Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Lord Lilley Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 6th March 2024 Lords Chamber

The Government respond by saying that their first responders will be able to spot people who are, for example, subjected to modern slavery. However, anyone who has worked in that field knows that it is not just a simple, very short interview that enables people to detect whether someone is subjected to modern slavery. There is a screening process, but how well equipped is that screening process, such that first responders are able to determine that someone is a potential victim? That remains an important question, and this lacuna should be filled by this amendment being supported.

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

My Lords, can I begin by setting the record straight? On Monday, I implied that no noble Lord had mentioned the precedent set in 2004 by the Blair Government in creating an unrebuttable presumption that a list of countries is safe. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, who is in his place, for alerting me to the fact that he and the Constitution Committee did refer to this precedent. I apologise to him for not having mentioned that. Both he and the committee excused the precedent because it was a requirement of European law, and it was replaced in 2022, so it would appear that removing such a bad precedent was a Brexit dividend, although I am not conscious that anyone has mentioned that.

The most reverend Primate rebuked me for citing this precedent on the grounds that

“two wrongs do not make a right”.—[Official Report, 4/3/24; col. 1336.]

Of course, neither do two rights make a wrong. I do not recall him, any right reverend Prelate or any lawyer, over the many years that that Act was in place, ever decrying it in the way they decry this proposal. What is the difference? The first is that, in those days, the list was all of white countries, and now we are dealing with a black country. I warn the most reverend Primate that he had better check his white privilege and his colonial assumptions, or he might find himself in trouble with some of his bishops.

The second difference is that this changes a court decision, whereas the 2004 one did not. I remind the House of something that I may, of course, not have heard other noble Lords mention: the advice of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Neuberger, who said that

“if a judge makes a policy-based decision with which the legislature is not happy, the remedy in a system with parliamentary supremacy, such as we enjoy in the UK, lies with Parliament. Any decision made by a court can always be reversed by the legislature”.

That is what the Bill does, and I hope we will pass it.

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

I rise in response to a point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, who referred to an article in today’s Times written by a Member of the other place, Joanna Cherry. She is, of course, the chair of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, on which I sit. I attended the same meetings as she did with members of the LGBT community in Rwanda and with the chairman of the Legal Aid Forum. I must tell your Lordships that I do not agree with the views that she expressed in the Times. She obviously comes from a political party that disagrees with this policy, and I am afraid that that has coloured her judgment in this regard. I do not find that the evidence that we heard sustains her conclusions.

We heard that Rwanda is a leading light in the region—east Africa—for the LGBT community. As we heard from the noble Baroness during the previous day of Report, this is a country that does not discriminate against LGBT activity and has very strong general protection against discrimination in its constitution. For those reasons, I am afraid I have the misfortune to disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Cashman.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Lawlor (Con)]

My Lords, I oppose this group of amendments on two grounds. I too want to promote the best interests of the child, but it is not in the interests of the child to be sent on dangerous journeys by land and sea, and in small boats, or to be removed from the care of family, relatives, friends, and a familiar home, to a distant country, to be brought up in care by strangers, where public authorities are stretched to the limit looking after their own children. I hope that the deterrent effect will be taken seriously by parents contemplating sending young children.

Many of the children are discovered, after scientific age assessment, not to be minors. I will not discuss the findings, and there are many different views about the validity of age assessments in this country. But I will take an impartial view from a neighbouring G7 country: that age determination tests have been used and have revealed that many who claim in a sample—I think one of the samples was for 2019—were not so. I draw attention to the analysis of age based on bone age, where radio- graphical evidence suggested that 55% of those claiming to be minors were over the age of 18. In fact, the average age of that 55% was found to be 29.

So, for two reasons, I oppose any change to the Bill, which will weaken the deterrent effect, as these amendments would. First, it is not in the interests of the child to be removed from their family, and not in the interests of the parents. I agree that nobody in this Chamber would probably contemplate doing it, and I do not think we should encourage parents overseas to contemplate doing it. Secondly, without tough conditions on age assessment, people might be encouraged to make false claims.

