Brexit

Lord Heseltine Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd October 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Campbell of Pittenweem]

I acknowledge that, but the fact of the matter is that, in our system, the Supreme Court is, as its name suggests, supreme. That decision having been taken, it is in my view wholly unacceptable to have the kind of treatment that was made covertly and, in some cases, openly in relation to the judgment issue. The same would have been true if, for example, those of the same cast of mind as Gina Miller had attacked the decision made by the divisional court. Attacking the independence of judges matters not for what they have decided; what matters is their independence, and that must be emphasised and encouraged at all stages.

Will the Minister name a legal jurisdiction which is more independent, impartial or incorruptible than the two legal jurisdictions of the United Kingdom? Politicisation will be the death knell of all three of these vital qualities. The fact is that, if the Supreme Court had found in favour of the Government, it would have been praised for its Periclean wisdom. Medals might even have been struck.

[Lord Heseltine (Non-Afl)]

Of the 11 members of the Supreme Court, nine were appointed under a Conservative Prime Minister. Might that not have been used as an argument, if they had found for the Government, indicating corruption?

[Lord Campbell of Pittenweem]

There are plenty of illustrations of how those who have had a political affiliation, when elevated to the Bench, are able to put that beyond them.

The Prime Minister did not dare to publish his proposals before his party conference; he did not dare to tell his conference what the proposals were; and he declined to tell Parliament until after their publication. I think that tells us quite enough about the Prime Minister and his willingness to adopt attitudes of openness and accountability.

I hope that the Minister will respond to the last matter I will raise. Yesterday, it was said on behalf of the Government that the proposals did not involve infrastructure. How can customs checks be carried out in the middle of a field? Who will carry out that check? What, if any, infrastructure will there be, even if it is only a camera at the end of a pole? Would not these things be of an attractive nature to the dissidents, albeit in a minority, whom we still find in Northern Ireland? We are too close in many respects to the consequences of the Troubles not to accept that to introduce anything that seems in any way to prejudice the Belfast agreement could cause unrest and even, beyond that, death and damage.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Heseltine]

My Lords, three days after the referendum I wrote an article in the Mail on Sunday saying, “The fightback starts here”. I have no hesitation at all in reiterating that position. I believed that, in the light of circumstance and the evolution of truth, we needed a referendum or a second election to deal with the issue. Why was I so preoccupied to argue for a further look? It is because I believe passionately that power in this country rests here in Parliament, and it is within our framework that we understand all too clearly how the system works. The Prime Minister depends on a majority in the House of Commons. The Prime Minister chooses the Cabinet, in which the Prime Minister is first among equals. All my political life I have argued that—as the noble Lord, Lord Taverne, eloquently pointed out—after the end of the impoverishment of the Second World War and the conversion of Empire to Commonwealth, all Britain’s interests lay in a new destiny with our neighbours, whom we had spent a thousand years fighting, in creating peaceful parliamentary democratic institutions.

It is interesting and coincidental that today, the first Question centred on what might be seen as rather a small incident in the context of things: the sacking of Sonia Khan by an apparatchik in Downing Street. If that had happened to me, I hope I would have resigned, but it is symptomatic of something much more serious, to which many of your Lordships have referred. First, three Privy Councillors were sent to advise Her Majesty on the proroguing of Parliament without the Cabinet knowing what was happening. Secondly, Parliament was closed down illegally and therefore had to be restored by the Supreme Court. I listened to Liz Truss on a BBC programme this morning conceding that the letter that went to the European Commission today had not been seen by the Cabinet in advance. So, how are the Government constituted? Who is it that is pulling the strings? Who is taking these decisions? How is it that the Cabinet are prepared to rubber-stamp the most controversial issues of our time, of which they were not briefed in advance? What do they think they are there for, as members of a Cabinet?

I disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Campbell, who felt that watching the Prime Minister’s party conference speech this morning was a waste of time. Far from it. First, he is without any shadow of doubt the best music hall turn in politics, and it was full of great jokes. But it also revealed very clearly what the strategy is, and what it has been since day one of his premiership: to combine an agenda of right-wing hard-line politics with Brexit to try to get it through a general election campaign by attracting back Nigel Farage’s supporters. It is as blindingly obvious as that. You had only to listen to the speech today, in which the ultimate target was Jeremy Corbyn. But Boris has got it wrong. Jeremy Corbyn is probably the only person on the Labour Benches who actually agrees with Boris about Brexit. To focus on Corbyn is completely to miss the point.

