Inequalities of Region and Place

Debate between Lord Liddle and Lord Adonis

Thursday 14th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, I first congratulate my noble friend Lord Stansgate on his maiden speech, which has been described as “outstanding” and “assured”. I also thought that what he had to say about the importance of science was very real. Some critical decisions for the Government are coming up in the spending round in October, and I very much hope that the enthusiasm that Dominic Cummings, to be fair to him, had for the science budget will continue to be reflected in the Government’s policy.

Secondly, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Greenhalgh, for his reply. We in the Lords often say, “Oh, it’s been an excellent debate”, but, actually, this has been an excellent debate. I thought that he tried to respond to it, in his own rumbustious style, and I am very grateful to him for that—

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

That is a compliment.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

It is; “rumbustious” is a real compliment. I thought that he tried to answer the points and displayed a certain sympathy with many of them.

For me, the key things that came out of this debate were, first, what my noble friend Lord Adonis said about HS2, which is one of the key decisions that will affect this country for decades to come. Who wants to add to the north/south divide in this country an east/west divide? That is a fundamental point.

Secondly, the noble Lord, Lord Young, and others talked about the need to reset central-local relations and think about local sources of revenue. We need to see that kind of thinking opened up again. For the department and Michael Gove, who leads it, these issues will come to the fore in the next few weeks. I hope that he reads what we have had to say in this debate in Hansard. I beg to move.

High Speed Rail (West Midlands-Crewe) Bill

Debate between Lord Liddle and Lord Adonis

Committee stage & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords & Committee: 2nd sitting : House of Lords & Committee: 2nd sitting
Thursday 12th November 2020 Grand Committee

[Lord Liddle (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I oppose the amendment. I do not see any point in it whatever. It seems to me that in this country we can never make up our minds about whether we are going to do anything that is big and expensive. We have constant reviews, and we are constantly cancelling projects that have already made some advance. We have just had the independent Oakervee review of HS2, and we have just had a government decision to go ahead with the line to Manchester—although I share the worries of my noble friend Lord Adonis about what the Government are thinking about the eastern leg. However, I see no purpose in launching another review now.

My noble friend Lord Berkeley says that it is very difficult to get independent advice regarding all these concerns about costs, et cetera. Of course it is difficult to get independent advice, as the people who really know the facts are the ones who are doing the job. Unless the taxpayer is to fund an independent organisation to be critical of a scheme that Parliament has voted for and that the Government have reaffirmed and have cross-party support for, then this is a ludicrous proposal. I suppose that the answer to my noble friend’s legitimate concerns is to have an effective HS2 board. If there is an answer to this problem, it lies in having an effective board to supervise the management of the project. That is the point that the Government ought to be satisfying themselves on. I honestly do not think that this is a matter for legislation at all.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, I agree with every word that my noble friend Lord Liddle has said, and I hope that the Minister will not give an inch to this amendment and will comprehensively refute it when she speaks. HS2 has been reviewed to death.

I find it utterly astonishing that my noble friend Lord Berkeley should be moving this amendment because he has brought his great, independent wisdom and distinction to the biggest review yet of HS2, which concluded only this February after the best part of six months’ work. When he says that there are no independent people to conduct that review, it is a lot of complete nonsense. The members of the Oakervee review were very eminent and very independent: Doug Oakervee himself, a man of immense distinction in the delivery of infrastructure projects here and internationally, including some of the most successful developed in modern economies, in Hong Kong; my noble friend, who was the deputy chairman; Sir John Cridland, who is the former director-general of the CBI; Michèle Dix, who is responsible for directing Crossrail 2; Stephen Glaister, one of the most eminent transport economists in the world; Sir Peter Hendy, the chairman of Network Rail and former commissioner of Transport for London; Andrew Sentance, of the Bank of England; Professor Tony Travers, who is one of the most independent-minded and distinguished professors of government in the world and holds a chair at the London School of Economics; Andy Street, who is the elected Mayor of the West Midlands; and Patrick Harley, who is the leader of Dudley council. So I ask my noble friend Lord Berkeley to tell us in his reply: what sort of independence does he have in mind? Who are these great independent judges of infrastructure projects who can bring their wisdom to bear and have not already been consulted? At the end of the Oakervee report, which is 130 pages long, there is a list of the people who submitted evidence and were consulted. That list extends to more than 400 people and organisations.