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

The noble Baroness, Lady Lawlor, makes an important point that provokes in me a question. I understand why the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford and others—all of us, I hope—have the interests of children at heart. I answer her question, “Would we send our child to Rwanda?” by asking her, “Would she send a child in a boat from France, a safe country, to the United Kingdom?” I hope she will answer that before the end of this section. I do not think she would.

In this Bill, we are trying to deter them from coming. I understand the collective view of the Bench of Bishops is that we should not deter but prevent them; we should make prevention—the actions taken by the French police force, the interruption of the people smugglers and so on—effective. If that is the case, will she confirm that it is the policy of the bishops to stop any children getting to this country? If prevention is made effective, they will not be able to—and nor will gay people or pregnant women or the other groups we are concerned about. They will all be prevented. Is that the view she is espousing?

[The Lord Bishop of Chelmsford]

My Lords, I will rise just to answer the question that was put to me. First, I do not speak on behalf of the Church of England; I will be quite clear on that. We are not whipped on these Benches; we speak individually. There happens to be a great deal of agreement among us on these Benches on these issues, but we do not speak with one voice. The question I posed about whether any one of us would want this situation for our children was actually around age assessment. If we found our child or grandchild, or anyone we knew, in this situation, would we want them to be assessed in this way?

As to the question of whether I would ever put a child on a boat, I think that is the wrong question. The point is that, behind every one of these figures, there are individual stories of enormous amounts of trauma that most of us cannot even begin to contemplate. I do not want to make a judgment about what goes on before somebody gets on a boat. I do not know whether it is necessarily parents putting children on the boats; we do not even know what has become of the parents of the children who end up here. I would not want to make a judgment on that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)]

My Lords, there are three amendments in this group, and they are all directed to the provisions of Clause 5 as to how interim measures of the European Court of Human Rights under Rule 39 of its rules are to be dealt with. None of these amendments is to be pressed to a Division, and so, following the example of the noble Baroness, I can be fairly brief.

My Amendment 36 seeks to replace the direction in Clause 5(3) that a court or tribunal of this country

“must not have regard to the interim measure when considering any application or appeal which relates to a decision to remove the person to … Rwanda”

with the provision that a court or tribunal “may” do so.

I have also added my name to Amendment 37, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, which would require a Minister of the Crown to consult the Attorney-General before deciding whether the United Kingdom will comply with the interim measure. Amendment 38, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, deals with the problem that Clause 5 creates more directly, in that it seeks to leave out the clause altogether.

Although we deal with the clause in different ways, we are united in our belief that Clause 5 provides for what will be a plain breach of international law. I do not think that I need to say much about that at this stage, because it was very fully debated in Committee. There are two different views, one way and the other, but I believe that, while that difference of view may remain, it can really be regarded as academic when one has regard to what happens in practice.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton, said in his contribution to our debate on 19 February that:

“International law has, therefore, reached a settled state of practice and agreement between member states and the Strasbourg court”.—[Official Report, 19/2/24; col. 468.]


That agreement is that interim measures are treated as binding. The United Kingdom has contributed to that settled state, not only by always complying with such measures until now but by calling on other states to do so when it suits our interests.

It is well recognised that custom, such as that in which this country has participated, is a source of international law. That has a long history; much of the civil law system, before the adoption of codes in the time of Napoleon, was built on custom and is still part of the law in certain respects in Jersey. The fact that states act in a consistent manner, as the United Kingdom has done and has called on others to do until now, can be seen as a good indication that member states are under an obligation to do so.

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

Will the noble and learned Lord comment on the decision of the French Government to ignore Rule 39 rulings and, in particular, to send someone back to Uzbekistan?

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)]

I was trying to explain that I am not getting engaged in that kind of debate. We have discussed the issue very fully in Committee —this is Report, and I have stated my position. I hope that the noble Lord, who has spoken now, will be content to accept that I can proceed and present my position.

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

But your position is that this is now settled and that member states all agree, when they patently do not.