The real problem for the Conservative Government led by Boris Johnson is the Conservatives. It was Conservatives in the ERG who would not support the previous Prime Minister, which frustrated her ability to get a deal. It is the sacking of 22 of the more renowned members of the Conservative Party by this Prime Minister that has removed the majority on which he would otherwise exist. And where did the word “chicanery” come from? It came from Sir John Major, a former Prime Minister, talking about what he thinks this Government are up to. There are two audiences for every party conference. Without doubt, the hall erupted. I know what it is like; it is a wonderful feeling. But there is a second audience, and that is the audience with which this Government should be concerned. I have indicated the parliamentary consequences of what is happening, but there are millions of Conservatives who are now voting for the Liberal Democrats, because they will not swallow the line that is peddled about Brexit.

So, I go back to the Prime Minister’s speech:

“Let’s get Brexit done, and let’s bring this country together”.


This country is more divided, more fundamentally, in more directions, than I have ever seen it in my life. The idea that we are going to give up our position of influence across the Atlantic, across the Commonwealth and within Europe and mould it all together in one by standing isolationist as an individual nation state is unreal in the changing world of today. The idea that President Trump is going to do a soft option for Britain’s trade in a pre-election period in America is a delusion of the most naive sort. The idea that 2.6 billion inhabitants of the Commonwealth are longing to open their trade doors to us while the Home Secretary is clamping down on the immigration that they want to encourage into our country is another delusion. And the idea that the Conservative Government are risking the future of the United Kingdom itself, on a dogma that was driven by extreme populism, is to me unbelievable. We need to go back to the people for an endorsement of the decision and, much better, its rejection.

Brexit: Preparations and Negotiations

Lord Heseltine Excerpts

Monday 23rd July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Heseltine (Con)]

My Lords, it behoves someone rising from these Benches to say nice things about the Prime Minister, and I want unreservedly to salute a judgment she got 100% right, which was to put the Brexiteers in charge of the negotiations for our severance with Europe. I advocated that in the immediate aftermath of the referendum, and I did it for two reasons: first, because if they had not been put in charge they would have blamed whoever was for the resulting challenges that emerged; and, secondly, I had unbounded faith that if those particular people were put in charge, they would make a resounding nonsense of it.

It is quite clear that those two judgments were manifestly right. The first person to spot how right they were was the Prime Minister herself. Those of us who have lived through the traumas of the past 40 or 50 years of public life, knew that when Olly Robbins was moved from David Davis’s wing to Number 10 the game was up. Some of us remember Percy Cradock and Alan Walters—I notice my very good noble friend Lord Lawson, the former Chancellor, is not in his place and, sadly, Geoffrey Howe is not with us at all—and when I saw the movement of Olly Robbins, I knew the game was up. I had a very similar experience when I was Secretary of State when a civil servant from the Ministry of Defence was moved to Number 10. I knew that that meant that all the gossip, intrigue and dirt within the ministry would be purveyed to Number 10 to my disadvantage, so I laid down a very simple rule. I said, “I am very happy that this civil servant from the ministry in Number 10 can communicate in any way and properly with the Ministry of Defence, but only in the presence of my private secretary”. Three weeks later, he was back in the Ministry of Defence, and that was a wise protection on my part.

After the protracted period of the Brexiteers in charge, we have seen what Brexit really amounts to in their mind. There is no plan, there is no detail. There are phrases, as the noble Lord, Lord Birt, said, but there is no reality behind the rhetoric and the emotion. The question that has to be asked is: what is Brexit? We know Brexit means Brexit—that is a very clear statement—but what actually is Brexit? The noble Lord, Lord Newby, went through the options. Boris Johnson started with the White Paper some time ago. How good it was, he said, but that moved on. We then had the Chequers document. I glanced at it and said, “This is dead. It won’t work”. Within a very short period it has been disowned by the Europeans, the right wing of the Conservative Party and, doubtless, parts of the Labour Party as well. Self-evidently, we narrow the field down to, as the noble Lord, Lord Newby, said, an amended Chequers announcement or no deal. If this House cannot tell me what Brexit is, if the Government cannot tell me, if the newspapers cannot tell me and everybody has got their own version—600 versions here, another 600 versions there and thousands outside—what did the people vote for? What was in their mind? How are we, as servants of the people, as people wishing to implement the referendum, to do what the public want, to know what they want when we do not know ourselves? It is no surprise to me that growing in volume and articulation is the demand: “Let the people have another chance. Let them say when they have seen the facts”. The interesting thing is that that they are now all saying that the facts were never there. We were not told.

That is not true. All the facts were laid out. All the warnings were there. Everything was in front of them, all within a giant smokescreen called Project Fear. Every warning, however factual, however realistic, was out, gone, just a scare. A lot of people believed that it was just a scare. And there was the bribe, not only a scare but 350 million quid a week—all blown of course. Nevertheless, how could anyone conceivably make a judgment about something we cannot define for them until we know what the deal looks like? And we cannot know what the deal looks like until the Europeans have said what they are prepared to do. In my view, there is a growing argument for another referendum.