High Speed Rail (West Midlands-Crewe) Bill

Debate between Lord Liddle and Lord Adonis

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 9th November 2020 Grand Committee

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, I was having some difficulty following the arguments of my noble friend. He could of course move the motion he referred to on Report, but I can confidently predict that it would not be accepted by the House. Indeed, I am not sure that many other noble Lords would give it the time of day, precisely because we have had this exhaustive procedure up until now. Essentially, cutting through what my noble friend said—he has of course wanted to stop the scheme all the way through and has been a deep contrarian in that regard—he wants to create new avenues for opponents to stop the scheme. I recognise that, and it is a perfectly honourable thing to want to do.

What Parliament has to judge is whether the processes we have are robust and fair. My view is that they are very robust and very fair. They give complainants and people presenting petitions ample opportunity to make their case. The arrangements that pertain between the two Houses are there to keep a proper sense of proportion in the consideration of the petitions, so that all of the issues raised—the petitioning process is exhaustive and expensive—are not repeated ad nauseam in the second House. That is why the Private Bill arrangements are in place: so that you cannot re-open in the second House, as fully as my noble friend would wish, issues that have been considered by the first House. That seems to me to be perfectly reasonable. It does not withdraw the rights of petitioners to have their concerns properly assessed by Parliament. What it does is put in place a procedure that is fair and proportionate for the consideration of those petitions, which is very different.

The reason why my noble friend Lord Berkeley wants the TWA process to apply is that he is not content with parliamentary consideration of these petitions, and he therefore wants petitioners to be able to create a wholly new and additional process: the TWA process. That is grossly disproportionate. The point he made about changes to the first phase of the project, from London to Birmingham, confuses apples and pears. If you are going to make changes to legislation that has already been agreed by Parliament, you have no alternative but to go for a TWA-type process, unless you are going to produce an entirely new Bill. That is a completely separate issue from seeking to layer on top of parliamentary consideration of the Bill a wholly new process—the TWA process—while this legislation is going through and petitions are being considered. I do not think, having had close acquaintance with the processes, that petitioners are treated in any way unfairly. The arrangements between the two Houses give them ample opportunity, and the power is there for Parliament to make fundamental changes in respect of petitions that are raised between the two Houses. The allocation of responsibilities between the two Houses is laid down by convention.

What my noble friend Lord Berkeley wants to do, essentially, is to stop the scheme; I accept that. He wants to create as many possible avenues of further appeal and expense—this would add to expense—to delay it. Any reasonable observer, particularly those looking at the work of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, and his committee and the committee in the House of Commons, would think that Parliament has struck a fair and proper balance between the power of the Executive to propose a major project of this kind and the duty of Parliament to see that all private interests are properly considered before agreement is reached.

[Lord Liddle (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I very much agree with what my noble friend Lord Adonis has just said and disagree with my noble friend Lord Berkeley. As a member of the Select Committee, I did not feel bullied by the government counsel on this question. We considered the issue in depth, and the reasons why we said we would not consider such orders seemed valid in the light of that discussion. I am sure the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, can give a much more elegant legal explanation of these issues than I can.

When the Bill goes through the Commons, the Select Committee can recommend fundamental changes to the route of the line by making additional provisions, but the convention has been established that the Lords does not revisit these questions on petitions that are made to it. Therefore, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, announced at the start of our proceedings that we would not be recommending additional provisions and would be sticking with the convention. Then, of course, people say, “You could use transport and works orders”, but, in effect, they another form of additional provision. As I understand it, if this point were conceded, the decision-making process would be taken out of Parliament and put into the hands of the Secretary of State. It would then be subject to all the arguments about judicial review and whether things have been done properly that have bedevilled plans for airport expansion in this country, for example.

As a non-lawyer, I was totally persuaded by the argument that we should not contemplate these orders. We listened to the argument that was made in the infamous case of the Stone depot, and I was totally unpersuaded that, even if we had had the power to make such an order, it was actually sensible.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Liddle (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I want to make a couple of brief points. First, it is important that there is some scheme of environmental monitoring, which I support. Three-monthly monitoring seems excessive, but it is good to have this amendment. Secondly, however, I am rather shocked by the tone of many noble Lords who are against HS2 in their treatment of these environmental questions. As one who served on your Lordships’ Select Committee on the Bill, HS2 seemed to me to display considerable concern and detailed knowledge of what it was doing on these points. Our exchanges with the Woodland Trust as witnesses were not in the tone of many noble Lords’ comments today. I thought that a good dialogue was opening up between the Woodland Trust and HS2. We made some recommendations in our report for more sensitive treatment of ancient woodland, particularly trying to avoid damage in the construction period, as well as recommendations on the planting of new woodland, but I am somewhat shocked by what I have heard this afternoon.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, I agree with everything my noble friend Lord Liddle just said. As a former member of the HS2 board and as the Minister who set up HS2 Ltd, environmental concerns were absolutely at the heart of what we sought to meet. By and large, HS2 has done a good job.

