On both those counts, it is very important that we actually work on no deal and take steps to provide more customs posts and generally put in the logistics that would be needed for no deal. If we do not, we are going to be in a very weak position in negotiating with the EU. If we want a good deal, we have to have the threat of no deal permanently there. If anyone is actually saying that under no circumstances should we entertain the idea of no deal—indeed, there are people in the Government saying it—they are guilty of undermining our negotiating position with the EU.

The other day a German ex-ambassador called Mr Thomas Matussek said the EU’s position on the negotiations is that it wants as soft a Brexit as possible but at the same time, it does not want to encourage anyone else to go down the same route as the UK. Germans, of course, believe in the two-headed eagles that have the great ability to face in opposite directions at the same time. When you come to think of it, those two statements are completely contradictory. My best guess as to what is going to happen is that we are going to reach heads of agreement terms by October or November this year, and then there will be a two-year transition period while the detailed negotiations go on.

I hope we have learned by now that dealing with the EU is actually very difficult. We started off these negotiations rather like someone playing tennis on a vicarage lawn, lobbing soft furry balls over the net. Unfortunately, what came back were cricket balls hurled with great vehemence and accuracy and designed to injure and break bones. I hope we have learned by now that negotiating with the EU is not going to be easy in any circumstances. We must therefore keep our position as carefully as possible, with options. If we do not have options, we are going to end up with a very bad deal.

That transition period is going to be the start of some very difficult negotiations; whatever deal is reached by October or November of this year may be much easier. So we must keep “no deal” as an option if we want to have a good deal, and anyone who suggests otherwise is undermining this Government’s negotiating position.

[Viscount Waverley (CB)]

Before the noble Lord sits down, could he tell the House what, according to what he is suggesting, he believes Parliament would be voting on?

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

What should Parliament be voting on at the end? It will be voting at the end of the Article 50 process on whether to accept the deal for the transition period that is then possible. The “no deal” may kick in later if we cannot reach agreement during the transitional arrangements.

Brexit: Reports to Parliament

Lord Hamilton of Epsom Excerpts

Monday 8th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan]

I totally agree with the noble Baroness that the EU Select Committee is an excellent grouping. We report to it regularly and I am sure we will be doing so in future. There has been a wide range of discussions with all sorts of parties about what might happen. We already have a Minister in the department—Steve Baker—who is planning for a no-deal scenario, but we hope that will not be the case. We want a full, fruitful and special partnership with the EU and we are continuing negotiations to that effect.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, following my noble friend’s intervention, does the Minister agree that if we have no deal on the table, we are much more likely to get a good deal?

[Lord Callanan]

It is important to bear in mind any possible outcome. We plan for all eventualities, but of course we are planning for a full and special partnership and we hope that will be the outcome.

Brexit: Release of Impact Assessments

Lord Hamilton of Epsom Excerpts

Tuesday 28th November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan]

I have my view on what they said, but the noble Lord will be able to judge for himself. We will make these documents available in a reading room, and he can read them and then come back and argue the point then.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

Can my noble friend confirm that one reason why it is a bad idea to stay in the customs union is because we would not be able to negotiate free trade deals with other countries all round the world?

[Lord Callanan]

My noble friend makes a very informed point.

UK and EU Relations

Lord Hamilton of Epsom Excerpts

Tuesday 12th September 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, I would like to use my five minutes to talk about the progress of the negotiations with the EU or, perhaps more accurately, their lack of progress. Michel Barnier, the EU negotiator, has made it clear that he needs to see progress on three issues: the rights of EU citizens living in this country and British citizens living in the EU; the Irish border question; and, of course, the money.

It strikes me that if there was any political will behind it, agreement would already have been reached on the EU citizens. We want them to stay here and it cannot be impossible to find the means by which that happens. We do not have to agree to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice for its citizens who live in this country because that would admit that our legal system was rather inferior to that of the EU. I do not think that anybody in this House would really go along with that.

At the same time, the Irish border issue is one where there seems to be complete unanimity. Everybody seems to agree that we should continue with the frictionless border between the north and southern Ireland, which existed decades before anybody joined the EU. If there was any political will there, I believe that issue could have been solved. The problem is that if it were solved, that would create a template of frictionless borders which could then be applied to the rest of the EU. That would then draw the EU into the question of the next phase of discussing our trade relationships with it.