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)]

My Lords, I am not going to respond. As I say, this is Report, and I am adopting a very particular position on settled practice, which the United Kingdom has participated in without exception, ever since the matter first was put into the rules. That being so, the idea that this country can simply unilaterally depart from that practice when it suits it is contrary to international law and is misconceived. My amendment, therefore, seeks to avoid that position and would allow the courts of this country to play a part in the procedure.

The Constitution Committee said in its report that Clause 5(3) raises “serious constitutional concerns”. I agree with that. As the committee put it:

“It is conceivable that a person may bring legal proceedings in the UK to compel a minister to adhere to an interim measure”.


Clause 5(3), as it stands, would prevent our courts giving effect to an interim measure in that way. The committee regarded that as a breach of the principle of the independence of the judiciary, which all Ministers of the Crown are under a duty, under Section 3 of the Constitutional Reform Act 2005, to uphold.

Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Lord Lilley Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 19th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 76A, in my name and in the name of my noble friend Lady Hamwee. This is a probing amendment to allow the Minister to expand on some of his helpful comments in an earlier group with regard to how the monitoring committee and the joint committee will operate.

When we started the Bill and I first read the treaty, I was not at that stage quite appreciative of how significant the monitoring committee and the joint committee would be when it comes to making decisions about the preparedness of when Rwanda would be a safe country. I was not aware at that stage, when I read the treaty, because at that stage, I was not aware that I was a decision-maker as to whether or not Rwanda would be safe. According to the Advocate-General, however, I am a decision-maker because I am a Member of Parliament and it is now a decision of the court of Parliament: this creature that has now come up from the grave to sit in judgment of a third country’s record on safety.

It is also relevant because the monitoring committee and the joint committee will be the supervising bodies, to some extent, with regard to the overall operation of the start to the end of the relocation processes. The noble Lord, Lord Coaker, is absolutely right: we do need more information about it, because we are gradually learning about what some of the estimates may be for the numbers to be relocated.

The Hope hostel in Kigali can accommodate 200 people, with an average processing time of a fortnight. On the previous day of Committee, we did the maths, as the Americans say. Well, we can do some more maths now, as the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, has helped us. If we believe the Daily Telegraph, which occasionally is a reliable journal of Conservative thinking in this country, if there are 30,000 people, on the figures given by the noble Lord, Lord Murray’s, impact assessment of the Illegal Migration Act, which, of course, we will take as read, that is £5.6 billion plus the £400 million down payment, so a neat £6 billion.

The Minister, in an earlier group, outlined the very high cost of accommodating existing asylum seekers in hotel accommodation. We know, through the Independent Commission for Aid Impact, that the Home Office decided on the most expensive and least efficient means by which to accommodate asylum seekers. Nevertheless, that is £2.9 billion a year—so, on any reckoning, the number of those who will be relocated to Rwanda will take at least a decade at a cost of at least £6 billion. There is no means by which the Government can have a more effective way for the British taxpayer than efficient accommodation and processing here in this country. There is no way the Government can square any of it to make the Rwanda scheme cheaper for the British taxpayer.

Ultimately, we are looking not just for value for money but for whether we can make the decision that Rwanda is safe and the mechanisms are in place.

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

Before the noble Lord moves on to the other bits, can he give us some estimate of how much it will cost the British taxpayer if he and his friends succeed in perforating this Bill like a sieve so that it has no deterrent effect and we have an ever-growing number of people coming here having to be put up in hotels at immense cost to the UK?

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord, who has been here during the various days in Committee. He will have heard last Wednesday what the Government’s own estimate is regarding the deterrent effect of the Illegal Migration Act. That ranges towards the top element of deterrence of 50%. That is not ours or the Opposition’s but the Government’s estimate of the likely impact of the Illegal Migration Act, and that is the mechanism by which this is brought about. A 50% deterrence would be roughly 16,000 people.

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

If it does not rise.

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

Well, that is the deterrent effect. Assuming that of those who are coming, 50% on a regular basis are deterred, then over the long term there would still be 50% coming by boats. That is not my estimate, it is the Government’s estimate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

I asked the noble Lord for his estimate of what will happen if we have no deterrent effect and there is an ever-growing number of people crossing the channel. Is it possible even to reach a figure? It must be enormous.