The fundamental concern many noble Lords have is that this railway is being built at all. We need to be quite clear about this. The impact on ancient woodland is miniscule as regards the proportion of woodland affected. Some noble Lords would prefer that the line was not built and there was no impact; I respect that entirely. However, Parliament has given these powers and it is a project of importance. The noble Lord, Lord Randall, says it is unpopular, but that is not what the polling shows at all. It shows that HS2 as a scheme is popular with the public at large. Railways are popular, and indeed, if I may point out to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, they are particularly popular with Greens.

Unfortunately, a kind of parallel debate is taking place here. There is one between opponents of HS2 who are simply latching on to anything they can use to try to undermine the project, and the reality, which is that HS2 is doing, by and large, a good job. It could improve—of course all organisations can improve—but it is doing a good job of meeting its environmental obligations, and the requirements placed upon it by the Government are reasonable as regards no net loss.

I point out to the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, that he delivered one part of his speech condemning cost overruns at HS2, which was prefaced by calling for additional costs, which would be significant. He tried to pooh-pooh them away in a kind of rhetorical way, but it would be very significant if they were imposed on HS2. He needs to work out how he reconciles the first half of his speech with the second half.

On reporting, I am in strong support of full transparency and proper accounting processes, as I have been all the way through this project. I hope that the Minister will tell us what the process for reporting is. HS2 Ltd publishes a full annual report, which gives an update of the progress on the project across a number of dimensions, and it is regularly held to account by parliamentary committees, including the Public Accounts Committee, and internally by the Government.

However, I see merit, as my noble friend Lord Liddle said, in a requirement for an ongoing process for reporting on delivery against environmental and financial objectives. Subject to what the Minister says when she tells us what the reporting processes are, might it be possible to bring together my noble friend Lord Berkeley’s Amendment 4 and my noble friend Lord Tunnicliffe’s Amendment 9? The latter would require annual reporting in respect of the impact on ancient woodlands. My noble friend Lord Berkeley’s amendment would require quarterly reporting across a much wider range of impacts —not just environmental impacts, but costs of land acquisition, the progress of the project, and revenue forecasts and cost-benefit analyses. I support the broad range of issues that my noble friend Lord Berkeley wants to see reported on, but quarterly reporting is too regular. Subject to what the Minister says, if we are still not happy about the formal requirements for reporting after the Grand Committee, I wonder whether it might be possible to have annual reporting, as suggested in my noble friend Lord Tunnicliffe’s Amendment 9, across a broader range of indices. My noble friend is right that annual reporting is the way most organisations report on objectives and costs.

European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 5) Bill

Debate between Lord Liddle and Lord Adonis

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

[Lord Liddle]

I understand that, but you would think that they are the only people who count. What about the 6 million people who in the past two weeks have signed a petition to revoke Article 50? That is one of the biggest demonstrations of support for remaining in the European Union that we have seen. What about the 1 million people who went on the march? Are they just part of the London bubble and do not represent anyone outside London?

[Lord Adonis]

I thank my noble friend for giving way. How many of the 17.4 million does my noble friend think voted for a no-deal Brexit, six weeks’ worth of medical supplies, the M20 becoming the largest car park in Europe, the ports not working, international driving licences having to be introduced and so on? Does he think that more than perhaps a few hundred thousand voted for those particular horrors?

[Lord Fairfax of Cameron]

Is the noble Lord inviting me to respond? Of course I will if he wishes me to do so.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Lord Liddle and Lord Adonis

Committee: 11th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 28th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, I add an English voice in support of the amendment—a northern English voice and a Cumbrian voice. In deference to the noble Lord, Lord Cavendish, for whom I have great regard because of the work he does in Cumbria, I think that European funds have made an enormous difference to our prospects in the north. In our debates on the Bill, we have heard a lot of the voices of Wales and Scotland about how they should be treated in the light of Brexit, but we have heard very little about how the north of England should be treated. This reflects the fact that federalism in this country has not advanced far enough. We do not have a proper devolved system of government. It is an object lesson in how the interests of large parts of England are completely forgotten in a lot of our deliberations.

