Brexit: Negotiations

Lord Jay of Ewelme Excerpts

Thursday 7th September 2017 Grand Committee

[Lord Jay of Ewelme (CB)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, for initiating this debate and for introducing it so robustly. I am also grateful to the Government for arranging a debate on the implications of Brexit for Ireland, north and south, earlier this week and for scheduling the debate next week on the EU position papers.

As acting chair of your Lordships’ EU Committee, I will speak today about accountability on Brexit to committees of the House. The points that I shall make reflect a letter that I sent yesterday on behalf of the EU Committee to David Davis, with a copy to the Minister. Parliamentary committees, including the EU Committee, are an essential part of parliamentary scrutiny. They meet regularly, they work across party lines, they have experienced support and they build up substantial knowledge of and expertise on their subject matter. Certainly in the Lords, they look at things objectively. If Parliament is to scrutinise effectively something as complex and important as the Brexit negotiations—as it must—committee engagement is essential.

As the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, said, the EU Committee has found the Secretary of State’s response to its requests for reports back after each round of the negotiations to be disappointing and unlikely to lead, if I may say so, to the deep and special relationship that we all want to establish with him. He has offered to appear quarterly, which is helpful as far as it goes, but the negotiations are fast-moving and regular reports back really are needed. We understand that the Secretary of State has a heavily charged schedule—in Edinburgh and elsewhere—and may not be able to attend as often as the committee would like, but the committee finds it hard to understand his apparent reluctance to allow his Ministers to appear before it. From my own experience, that would surely be the natural thing to do. That is why I wrote to Mr Davis yesterday, on behalf of the committee, welcoming his commitment to appear before us at least quarterly and formally inviting the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay—for whom we all have very great respect—to appear before us after the intervening negotiating rounds. I hope that she will be able to respond positively to the committee’s invitation in her reply to today’s debate.

The Brexit negotiations are the most important and complex negotiations that any British Government have carried out since the Second World War. Proper parliamentary accountability for and scrutiny of them is an essential part of our constitutional arrangements—even if unwritten. It really does matter.

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[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My next page turns to Select Committee appearances. The key to explaining the Secretary of State’s position is in the letter he wrote on 9 August to the noble Lord, Lord Jay. I am delighted he has been able to participate here. I want to address his very careful points in a moment, but first I will refer briefly to the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, because I do not want to run out of time and the intervention of the noble Lord, Lord Jay, was crucial.

In that letter from 9 August, my right honourable friend said that,

“I want to emphasise that I fully recognise the critical role the Committee plays in scrutinising our withdrawal from the European Union. It is for that reason I am clear that, as the Secretary of State who represents the UK in Brussels, I should personally update the Committee on the progress of negotiations.”

He goes on to talk about how. At the meeting of the committee in July, he made it clear that he would consider how best he could do that and balance that duty against the range of other committees. I would say, very carefully of course, that since my department was created, just 15 months ago, Ministers from my department have given evidence to Select Committees, covering a range of EU exit-related inquiries, on no less than 16 occasions. We will not step back.

I address the noble Lord, Lord Jay, because I feel it is vital to do so in my last two minutes. I thank him for the letter he wrote to the Secretary of State, which he kindly copied to me. I have made it clear that my department and I fully support the work of committees in both Houses in fulfilling their scrutiny responsibilities and that we will continue to value the work of the noble Lord’s committee as it conducts its Brexit-related inquiries.

The Secretary of State has given his commitments to update us after each round and will do so with a Statement, as he said. It is no small commitment to update the House after each negotiation round and, no less importantly, to take questions from Members. I want to give all Members of the House the opportunity to scrutinise progress in the negotiations and the Secretary of State has made it clear that he is happy to give evidence to the committee in the autumn.

I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Jay, will appreciate that the complexity of the negotiations—he was head of the Foreign Office so knows about the difficulties of the issue—demands a level of flexibility to ensure that they are conducted successfully, and that rigid committee appearances at fixed intervals may run counter to that. I appreciate there has been some joshing about what my right honourable friend may or may not do. What he does do is properly respect Parliament and scrutiny. I look forward to seeing the noble Lord, Lord Jay, later today when I am sure I will have the opportunity to explain in more detail why the Government are taking that approach.

[Lord Jay of Ewelme]

Before the noble Baroness finishes that part of her speech, can she confirm that she will be prepared to accept the invitation of the Select Committee to come before it for meetings when the Secretary of State is otherwise engaged?

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

Although I am out of time, I crave the indulgence of the Committee. I would like to discuss the matter further. I have set out the Government’s position and, because of the interventions from noble Lords, I have not been able to cover the issue of papers. I hope that I have at least given the way in which noble Lords can access those papers and that information. It is disappointing not to be able to conclude in a fuller way but I can certainly say that we will have plenty of further opportunities to discuss these matters.