Then there is the money. I always think that the whole debate about how much we should pay the EU was rather snarled up at the beginning by its absurd claim that we should pay it €100 billion. Not unnaturally, the UK position seems to be to go back to the EU and say, “We will of course honour our international obligations, but produce us the evidence that we actually owe you money. If you do, we’d be more than happy to pay up if we are clearly liable for those debts”. That does not seem an irresponsible position to be in.

However, the problem is that the question of whether we are making progress on these issues is a subjective judgment in anybody’s language. I expect that the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, was right to say that the advice to be given to the Council of Ministers in October will be that insufficient progress has been made, so we will not be able to move on to the more serious issues of our future trading relationship with the EU.

The most important question put in this Chamber today came from my noble friend Lord Caithness. I repeat it to my noble friend the Minister: is it right that the United Kingdom made a proposal to the EU that we should have a rolling programme of negotiations, which should just continue, and that the EU turned this down by saying that we had to wait for the next scheduled meeting? If that is the case, it is quite clear that—as per the alarm bells sent ringing by my noble friend Lord Blencathra—it does not want an agreement but wants to push it right to the end of the period. If you have negotiations going on between two parties, one of which wants an agreement and one of which does not, it will clearly be very difficult to get an agreement. This brings us back to the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Jay, who made it clear that we might reach the end of the period without any agreement because it has just been impossible to get any agreement during that period.

If there was an agreement, it does not follow that it will be ratified and agreed by the European Parliament, which might well take the view that it does not want to encourage anybody to leave the EU. It would therefore be very important not to approve it in the European Parliament. The agreement then has to go to 27 different countries in the EU. There are also something like 11 regional Governments—I do not know whether they all have a veto on it as well. So there are many hurdles to be cleared and it seems not inconceivable that we might end up, through no fault of our own, with no deal whatever.

There are moments when I feel quite sorry for Michel Barnier. He is trapped between businessmen and sensible people in the nation states, who want to go on trading with the United Kingdom, and lunatics in Brussels who want to punish anybody who has the nerve to leave the club.

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[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, the fact is that as we leave the European Union, we will leave Euratom. What I can say to the noble Lord and to the House is that a lot of work has been done, not only with respect to Euratom but with other international obligations, to scope out exactly what all our international agreements mean, whether any need to be replaced and, if they do, how they would be replaced and how that would be affected by our leaving the European Union. So although I cannot say specifically that the two would be contiguous, because we will leave Euratom on the date we leave the European Union, we are in the position whereby we cannot negotiate new agreements until we have left the European Union. However, we can carry out technical exploration of such agreements. Therefore it is important to know what kind of agreements we need to reach. Above all, we are making sure that we do not in any way compromise our current position as members of the European Union. We gave that undertaking and we will keep to it.

I was asked about the transitional implementation period. My noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe looked very closely at that with great interest, because it is all about making sure that we enable those who are in business, as well as everybody else, to know that they do not have to go through the same process more than once. If we are leaving the European Union, they will not have to keep changing their processes in business. We have certainly heard from business about what an implementation period needs to look like. Different businesses think of different periods. We have said very firmly and clearly that an implementation period is something that we will need to negotiate with the European Union but that we do not see it going beyond the date of the next election. Of course, we are not in a position to be able to discuss the terms of an implementation period until we have reached the next stage, which is to look at what our future relationship with the European Union will be. Clearly, if anyone wishes to stay in both the single market and the customs union, it means that they have to accept the four freedoms. The Commission and the EU 27 made it very clear early on that those freedoms were not divisible.

There was a lot of strong feeling about the customs paper not being clear enough. By the way, I reminded myself the other day that blue-skies thinking was the way in which Apple started its rather special business; it is a way of testing out new ideas that can really take off and work. The real reason we put in alternatives is because that is what you do in a negotiation—test out alternatives.