The noble Lord, Lord Wigley, is absolutely right that the £350 million a week claim on the bus played an enormous part in the leave victory. I remember giving out leaflets on the streets of the ward I represent on the county council in Wigton in Cumbria. People came up to me and said “Roger, you know, we’re not going to vote for you on this because we’re just wasting all that money”. I tried to explain to people that the £350 million that they were talking about was a gross figure of UK contributions to the EU, from which we got back substantial amounts of money which went to Cumbria in a big way.

Let me cite some examples. There is not just the agricultural support, which I know is a great concern of the noble Lord, Lord Cavendish. We would not have broadband in Cumbria if we had not had special EU support for it. We would not have had the regeneration schemes for the ports of Maryport, Whitehaven and Barrow if we had not had EU structural funds. We have had huge support for regeneration.

One other interest that I should declare is that I chair Lancaster University, just outside my native county, which is presently building a health innovation campus that would not happen without EU structural funds—and this for an excellent university, which is top of the league in the Sunday Times this year, if I can plug it in the Lords Chamber. It is a vital investment for the university’s future.

The truth is that, if the £350 million claim that the leavers made was to be met, all that spending would have to be scrapped—all the spending on agriculture and the regions and all the spending on culture, science and innovation would go, because that was the gross contribution. Clearly, therefore, there is great embarrassment on the Benches opposite as to their present intentions, because they cannot tell the Foreign Secretary that he was lying throughout the campaign. But the truth is that that was what he was doing. He was lying about the £350 million. The fact is that, if these programmes, the agriculture support and structural fund money is to continue, there is no £350 million. There might be a lesser sum from the net contribution, but when you are thinking about the net contribution, you have to think about the impact of Brexit on our economic growth and therefore on tax revenues. It is already the case that, whereas we were growing before the referendum at the top of the G7 league, we are now growing at the bottom of it, and the Chancellor’s own forecasts for the next five years suggest that we will continue to be in that position and will suffer a considerable loss of potential growth and tax revenue.

This is a very serious issue. I would like clear answers from the Government as to what promises beyond 2020 they are prepared to make on agriculture and structural funds. That matters greatly to the future of the regions of this nation.

[Lord Adonis]

I endorse everything that my noble friend Lord Liddle has said. Always when the House debates a Bill at length, certain themes appear, and the themes and patterns can often be of some significance. One of the most significant themes that has appeared in your Lordships’ consideration of this Bill is how weak the voice of England has been in our debates compared with the voice of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

There has been only one substantive debate about the interests of England after EU withdrawal and how it is handled, which was the debate initiated by the noble Lord, Lord Shipley—significantly, a former leader of Newcastle City Council—on 19 March. It was a very significant debate in the form that it took. What came through very clearly in the debate was that the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, and other leaders of local authorities in England, including the noble Lord, Lord Porter, who sits on the Conservative Benches and is the leader of the Local Government Association, had far more confidence in the EU’s processes of consultation through the Committee of the Regions than they did in any institutional arrangements for consultation between Her Majesty’s Government and local authorities in England.

I am delighted to see the noble Lord, Lord Bourne, in his place—I think that he may be responding to this debate. In his characteristic way, he made a very constructive response to the debate, saying that the Government were considering consultation arrangements post-EU withdrawal with local authorities in England. I took it to be a very significant statement when he said that that might involve new consultative machinery, including possibly a new consultative body between the Government and local authorities in England. I have to say that the fact that it takes EU withdrawal for Her Majesty’s Government to produce proposals for formal institutional consultation between the leaders of local authorities in England and the Government is a pretty damning commentary on the state of our constitutional arrangements in this country. One of the themes that comes through very strongly from Brexit is that English local government and the regions and cities of England are essentially government from London in a colonial fashion, in much the same way as Scotland and Wales were before devolution. One of the very big issues raised by Brexit is that whatever happens over the next year, whether or not we leave—and I hope we do not—Parliament is going to have to address with great seriousness in the coming years the government of England as a nation but also the relationship between this colonial-style government that we have in Westminster and Whitehall and local government across England as a whole.

The one telling exception to this pattern is London, because London has a directly elected mayor and the Greater London Authority. As a former Minister, I know that the whole way that London is treated is radically different from the way that the rest of England is treated because it has a mayor and the GLA. When the Mayor of London phones Ministers, sitting there with 1 million votes—somewhat more than my noble friend has as the county councillor for Wigton; I know he has done very well but he does not sit there with quite so many votes—I assure noble Lords that Ministers take the Mayor of London’s call.

