European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 5) Bill

Lord Howard of Lympne Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 4th April 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howard of Lympne (Con)]

My Lords, it is a genuine pleasure to follow the noble Lord. He and I crossed swords many times in the other place, and I always emerged from those exchanges with a great deal of respect and a touch of affection for the noble Lord—but I regret to say that I disagree what he has said to the House this evening. The House of Commons and this House decided to delegate the decision on the future of our relationship with the European Union to the people of our country in a referendum. They did that without qualification. The question on the referendum paper was not, “Do you want to remain in the European Union if we can get satisfactory terms?” or, “Do you want to leave if we can get satisfactory terms?” Rather it was a clear question: leave or remain? The country delivered its verdict without qualification. It said, by a relatively small but clear margin, that it wanted to leave.

Parliament then voted to trigger Article 50 and did so without qualification. Article 50 meant that we would leave the European Union two years after the article was triggered. There was no qualification. It was not a question of our leaving in two years’ time if we could get a reasonable deal; it was that we should leave. That, I believe, is what we should have done last week, but we did not. That was because Members of both Houses of Parliament did not get the answer they wanted. There was a considerable majority in both Houses for us to remain in the European Union. After the result of the referendum, some Members of both Houses who had been in favour of the UK remaining accepted the verdict of the people in good faith. Some accepted it but tried to limit what they saw as the damage. They were reluctant accepters of the verdict of the people. Others—far too many, I fear—have sought to thwart, obstruct and reverse the decision of the people and have never really accepted the result of the referendum.

I believe we should leave the European Union without, if necessary, any overarching agreement. In the end, I was persuaded of the merits of the proposal put by the Prime Minister to Parliament for a third time and I would have reluctantly voted for it. However, the proposal did not achieve the support of Parliament. In those circumstances, I would leave without a deal, which is why in due course I shall vote against this legislation.

I do not want to repeat the points made very eloquently by my noble friend Lord Lilley in his speech today before he was cut off in his prime, but it is the case that we could leave. Preparations have been made on both sides of the channel for us to leave in relatively good order, and that is what I think we should do if the Prime Minister cannot achieve agreement to the terms she has negotiated. The former Governor of the Bank of England has suggested that we should do so with a six-month standstill. After we have left, we should agree with the European Union to trade with each other on the same terms. That is a sensible proposal and I would even go so far as to say that we should give each other 12 months in which to negotiate a satisfactory trading agreement. I have no doubt that if that step were taken, it would be perfectly possible to reach an agreement along those lines.

Given that, I speak against the Bill currently before your Lordships’ House. When the moment comes, I shall vote against it because I think we have to honour the result of the referendum, and the time has come for us to do so.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, is my noble friend saying that he will vote against Second Reading?

[Lord Howard of Lympne]

No, of course not. I accept the procedures of this House, but there will come an opportunity for us to vote on the merits of the Bill and at that stage I shall vote against it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Bilimoria]

Absolutely not. The noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, is here. She was a member of that committee, and I have sat on the committee with her. I was referring to other people. By the way, today’s running order was blessed by the Government. Could the Minister explain how they came to that?

Today, I was not proud of the behaviour of our House. At many stages I felt ashamed of the disgraceful behaviour that I do not think was befitting of the finest, highest-quality debating Chamber in the world. I asked one of our Members who has been here for nearly 50 years, “How bad is this compared with Maastricht?” He said, “Maastricht was a tea party compared with this”.

My noble friend Lord Pannick has clearly said that the Bill is not perfect. None of us says that it is perfect; it was rushed through at the other end. However, he and my noble and learned friend Lord Judge have already found a way of amending the Bill in Committee that will allow it to be effective and will prevent us reaching the cliff edge.

Before I conclude, I want to emphasise how much we need the Bill, because what has been agreed so far is nothing. If my noble friend Lord Kerr were here, he would say, “I wrote Article 50 in order for those two years to be used to agree a future relationship. The withdrawal Bill just becomes part of that, and then you leave after two years having agreed it”. We have not negotiated our future relationship. We have negotiated only three things: people, the backstop and money. And £39 billion out of a £2 trillion economy is absolutely not material in the long run; this big figure is actually not a material figure. What about the political declaration—the wish list of our future? Nothing has been negotiated at all: tariffs, customs, services, market access, regulation, financial services, digital, capital markets, intellectual property, movement of people, aviation, roads, maritime, energy, civil nuclear, data exchange, foreign policy, security, defence, space, cybersecurity or counterterrorism—

[Lord Howard of Lympne]

Would the noble Lord give way?

[Lord Bilimoria]

Do not ruin my momentum, please; I will give way in a second. Nothing has been agreed.

[Lord Howard of Lympne]

I have great sympathy with the point made by the noble Lord. Is it not a fact that it was the European Union that insisted on the sequencing of the negotiations and was not prepared to talk about the future relationship until the withdrawal agreement had been effected, contrary to Article 50?