Brexit: Withdrawal Agreement and Political Declaration
Lord James of Blackheath Excerpts(5 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord James of Blackheath (Con)
My Lords, I start with an expression of regret at the circumstances of this debate. It is very unfortunate that we appear to have left it to the Commons—alone, in isolation and unaided—and I am not sure that I have that degree of trust in it to pass on its own an independent conclusion that does not attempt to foreshadow what we have said here. I have carefully monitored the opinions of this House for the last two days and, from those who have spoken, it is by no means certain that there would not be a majority in favour of supporting it. I do not want the Commons to get the idea that it can claim a proxy consent from us and go ahead without any further reference. There is a whole new chapter beyond next week, and we need to be part of it. This debate has been fine, but this is not an end for us; we must have another chapter to come.
Where do I stand on this? I was a Brexit voter at the time and I have seen nothing whatever to alter my opinion since. I think there would be a big surprise for all noble Lords contending the need for a new vote. I think the mood of the country has hardened, and the vote for Brexit would go up, not down. That is my gut reaction.
I took great interest in the comments of my noble friend Lord Robathan earlier this afternoon. He made two wonderfully perceptive comments. He noted that every previous attempt by anybody to run a referendum against the European Union’s interests had resulted in it being taken to a second referendum and defeated. Yes, the circumstances were different, but the unique feature is that nobody has ever gone on to run the second referendum. I think we would find ourselves with a very different issue.
The best outcome I would prefer to see is that for the present we do nothing but carry on negotiating. Europe has never had to put up with a second innings; it has never followed on. They do not play cricket over there. I would like to see them follow on and have to put up with a very big score against them this time round. I think we should do that. They have no experience of how to run a debate on a second round, and I think we should really hammer it to them. And this time, can we please have a bit of respect? We have had no respect yet. They have treated us completely as though we can be pushed around as they want, and we cannot. It is time to stand firm on all of that.
They do not recognise two important factors about us, and they do not want to know. First, we are a sovereignty, and they do not know what sovereignties are. They are all republican—they are republics. There is no collective word for republics, but I offer the word snaffle as a good descriptive word, because they are a bunch of snafflers. From my point of view, we should give them the lesson of inflicting on them another round of intense and very annoying debates. I would like those debates to concentrate on giving them a lesson in what a sovereign constitution actually means.
The way this has gone at the moment, I think the House of Commons is committing an act of treason by even recognising the ability to negotiate a treaty in which its own God-given right by the Bill of Rights is being breached. The one great power our Parliament has is that it is omniscient in all things. The only thing it cannot do is limit its own powers. That is what this Bill would do, because it would continue to endorse what came in with the treaty of Madrid and would carry that on as though it were permanent for ever. That, in my view, is treason. I would not wish to go to Her Majesty and put that to her. Under the oath we have all taken on coming into this House, anybody who took that line forward from here would be committing treason. I will not do it. I will go to the barriers—with anybody who will come with me—before I do that.
Beyond that, we have to recognise that we have got to try to change the emphasis in how they think of us. It is strange that in all of this there have been three references to the fact that we are an island. We know we are an island. It is almost as though they have just discovered it for themselves. General de Gaulle said: “No, no, no. We do not want Britain in; they are an island”. Mr Macron recently said: “Of course they would say that; they are an island”. One of the other people did as well. Yes, we are an island and a trading island. We survive, as all islands do, by trade. We should have every assistance in continuing to do that.
We are also the island that three times in the last 200 years has provided the means of putting together an alliance which has rescued Europe from itself. As Sir Lewis Namier, professor of history at Manchester 25 to 30 years ago, said, the fact that we are an island is the unique feature that means we have saved Europe. They have to put us back in the position to continue to be the positive benefit for them that they do not see us as today.
They need a history lesson. That should be the first part of resuming our dialogue with them. In 1815, we rescued them from Napoleon. I wonder how many of your Lordships recognise that Nelson’s Column stands today on exactly the position that the post-revolutionary Government had marked to mount the guillotine where they were going to march the entire occupants of the House of Commons and House of Lords for one last embrace. We did not win the Second World War or the First World War, but we were the island that put together the alliances that did. They need to remember that. I hope they never need another alliance, but they can send us an email if they ever want us to try again. We will be around.