I remember vividly that when I was Secretary of State for Transport I met the then Mayor of London, who is now the Foreign Secretary, and he did not know who the leader of Birmingham City Council was. It only happens to be the second largest city in England. That is a very telling commentary on the state of the government of England. How England is going to be treated is massive unfinished business in our constitutional arrangements, and Brexit has exposed a whole set of issues relating to the government of England that will now have to be addressed.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Lord Liddle and Lord Adonis

Committee: 10th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 26th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, the noble Baroness needs to be very cautious about taking on the noble Duke, of Wellington in a debate. I hope that she will be able to agree with her ducal colleague. There are two key points here: one is fundamental, the other pragmatic. The noble Duke made the pragmatic one, which is compelling. There could be reasons, perhaps to do with the final ratification processes, why it is in the public interest to delay and we should not put obstacles in the path of that. There is also a reason of fundamental constitutional principle why we should not agree to this. We are being asked to agree to a date for leaving the European Union, and to put it in statute, before we know what we will be doing after we leave. Until we have the withdrawal treaty, we will not be aware of what the terms of withdrawal are—

[Lord Liddle]

I do not think we are going to know what the terms of withdrawal are even when we get that treaty. All we are going to get is a political declaration. It is clear that everyone in Brussels thinks that the British Government want to fudge that as much as possible because that is the only way the Prime Minister, Mrs May, can get an agreement through the House of Commons and her own party.

[Lord Adonis]

My noble friend makes very good points, which will be a subject for discussion when we see the proposed withdrawal treaty. However, this is all the more reason why Parliament should not commit itself now to a date in advance of knowing the basis on which we are going to withdraw. The arguments for taking the date out of the Bill are compelling. It is not sufficient that only a Minister has the power to change the date. It is crucial for Parliament itself to be in charge of setting the date, once it has agreed the terms of departure.

I am always an optimist in these matters. The noble Lord, Lord Hannay, did the noble Baroness on the Front Bench a great disservice when he said that he knew in advance what she was going to say. We know that the noble Baroness is highly emollient and listens to debates in the House. She is not her noble friend Lord Callanan, who just reads from the script and is totally unresponsive to the mood of the House. We have great confidence that the noble Baroness will say that she has listened to the compelling arguments which have been put to her, particularly from her ducal colleague; that she is going to depart from the words in her script; that Her Majesty’s Government will consider this matter on the basis of the overwhelming weight of arguments which have been put in this Committee and that she will be delighted to accept the amendments on the Order Paper this afternoon.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Lord Liddle and Lord Adonis

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Monday 26th February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Adonis]

I entirely agree, and I hope that the noble Lord will say that to the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, who is sitting right next to him. It provides a devastating response to the noble Lord’s intervention just a moment ago.

We are asking the Government simply to declare the policy of Her Majesty’s Government in the negotiations that are taking place. Since one assumes that our European partners are being told what we are seeking to negotiate—it is quite hard to negotiate something if you do not tell the other side what you are seeking to negotiate—I cannot see that there is any damage to the public interest in telling this House and the public. These are very straightforward questions. The noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, says that we should not declare our hand midway. Are we or are we not in favour of keeping the European arrest warrant after 29 March next year? If we are, that is a clear negotiating objective of the Government. It will require a straightforward continuation of the current arrangements, and people like me will say all the way through that it is yet another argument as to why we would be much better off staying in the European Union in the first place and not having to go through this hugely complex and difficult process of attempting to replicate arrangements so that we do not end up with a worse situation, when there is every likelihood that we will.

The devastating response to and commentary on all these matters come from the Prime Minister herself—both in her Munich speech, in which she made it very clear that she would regard it as damaging to the national interest not to have a treaty at the end of March, and in her speech on 25 April 2016 before the referendum, in which she was even clearer on these matters. In that latter speech, in which she sought to argue why we should stay in the European Union, she went through in great detail the benefits that the European arrest warrant, the Prüm arrangements and so on gave to the security of the United Kingdom. Those are all points that the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, has raised.

The noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, seems to want to will the ends without the means. I understand that he has not had to negotiate these issues himself, but just says, on a wing and a prayer, that he wants these objectives to be secured and is sure that our negotiators in Brussels will be able to do it. If the noble Lord had had any systematic engagement with the Ministers responsible, I do not think he would necessarily have so high a degree of confidence in their capacity to negotiate his objectives.