I turn to money. I was challenged on many occasions to say that we should simply tell the European Union how we were going to work out what we owed. It is a two-way street: the European Union also has obligations to the UK. We recognise that we have obligations with both an international legal basis and a moral one. I am sure that noble Lords will have read the paper put out by the European Union. It is three and a half sheets of paper, two of which simply describe the fact that the UK owes something. It says that the debts ought to be shared out among all the people who need to take a share, without actually quantifying or saying how they were going to calculate that, or giving an idea of how they value certain premises—the wherewithal of the European Union. What is the value of the obligation that is owed? What it did do, which is helpful, is to carefully list, on one and a half pages, a whole load of reference to treaties and regulations saying, “This is the legal basis for us demanding money”. Not how much money or how it should be divided up, but why it wants some money.

I recognise how vital this is to the other EU 27. They face losing the third largest net contributor to the European Union. They have been given a bald choice: either they get less in the way of infrastructure funds, or they pay more. Neither is a particularly attractive option for them—and they have been told that, if they can find a third way to solve the problem, they should let the Commission know. This is a problem—these are our friends, and we want Europe to continue to succeed, so I understand the difficulty. However, our duty to the British people is to challenge the European Commission and say: “You say that that particular section of a treaty confers on the UK an obligation to pay. Let us first of all test that legal basis”. That was what was happening about two weeks ago. We were challenging the legal basis, not in a hostile way, but as lawyers do, by simply saying: “How does this work”? That is at the core of why there has been so much anxiety in Brussels. It is because we have different ways of doing things, not because we do not want to reach agreement. The UK way of doing things is to analyse, challenge, then agree. I promise this House that that is what we will do.

We have had two speeches from noble Lords who nearly always make me want to think and think again, as they did tonight. The first was my noble friend Lord Bridges, who said that we have to think what kind of society we want to build in this country as we leave the European Union. My noble friend Lord Howell of Guildford carefully set out how it is important to have an eye to the future and said that we need to challenge what that future is like. How do we look at the reform of institutions across Europe, which we have helped to build but which need to be resilient for the future? Whether it is Europe, the UK or this House, all of us want to be resilient for the future.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

Before my noble friend sits down, could she answer the question put to her by my noble friend Lord Caithness and myself? Is it right that we offered the Commission the option of a rolling programme of negotiations and that this was turned down by the EU?

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, I put the position very early on, in my winding-up speech, I hope, when I explained that the Prime Minister had made it clear that we were prepared now to ramp up the speed and increase the number of days for negotiation. That has not yet happened, but clearly what has happened is constructive and we now have time before 25 September for some of the technical agreements—which are right on the cusp of being made—to be sealed. That is to be welcomed. There is good will on both sides in this negotiation.

Brexit: EU Institution Relocations

Lord Hamilton of Epsom Excerpts

Thursday 6th July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, is it not rather early in the day to start anticipating what the outcome of our negotiations with the EU is going to be? It is inevitable that at this point, both sides will be taking more extreme positions. Compromises will eventually be reached, and there is no reason to believe that they will not be for the benefit of both the EU and the United Kingdom.

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

I agree entirely with my noble friend.

European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Hamilton of Epsom Excerpts

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

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, that will be part of the consideration at the time. All the evidence to date is that our European friends and neighbours are shaking their heads with disbelief at what we are doing and saying, “For goodness’ sake, why are you doing this?”.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

If all our European neighbours are shaking their heads and wondering why we are leaving, why then should they give us a good deal when they know that it might be overturned by a referendum and the UK might stay in the EU? Therefore, they would have no incentive to give us a good deal at all.

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, I think that our European friends and neighbours will negotiate in good faith—

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[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

I find myself, unusually, agreeing with the noble Lord, Lord Tyler. Having seen him on television recently, he has taken me by surprise. They have been confirmative and that is what we are talking about in this referendum. I think the noble Lord, Lord Newby, agrees that it will be a confirmatory referendum after Parliament has agreed or otherwise the proposal that comes from the Government in relation to Europe. On that basis I will back his amendment.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

My Lords, there are two scenarios vis-à-vis the attitude of the EU towards our leaving it. One is that it will be absolutely delighted that we are going. A thorn will have come out of its side once the UK has departed and it will be able to proceed with the federal dream it has always had. Therefore, it will want to quickly get on with an agreement and say goodbye to us. The other scenario is that the EU will regard the UK leaving as a hole in the head. As the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, said, it will present it with an enormous budgetary problem. It will probably be contagious and will lead to other countries in the EU wanting to leave as well. The noble Lord, Lord Newby, says that we must trust the EU. Well, hold on. The people who run the EU are not renowned for being overtly democratic. Let us face it: they put the whole objective of the federal dream above all else. Therefore, they will say that we must go to any lengths that we possibly can to ensure that the United Kingdom stays in the EU.