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

The Permanent Secretary at the Home Office was unable to do so. That is why he sought ministerial direction. Home Office civil servants sought ministerial direction because the Permanent Secretary said that the Government’s policy was not proven value for money.

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

I will address the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, and then happily give way to the noble Lord.

The valid question is, “If this Bill will not work, what would work?” We know that this Bill will not work, so the better deterrent effects are those policies such as relocation and resettlement agreements, which comply with international law and have policing mechanisms attached to them. That is called the Albania deal. I am sure that the noble Lord will agree that this has been a success.

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

A deterrent effect of 90%.

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

From a sedentary position. I agree with the noble Lord. I think Hansard picked it up: a successful 90% deterrent. The noble Lord heard me at Second Reading saying that we welcomed the Albania deal. An internationally legal, efficient, effective resettlement and relocation agreement is what works. This is not any of those. I happily give way to the noble Lord, Lord Murray.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

Well, it is someone’s idea of how to answer that particular question, but it is not an answer.

I worked out the number of small boat arrivals myself, simply by counting the Home Office’s own statistics from the middle of July to the end of 2023, which came to over 16,000. According to the law that the Government have passed, all those people are waiting to be deported, but the only answer that the Government give is Rwanda.

The noble Lord, Lord Lilley, is quite right to make the point about Albania. Albania works because it is Albanians being sent back to Albania. It is not a Rwandan deal with people from all over the world supposedly being sent to a third-party country. I quite agree with respect to that. If the Government had other treaties like this one organised, they would not have half the problems that they do, so the noble Lord is right to make that point.

The Minister has made no attempt to say the number waiting for deportation under the Illegal Migration Act. I worked it out for myself by looking at the statistics. If I can work it out using the Government’s own statistics, why can the Minister not come to this Chamber and tell us what the number is? Where are they? We read time and again that the Government have lost most of them or do not know where many of them are. That was part of the purpose of what I said.

I want a timeline because I am interested. If this is the only thing the Government are saying is going to work with respect to dealing with the small boats crisis and it will act as a deterrent, surely, we deserve some idea about the Government’s timeline. If it is going to act as a deterrent in the way the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, said, then people would know that there will be planes every week taking hundreds of people. We read from the Court of Appeal that Rwanda can only take a few hundred people, yet there are tens of thousands waiting to be deported. That is not a policy; it is a gimmick. It is a way of trying to pretend that something is going on.

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

Will the noble Lord give way?

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

I will give way in a moment.

Why can the Minister not give us some numbers and facts? That is all we were asking for. I hope and I would expect, frankly, that we get a bit more about the numbers the Government are working towards. They will have working assumptions they are working towards, and this Chamber deserves to know what they are.

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. I bet if he were to ask the Australians their estimate of the number they would have to send to Nauru before it had a deterrent effect, they would not have been able to give a figure. They would have probably given a figure that was much larger than what turned out to be the case. I can, in the privacy of this Room, since no one will report it, say from speaking to civil servants about the Albanian situation that they were expecting to have to deport far more people before it had any effect. It started to have an effect even before they had deported one new person; they were only deporting people who arrived before the agreement took effect.

Illegal Migration Bill

Lord Lilley Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 28th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, we have heard several times in the course of debates on the Bill that this is the will of the British people. I can assure the noble Lord sitting opposite that, if he steps outside the right-wing media, he will see that it is not. They have already been quite shocked by the egregious and often law-breaking behaviour of this Government, so now the only decent thing this Government can do is accept Amendment 5 and say that they will not break more laws. This is a reasonable request from, apparently, the whole House. I urge the Government to accept this amendment.

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

My Lords, at an earlier stage in our debates I asked all the lawyers present why our judiciary and officials, in interpreting these international agreements, give 75% of applicants for asylum the right to asylum on first application. It is only 25% in France and in almost all other countries it is below ours. If we are interpreting these laws correctly, other countries must be interpreting them incorrectly. We are told that we will lose all credibility if we do things incorrectly. Why do these other countries not lose all credibility? Why has none of the lawyers answered these questions before or now?