The Prime Minister herself gave the devastating response to the question of why we should stay in the European Union in respect of these security and justice issues. In her speech of 25 April 2016, when referring to the European arrest warrant and the passenger name record directive, she said that these show,

“2 advantages of remaining inside the EU … without the kind of institutional framework offered by the European Union, a complex agreement like this could not have been struck across the whole continent, because bilateral deals between every single member state would have been impossible to reach”.

Let us be frank: that is why we are in the European Union, why it serves our national interest and why we have a very high degree of co-operation when it comes to justice and home affairs.

We are talking about very large numbers. The Prime Minister herself gave the figures, saying that in the five years prior to her speech—2011 to 2016—5,000 people had been extradited from Britain to Europe under the European arrest warrant, and 675 suspected or convicted wanted individuals were brought to Britain to face justice. She said:

“It has been used to get terror suspects out of the country and bring terrorists back here to face justice”.


Just as the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, gave his extraordinary statistics about how long it used to take to get extradition proceedings under way, the Prime Minister said:

“In 2005, Hussain Osman—who tried to blow up the London Underground on 21/7—was extradited from Italy using the Arrest Warrant in just 56 days. Before the Arrest Warrant existed, it took 10 long years to extradite Rachid Ramda, another terrorist, from Britain to France”.


These issues are of the utmost gravity and we need an assurance from the Minister that, in the negotiations for the treaty that the Prime Minister referred to in Munich, we will seek to maintain arrangements that are in every respect as good as those we currently have. If we do not have those in the treaty she presents to Parliament at the end of the year, many of us will say that this whole Brexit process has seriously damaged the security of the United Kingdom.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

Does my noble friend accept that the reason the Government will not disclose their negotiating objectives is not that this would somehow prejudice their position but rather that they do not know what those objectives are? The truth is that this is an issue of real sensitivity to the Brexiteers. The question is whether these arrangements are intergovernmental or involve the institutions of the European Union and the supervision of the European Court of Justice.

I know all about this because, as an adviser to the then Prime Minister, I went through many iterations of this issue. When justice and home affairs first became a subject of the European Union, and a pillar of the Maastricht treaty, it was all at an intergovernmental level. Gradually, it became more communitised, as it were, for the simple reason that that was the way to make it work. We could not make it work as an intergovernmental mechanism. We could not get the degree of co-operation needed to make something like the European arrest warrant work without having some judicial supervision mechanism, so the Labour Government agreed to it—somewhat reluctantly because some of the people involved were not the greatest supporters of civil rights in many respects, but they agreed to it.

What is happening in Brussels at the moment is that the member states are discussing among themselves what framework they are going to set for the negotiations for the rest of the year. That will be coming out at the end of March.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Goldie]

I think your noble friend thought that he had been usurped.

[Lord Adonis]

My noble friend’s intervention is excellent and gives the Minister more to respond to. I know he is short of points to deal with at the end of this debate.

[Lord Liddle]

This is Committee stage. We are allowed to go back and forth. What are the Government saying to other member states at the moment about the nature of the agreement on this that they are prepared to contemplate? Are they saying to our current partners that they are prepared to see judicial supervision in these arrangements or not? I hope the Minister will answer that very simple point.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Lord Liddle and Lord Adonis

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

[Lord Adonis]

Perhaps I may ask the noble Lord, Lord Kerr—the supreme oracle on Article 50—a question which, again, I think will be important for our deliberations later on. An extension of the Article 50 period requires unanimity in the Council. However, if Her Majesty’s Government wished to extend Article 50 for the purposes of holding a referendum, or conceivably for a parliamentary vote, thus completing our established constitutional procedures, would the Council recognise that automatically because it recognises the domestic procedures of member states when it comes to the ratification of agreements?

[Lord Liddle]

I would like to follow that up with a relevant question to the noble Lord, Lord Kerr. I agree with all the excellent speeches in favour of this amendment. To me, the politics of the amendment is the question of whether, when exit day is discussed, Parliament knows what it is exiting to. That is the question. If Parliament does not know what it is exiting to, surely the logic is that the date should be extended until it does.

Along with my noble friend Lady Kennedy, I have recently been on Select Committee visits to Brussels, and she can confirm that there is much uncertainty about what information will be available to Parliament in the autumn of this year. If things go well, we might have a withdrawal agreement and a transition period, but the only thing on the future relationship that we will have is a political declaration. There is no question at all of there being a trade agreement when Parliament votes; it will be a political declaration. The European people to whom we talked said that they wanted that to be clear and precise. However, at the same time, people said to us, “We think that possibly your Government might quite like to get away with a fudge”. Why should Parliament be put in the position of taking this crucial decision when all the British Government are offering is a fudge?