I think I have some idea of what Brexit is. I think it is two things. First, it is the frustration of eight years of post-2008 stagnating living standards. All my political experience tells me that there is a tolerance of limited dimension in the electorate for frozen living standards. They do not ask for much from us, but they ask us to try to keep the show on the road, keep prosperity rising and make sure that the country is relatively well run. For eight years following the 2008 crash, we have failed to deliver that. Not that I blame the British, because the Americans and the Europeans failed in the same way. We went on a great spending spree—personally, collectively, industrially, commercially and in the public sector—there had to be an adjustment, and people do not like the consequences. Of course, you do not deal with that by the Brexit solution, which makes us poorer. As Sir John Major articulately reminded us—something that the Government had already said—we will not only be poorer, we will remain poorer, and those who will be the poorest are those who voted most persistently to be made poorer, without knowing what they were doing.

As the noble Lords, Lord Newby and Lord Radice and, I think, my noble friend Lord Birt said, the right solution is to ask the second question about Brexit and see whether there is a way to revisit the fundamentals. Immigration has not raised its voice very articulately this afternoon. I think that if you have the frustration to which I have referred, there has to be someone to blame, and the person who is the easiest to blame is the foreigner. You cannot argue they are taking your job, because they all have jobs. You cannot argue that they are all a lot of scroungers coming here to live in our welfare state because they are all in work. But there is something about immigration on too high a scale that challenges people’s willingness to accept the change it involves.

That is not a British problem. It is all over Europe. It is called Le Pen, and the AFG in Germany. The Dutch have it. It is Donald Trump in America, who has played ruthlessly with the issue. In my humble submission, we have to understand that the electronicalisation—the communications revolution—of the world means that everywhere, in every darkest corner of poverty, they know how prosperous we are. The most energetic, the most talented, the most adventurous of them see the honeypot. We are the honeypot, and they are coming here. They are not coming to land off the Mediterranean, in Greece, Italy or Spain; they are coming here to northern Europe. There is an opportunity, in looking at Brexit and Europe, to see whether we can become engaged in a dialogue with the Europeans which recognises that this issue engages us all, and that we will have to address it in one way or another. I have always believed that Stalin made a terrible mistake in closing the wall. If he had left it open, we would have had to build the wall.

In another context, in another generation, there will be the same issue—they will keep coming. I have one question for the Minister. The Government have total control over the non-European immigration figures. The European figures are going down, with all the economic consequences of which we are aware. What are the Government doing about the rising non-European figures, which have soared to replace the Europeans going home? Is it just possible that they are not doing anything significant because they do not want to expose the dependence of our social services and our economy on the creaming of talented, energetic and skilled people? I say to the Government: wait until you get to the undeveloped world with which you will be trying to do all these great trade deals, and tell them, “Everything is all right. You train all these people at great taxpayers’ expense, in the poverty-ridden world in which you live, and we will then take them here because they are the only ones we want”.

Brexit is a disaster. I accept—I am afraid in conflict with my noble friend Lord Hunt, of whom I am a great admirer—that there is no compromise with Brexiteers. There never has been and there never will be. For my money, here we stand and fight.

European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Heseltine Excerpts

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

[Lord Pannick]

I am very grateful to the noble Lord. I was worried for a moment that he was going to sing at me, but I entirely agree with his point. We are considering the Bill because, and only because, as he reminds the House, the Supreme Court ruled as a matter of law that parliamentary sovereignty is required at this stage of notification of withdrawal. I say, not as a matter of law—because I am not arguing a legal case—but as a matter of constitutional principle, that parliamentary sovereignty is as important at the end of the negotiating process. I beg to move.

[Lord Heseltine (Con)]

My Lords, many of your Lordships have made the point that we are not here to refight the referendum campaign; there is a clear mandate to trigger Article 50. My own personal position has been clearly established since I first joined the Conservative Party in 1951. I believe, and always have, that Britain’s national self-interest is inextricably interwoven with those of our European partners. I deeply regret the outcome of the referendum.

That said, within three days of that outcome, I publicly made three points. First, I urged the Government to get on with the disengagement process, not only because they had a clear mandate to do so but because I thought that delay would only add uncertainty to the damage that the result itself had produced. Secondly, I urged the Government to appoint Brexiteers to the three Cabinet positions that would front the negotiations. It was clear to me then that failure to do so would open the door to the allegation that if only “the right people” had been put in positions to lead the charge, a much better deal would have been done. I also took the view, perhaps naively, that as campaigners for Brexit, it was not unreasonable to assume that they might have answers to the numerous questions that we faced. Your Lordships will be aware that both of these events have now taken place and I am very pleased to say how fully I support the Prime Minister in what she has done.