[Lord Green of Deddington (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak within two minutes and oppose this amendment. Migration Watch was the first organisation to draw attention to this problem and has been calling for action for three years. I will make two political points, not legal ones. I leave the law to the lawyers.

Practically, we find ourselves in a situation where we have no means of stopping the flow of another 50,000 applicants for asylum over this year, and quite possibly as many or more next year. With last year’s intake still under consideration, the whole system is being overwhelmed and the cost is becoming extraordinary, even as a percentage of our foreign aid. This is unacceptable.

Secondly, from a political point of view, I am not political but the public are furious—

Northern Ireland Protocol Bill

Lord Lilley Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 11th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

It is a privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord Bew, who has made the important point—strangely ignored by all the lawyers who have spoken so far—that we are subject to conflicting international agreements that cannot be reconciled without breaking, in part, some of them.

We all agree that there should be no infrastructure or checks at the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic. Why? Not just because they would disrupt trade but because they would be a provocation to republicans and would probably be blown up, threatening the whole peace process. By the same token, we should all agree that there should be no border between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. It disrupts a far larger volume of trade and, as we have seen, it is provocative to unionists and is gravely undermining the Belfast agreement. As it happens, Article 6.2 of the protocol commits both parties to avoid infrastructure at the ports and airports of Northern Ireland to the extent possible—but the EU ignored that and actually invoked legal procedures to require the introduction and building of checkpoints at Northern Ireland ports.

The EU’s only legitimate interest in the protocol is to protect its internal market. At present, the threat to its market is imaginary, and in the future any threat would only come from third-country goods which incur a lower tariff to enter the UK than the EU tariff, from goods, if any, which are subject to lower standards in the UK market than are required under EU law, and a minority of those two groups of goods which are actually destined for the Republic. If this Bill provides an equal, or possibly greater, protection against these pretty minor threats, the EU has no pragmatic reason to insist on retaining the complex procedures envisaged under the protocol. Moreover, under Article 24 of the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement, to which all EU states adhere,

“where two or more alternative measures are reasonably available for fulfilling the policy objective”,

the least trade restrictive measure must be taken—an obligation which the EU is in fragrant breach of.

But some in the EU have an illegitimate reason for hanging on to the protocol, which is to make sure that Britain suffers for Brexit. That raises the question: can we lawfully, unilaterally, replace the Northern Ireland protocol by other measures which meet the EU’s legitimate objectives, avoid a hard border and protect the Belfast/Good Friday agreement? I believe we can do so.

First, the sole justification for the protocol was to uphold the Belfast agreement. As the former Lord Chancellor pointed out, the very first article of the protocol says:

“This Protocol is without prejudice to the provisions of the 1998 Agreement”.


So, as he said, the Belfast/Good Friday agreement takes precedence over the protocol. The UK, as guarantor of the Belfast agreement, has not just a right but a duty to ensure that, where the protocol threatens the Good Friday agreement, it is changed—preferably by agreement, but if not, otherwise—as envisaged in Article 13 of the protocol.

Secondly, the protocol is intrinsically temporary; the EU itself said so. It said that no permanent agreement with a member state can be reached under Article 50 —only temporary and transitional relationships. That is why we had to leave first before we could negotiate the permanent trade and co-operation agreement. The then Solicitor-General told Parliament:

“article 50 of the Treaty on European Union does not provide a legal basis in Union law for permanent future arrangements with non-member states.”—[Official Report, Commons, 3/12/18; col. 547.]


So, he went on, if someone were to mount a challenge to the protocol on the basis that the EU said that Article 50 is not a sound basis for a permanent agreement,

“I tell you frankly, Mr Speaker, they are likely to win”.—[Official Report, Commons, 3/12/18; col. 555.]

That was pretty emphatic advice from a lawyer. If the EU now repudiate that doctrine, then the protocol was negotiated in bad faith, which itself is grounds for us to replace it.