We would like to be a prosperous, trading island. We need some sense on that and some respect for what we are. We are not a defeated nation, and Europe should cease trying to look upon us and treat us as such. We are a nation that is proud of its achievements, survival, people and monarchy. Hands off: we do not want any interference with it. We keep what we have, and it is good for you in Europe, too, so get used to it.
It has been a long debate. I have gathered a very strong impression that there is a willingness in this House to support what is on the table at present, but we should not take it until we have hammered away at getting it improved. I am sure that it can be improved, but we have got to take the initiative more strongly than we have.
Syria: UK Military Action
Lord James of Blackheath Excerpts(8 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord James of Blackheath (Con)
My Lords, it has been an intermittently recurring theme today that some frustration has been expressed by noble Lords about the impact of Mr Putin’s apparent loyalty towards Mr Assad, to the extent that he would block and preclude any restructuring of Syria post this crisis. Yet nobody seems to know the nature of the connection between Mr Putin and Mr Assad. Without knowing that, I do not see how we can have any concept of what might be possible in the future for Syria.
Six years ago, this House may have had an insight into what this mysterious reason was through EU Sub-Committee B, which was at that time chaired dynamically by my noble friend Lord Freeman. I had the honour of being on the committee and our agenda included the question of the Gazprom pipeline into Europe, on which the security of our own European energy resources for the future so much depended. We were deeply sceptical about whether this was sensible, given the power that it appeared to give Russia to control us and turn the lights off any time it wanted to.
The Foreign Office was prevailed upon to find a Russian expert—yes, it has one—and sent along a bright young man to come and talk to us. We told him of all our concerns: Ukraine, Georgia, Chechnya all bordered on the pipeline. The scope for interference and blackmail from Russia was terrible. How would we make it work? This bright young man looked at us very tolerantly. He did not quite say, “You are a load of fuddy-duddy old idiots”, but he got very close to it. He said, “You have not understood a thing of what is happening here”. We said, “Tell us”. He said, “The whole point is that the pipeline is in fact going to be the personal financial source going directly into the private hands of Mr Putin and it is going to be the only means by which he will be able to hold on to power in Russia personally, so there is not the slightest risk that he is going to do anything which interferes with the continuity of your supply”.
If that was true then and is still true now, is this the explanation of Mr Assad’s hold over Mr Putin? Mr Assad would be in a position to open up the shores of Syria—in a very narrow band, only about 30 kilometres long—for a new pipeline, which has long since been rumoured, to be created out of Iran, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, all merging on the Syrian shore and then crossing to the mainland of our European homeland. This would destroy Mr Putin’s position. Is this what the connection is? If it is, surely we can have a diplomatic initiative with Mr Putin to put his mind at rest as to the impracticality of this and to give him some assurance that we would never entertain it, even if it had to be done at a European Union level. But this is ridiculous as it stands. I believe that this is the barrier for Mr Putin to the reorganisation of Syria and we should be addressing it at this level.
Energy: Renewables
Lord James of Blackheath Excerpts(14 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord James of Blackheath
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to assess the assurances given by the previous Administration on the completion date and costs of the renewable energy programme required to meet the European Union target of a 20 per cent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 2020.
Lord James of Blackheath
My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper. In so doing, I note my former interest as chairman of North Sea Assets plc and British Underwater Engineering plc.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Lord Marland)
My Lords, I believe that the noble Lord is referring to the European Union’s obligation under the renewable energy directive to source 20 per cent of its energy from renewable sources by 2020, of which the UK share is to achieve 15 per cent renewable energy consumption by 2020. We are committed to meeting the UK’s target for renewable energy by 2020, but we want to go further and have asked the Committee on Climate Change to provide independent advice on the level of ambition for renewables across the UK.
As part of the package of challenging energy and climate change measures, the UK has also signed up to the target of a reduction in new EU greenhouse emissions of at least 20 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020. Actual costs will depend on how the market responds to incentives, on barriers to deployment and on how technology costs evolve between now and 2020. We will continue to monitor and review the uptake of financial incentives and costs.
Lord James of Blackheath
I thank the Minister for that reply. Can he confirm whether his department is able to agree with the former estimates last provided to your Lordships by the previous Government to the effect that they would achieve the target for 2020 with a programme of extensive wind farm developments on Crown properties within a budget to be provided by the Prime Minister of the time—not from his own pocket, I think—of £75 billion? Does that hold good as an achievable forecast today, given that not a scrap of equipment can be contracted for wind farm development until 2020?