That leaves only my third point—the most controversial of the three. I said then that the fightback starts here. Like so many of your Lordships, I enjoyed the privilege of many years in another place—in my case, 35 years. I learned the limitations of government in a parliamentary democracy and I learned the role of opposition in such circumstances. Time and again I have been involved, along with many of your Lordships on these Benches, in opposing by every constitutional means in our power the mandate of the elected Government. Not only did we oppose their mandate from the very first day that Parliament met, we began the long process of repealing the Acts of which we disapproved.

In the end, it came down to a belief in the ultimate sovereignty of Parliament. I must make it clear that, in accepting the mandate to negotiate our withdrawal from the European Union, I do not accept that the mandate runs for all time and in all circumstances—48% of our people rejected that concept last year. They have the same right to be heard, as I hope so many of us recognised in those long years of opposition in another place.

We now face a protracted period of negotiation. No one has the first idea what will emerge. No one can even tell us what Governments in Europe will be there to conclude whatever deal emerges. No one can say with certainty how British public opinion will react to totally unpredictable events. To give just one example, I am told that it took 240 regulations to introduce the single market in the late 1980s. I remember the resentment that caused, particularly to small and medium-sized companies. I understand that it may take 1,600 regulations to unravel more than 40 years of closer union—and no one can say how the vital small and medium-sized sector of our economy will react to the circumstances that it will then face.

Everyone in this House knows that we now face the most momentous peacetime decision of our time. This amendment, as the noble Lord so clearly set out, secures in law the Government’s commitment, already made to another place, to ensure that Parliament is the ultimate custodian of our national sovereignty. It ensures that Parliament has the critical role in determining the future that we will bequeath to generations of young people. I urge your Lordships to support the amendment.

[Lord Oates (LD)]

My Lords, I support the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick. I will not take up too much of the House’s time, not least because I think the issue at stake is really rather simple. On 17 January this year, the Prime Minister confirmed in her Lancaster House speech the Government’s intention to,

“put the final deal that is agreed between the UK and the EU to a vote in both Houses of Parliament”.

As the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, said, on 7 February the Minister of State for Exiting the European Union stated that,

“the vote will cover not only the withdrawal arrangements but also the future relationship with the European Union”.—[Official Report, Commons, 7/2/17; col. 264.]

This amendment merely gives legislative effect to the Government’s pledge. In doing so it will assist the Prime Minister in upholding her intention, should she or any successor be tempted to resile from it. The amendment will also provide clarity that the Government will require the prior approval of Parliament should the Prime Minister decide to leave the European Union without any agreement at all.

In Committee, some noble Lords on the Benches opposite questioned the need for legal underpinning of the commitment given by the Government to a meaningful vote. The reason is simple. We do not trust the Government on this matter—not because we do not trust the integrity of individual members of the Government but because, as the noble Lord, Lord Deben, pointed out in Committee, we are only discussing this at all because the Government were forced by the courts and the arguments made by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, to come to Parliament and hear its voice on the matter.

If we want to ensure that our sovereign Parliament, so often championed by the leave campaigners, has a clear and decisive role in scrutinising the final outcome of this process, it must assert its rights in legislation. If the Government are genuine in the commitment they have given on these matters, they should have no problem accepting the amendment. If they are not willing to do so, it will call into question the sincerity of their commitment and only strengthen the argument to pass this amendment into law.

The noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, reminded us last week:

“Prime Ministers can go, Ministers can be sacked, Parliaments can change and Governments can cease to exist. One needs to enshrine assurances that stand against … changes in circumstances”.—[Official Report, 1/3/17; col. 921.]


I wholeheartedly agree with the noble Viscount. That is why I support the amendment. I hope that your Lordships’ House will do so, too.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

I promise to give way to him once I have actually made my points about the amendment.

It is a first rule of negotiation that you never negotiate with someone who does not have authority to conclude the deal. The effect of these proposals is to put Ministers in a position where their authority is in doubt and where, in effect, this House and the House of Commons are parties to the negotiation, which has to be conducted between Ministers and people from the EU.

[Lord Heseltine]

I wonder whether the noble Lord realises that the Ministers or European officials with whom this will be negotiated have all got to go back to every European parliament and the European Parliament before they can conclude a deal.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

I do realise that. I have the utmost respect for my noble friend, who helped to get me elected in 1983, which may not be one of the most important things on his escutcheon. He has served the party with great distinction. But I have to say to him that it is not the moment for this House to grab the mace and challenge the authority of the House of Commons.