The reason the protocol is undermining the Belfast agreement is that it lacks the consent of the unionist community, who see it as undermining the Act of Union itself. Indeed, the court in Northern Ireland has ruled that the protocol “subjugates” the Act of Union.

What should a state do if it finds that its obligations under one treaty conflict with those under another treaty or with its own constitutional law? Let me answer that question in the words of the European Court of Justice in the Kadi case. The court affirmed that,

“although the Court takes great care to respect the obligations that are incumbent on the Community by virtue of international law, it seeks, first and foremost, to preserve the constitutional framework … it would be wrong to conclude that, once the Community is bound by a rule of international law, the Community Courts must bow to that rule with complete acquiescence and apply it unconditionally”—

what is right for the EU is surely right for the UK too.

In short, we have a right and a duty to replace this protocol—preferably by agreement; if not, unilaterally—under EU law because it is temporary, under the EU’s own doctrine that international obligations must be subordinated to supreme constitutional laws by the Act of Union, under the protocol itself which says that the Belfast agreement takes precedence over the protocol, and under the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement, of which the EU is in breach. So I support this Bill.

Oil and Gas: Subsidies and Licensing

Lord Lilley Excerpts

Thursday 20th January 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

My Lords, I apologise for missing the first few seconds of the debate; foolishly, I was sitting in the Chamber instead of here. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, on securing the debate. I have always longed to agree with her, since I like her so much, and I do agree with her on the two objectives of the debate. I am against subsidies for the oil and gas industry, as I am against subsidies for renewables. I am also against undue influence being brought to bear on government.

The oil and gas resources with which this nation has been endowed by a beneficent providence are, essentially, the property of the people. It is right that the economic rent and value of those resources should be extracted for the benefit of the people and not given away. I first made myself an enemy of the oil industry when I published a document called North Sea Giveaway, advocating that licences should be not allocated but sold to the highest bidder, so as to extract the economic rent. For a while, it actually changed the Government’s policy. That was before I was ever a Member of Parliament; I had more influence then than I do now. Sadly, it did not continue for ever, and eventually Governments and officials went back to allocating, rather than selling, auction blocks.

Instead of extracting the money that way, they tried to do so by imposing a whole range of taxes—the royalty, the petroleum revenue tax and the supplementary corporation tax, all on top of the basic corporation tax that other industries pay. Since 1975, when oil first began to be extracted from the North Sea—I was then an energy analyst in the City—the oil industry has paid over £186 billion in those taxes to the Government.

Beyond the folly of giving away the licences rather than selling them, the idea that the UK subsidises the oil and gas industry is a nonsensical myth. The £4 billion that the noble Baroness mentioned is not a subsidy. Every industry is allowed to offset the costs it incurs to produce revenues against the revenues that those costs generate. The oil industry is no exception, but in that industry some of the costs are incurred after the revenues have been generated—in particular, the decommissioning costs. It is absolutely normal and acceptable for companies to be able to offset those costs against revenues in previous years. They get back tax that they paid on those revenues that were in excess of their costs. That is normal, and to describe it as a subsidy is, frankly, an abuse of language.

[Baroness Worthington (CB)]

I am enjoying this very much, but can the noble Lord comment on the rules that now underwrite those decommissioning costs with taxpayers’ money? As I understand it, that will cost us in the region of £20 billion over the coming years, because we are now underwriting some of those decommissioning costs. Is that not a subsidy?

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

It could well be but, as I understand it, that is not the £4 billion to which the noble Baroness referred.

[Baroness Worthington (CB)]

I am saying the wrong thing?

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

Maybe. It seems unwise to have got into a position in which the oil companies are required to do something that they cannot and have not been financing, and to take it to the taxpayer. I think that the noble Baroness will agree with me that up to now there has not been a subsidy. If we did not allow the costs of decommissioning to be offset against the revenues that the oilfields generate, we would effectively be taxing rather than supporting the most ecological activity that we require of oil companies; namely, the removal of what they have constructed in the North Sea.