How do you do that? You offer the most appalling deal known to man. Then, knowing that there is going to be a referendum, if this amendment is passed, you can confidently reckon that the British people will vote against that deal and the United Kingdom will stay in the EU. Does that not completely undermine the Government’s negotiating position once Article 50 has been triggered? This amendment should be opposed absolutely ruthlessly.

[Lord Taverne (LD)]

My Lords, there is one other important reason why the final decision on Brexit should be a national referendum, not the approval of Parliament: Parliament has changed. We have abandoned the main principle that we are a parliamentary democracy and that MPs are representatives, not delegates. Instead, we have adopted the doctrine that the will of the people must always prevail. That is the favourite doctrine of dictators and autocrats throughout history. At Second Reading I gave examples, which I will not repeat now. In that debate the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, pointed out that four-fifths of the MPs who voted to trigger Article 50 had voted to remain and believed that Brexit would be against the national interest. The exercise of their own judgment, based on weighing up the argument and evidence in debate, has given way to the new fashion for populist political correctness. The inescapable logic of this approach means that if MPs, at the end of negotiations, came to the conclusion that the result would be equivalent to falling over a cliff, they would still feel duty bound because of the referendum of 23 June to act like lemmings.

Burke has been ditched; Rousseau rules instead. I have always been a devotee of Burke. I once fought a by-election on his principles. In 1972, I was one of the 69 Labour Members of Parliament led by Roy Jenkins who voted for British entry into the European Community against a three-line Whip. Without our vote, Britain would not have joined. My local, left-wing Labour Party in Lincoln was passionately anti-Europe. It told me that if I voted with the Tories, against the party’s three-line Whip, it would deselect me. I did, and it did. So I resigned and fought a by-election in March 1973 as an independent social democrat. The real issue in that by-election was not Europe, but Burke. I explained my reasons at a mass meeting held in Lincoln. I said that I had always been pro-Europe and as an 18 year-old student—some 70 years ago—I joined a club called the Strasbourg club, which argued that Britain should share some of its sovereignty with other European countries to promote peace and prosperity, and that I was not going to change my views because my party told me to. I was supported at this mass meeting by a famous journalist at the time, Bernard Levin, who put the issue quite simply. He said that the choice in Lincoln was between Dick Taverne and a Dictaphone. I won with an overwhelming majority over Labour and the Conservatives, and it was Burke wot won it.

Burke is popular because people like those who stick to their guns. His championship of MPs as representatives, not delegates, has been a basic part of the strength of our parliamentary system. If referendums determined our laws, we would probably still have the death penalty and flogging in prisons. What would be the point of parliamentary debates if MPs had already pledged their vote irrespective of all arguments?

It may be asked why I support the Liberal Democrat amendment in favour of a new referendum. My noble friend Lord Newby gave a very good answer to that. A referendum is one way in which people would have a chance to change their mind. If the Government’s process is followed, there would be no real choice because the only one would be either to accept or reject the end of the negotiations, whatever their result.

I believe that the decision to leave the single market and the customs union makes a hard Brexit almost inevitable. We will not get a special deal for key industries or the right of our service companies to operate in their biggest market. Mr Trump will not abandon his claim for “America first” and we will face a more protectionist world, not a free trade bonanza. We are in real danger of returning to the nationalism and protectionism of the 1930s. If we leave Europe, we will find it increasingly necessary to rely on Mr Trump’s America: a future of Mrs May and Donald Trump walking hand in hand. We should not travel one miserable inch along that fearsome road.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to support the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter. It is important to have a structured schedule and framework for reporting back to Parliament as part of the whole scheme that we are trying to set up, including a meaningful vote, which we will discuss this afternoon.

The European Parliament example has been much prayed in aid. Those of us, like myself, who were in the European Parliament, and others, will know that one of the incentives for making sure that the European Parliament was kept informed throughout the process of negotiating external agreements was that it had the power to reject them at the end. After the European Parliament had rejected several international agreements, the European Council, the Council of Ministers and the Commission finally came to their senses and realised that it was much better to front-load the system so that the European Parliament was kept informed along the way, instead of getting a nasty surprise at the end. In the jargon, that accounts for the “inter-institutional arrangements”, which include reports and the making available of documents throughout the process. It is a much better way of managing it and making sure that the Council’s negotiating objectives are delivered in a “smooth, orderly way”, which, I think, is the phrase often used by the Government about Brexit. There are, therefore, good practical reasons for having a very structured system of reporting back.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, talks about everything happening in a smooth, orderly way. I rather agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter. Everything will leak. The EU Commission is obliged to report to the European Parliament and the whole idea that the European Parliament will say, “This is all secret information, we should not let it out”, seems to me to be for the birds. Everything will leak and we will hear rumours about how far the negotiations have got, or what has happened. At that point, Parliament will demand a debate. The Government will get up, if this amendment is passed, and say, “No, you must wait for the quarterly review in two months’ time”. I do not think so. I think that the House of Commons will say, “Come on, get on with it, we want a response. Why have we heard these rumours? The Government must put us straight on all of this”.

This amendment, therefore, would achieve nothing. Everything will leak from the negotiations. When things of substance leak, Parliament, particularly the Commons, will demand a debate, and your Lordships’ House will no doubt do the same. This amendment is otiose.

[Lord Spicer]

My Lords, I made the point in Committee that if you want sovereignty of Parliament you should vote as quickly as possible for this Bill and subsequent Bills to get us out of the control of the European Union. I make the point now—it is rather similar to that of my noble friend—that it is highly unlikely that the Government will accept this amendment. If it prevails, we will potentially be into a constitutional issue.

Therefore, one has to ask what options are likely to occur in the event of this House passing this amendment and, as my noble friend has just suggested, the other House passing it back to us, with the Government standing firm. There are three options. First, the Government could do nothing and concede the situation, but I think that that is highly unlikely. To lose control of the Bill at this stage on this issue would be very questionable wisdom on the part of the Government. Secondly, they could create 100 Peers. That is unlikely as well and would be rather dramatic at this stage. Thirdly, they could call a general election. That option should be under strong consideration by the Government at the moment. Through a vote of confidence in the Commons or whatever, they could have it out in the well-known democratic way of doing things—through a general election. I want to put on the record that there should be one round of ping-pong and then we should call a general election.

[Lord Warner]

My Lords, I wish to speak in support of the amendment. I tabled a similar amendment in Committee which was rather less demanding than this one, but the Government dispatched it extremely briskly.

I suggest that this amendment might be helpful to the Government. The idea that all the special interest groups affected by these negotiations—the different sectors, companies and pressure groups—will sit still, while stuff comes out of the EU about the possibility of doing damage to their particular interests and concerns, is fanciful. If the Minister and the Government do not have any structured way of reporting back to Parliament, we will find that many of those people will lobby your Lordships’ House and there will be a demand for a huge number of Parliamentary Questions, as well as demands for debates, to deal with the latest set of rumours about a particular sector, industry or agency which may be being transferred back to Europe. The EMA would be a good example and Euratom is another. Therefore, the Government might find that their life was made a bit easier if there was a structured way of reporting back to Parliament about the progress that was being made, especially if it was reasonably detailed and told some of these interest groups what was going on in the negotiations.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

Does the noble Lord think that Parliament will be happy if they are given the response that, because the quarterly review is coming up and it is two months away, the question cannot be answered today; it will have to be answered in two months’ time when the clock next ticks round?

[Lord Warner]

The noble Baroness’s amendment is very flexible. It refers to a period of at least three months. There is nothing in the amendment to stop the Government serving their own interests by being more forthcoming more frequently. I am sure that the noble Baroness would not mind having reports made on a more frequent basis.