The second thing that the noble Baroness is against is undue influence on licensing. One of the arguments in my pamphlet about the North Sea giveaway was that giving away those huge resources means that the civil servants who decide on it will be open to corruption. Amazingly, in the ensuing years, I found no evidence of that micro-corruption; nor is there any evidence of macro-corruption, in the sense of the oil and gas industries exercising undue influence. On the contrary, the offshore fields are not being developed—Cambo and the other one whose name I forget—and, onshore, hugely valuable shale resources are not being exploited. It is clearly not the oil industry that is exercising undue influence; somebody else must be. It is not those who want to reduce carbon emissions who are exercising undue influence because, by and large, particularly in the case of shale, if we import gas instead of producing our own—that is the consequence of not allowing shale exploration—we incur greater emissions, not just in transport but in liquefying and then deliquefying gas, which is an energy-intensive process.

There are two ways in which we can meet the net-zero target. One is to reduce demand, and the other is to reduce supply. The sensible way is to reduce demand. If you reduce supply ahead of reducing demand, the price goes up, as we are seeing now; the oil and gas companies make undue profits, which will upset you all greatly, and I do not particularly want to see them make undue profits either; and it will cause difficulties to households in the short term, which is what we are experiencing. I hope that we will see more realistic analysis than we have heard so far.

[Baroness Sheehan (LD)]

I want to ask the noble Lord something before he sits down. I bow to his greater understanding of the finances behind pricing of oil. Maybe he can explain why, in 2019, for each barrel of oil the UK received so much less—$1.72 in tax—than Norway’s more than $21 per barrel of oil. On the supply and demand side, would he not say that it is not one or the other? We need to do both if we are to get to net zero in the timeframes that we have set ourselves.

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

I have not looked at the profitability per barrel and the tax paid per barrel, but I used to do that every day 40 years ago. I assume that it is because our fields are now running down, whereas the Norwegian fields are still far from fully mature. As far as I know, Norway’s tax regime is not hugely different from our own; it was not then. On the question of whether we have to restrict supply as well as restricting demand, no, we do not. If you reduce demand and anyone has supply available and no market for it, they lose money—that is their problem—but if you reduce supply without reducing demand, you raise prices, increase profits to the industry and increase costs to ordinary households.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

Before the noble Lord sits down, can I ask him how he thinks demand could be reduced?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

You could do all sorts of things to reduce demand for oil and gas—requiring people to spend thousands of pounds on shifting from gas to electric heat pumps, that sort of thing. The noble Baroness knows the answer to her own question.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

Except—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Oates (LD)]

My Lords, I apologise to the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, for stepping in. I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Offord, to his place and look forward to his maiden speech. I cannot help noting, although I am very pleased we heard his point of view, that the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, was allowed to speak having arrived about three minutes late, when only recently in a debate on the nuclear industry, the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, was refused the opportunity to speak despite arriving at almost exactly the same time. There cannot be one rule for members of the governing party and another for members of the Opposition. I hope the Government Whips will take note of that. However, I am glad we heard from the noble Lord.

The urgent need for the North Sea industry is not further subsidies or contradictory policy-making by a Government who on the one hand say that they are in favour of net zero and on the other continue to endorse the maximum economic recovery policy. The urgent need for the North Sea industry is transition. If there are tax breaks and subsidies, they must be directed at transitioning that skilled workforce out of the oil and gas industry, because that fossil fuel industry is coming to an end. That is what will happen. It is the reality, and those who think they are standing up for workers in the industry by backing further drilling are simply sending people down a blind alley.

As I mentioned during debate on the Financial Services Bill, the last part of my title—Lord Oates of Denby Grange—is taken from a colliery in Yorkshire where my grandfather and uncles all worked as coal miners. I have great respect for the people who work in the fossil fuel industry; they powered our industry and heated our homes, often working in very dangerous circumstances. However, we know what happened to the coal industry: it came to a dead stop. There was no proper transition and, as a result, communities were stranded and suffered massive social and economic deprivation that remains to this day.

Let us not pretend we are doing any favours if we go down this maximum economic recovery route and keep going until the dead stop happens. It will happen; as the International Energy Agency has stated, we cannot burn all the reserves we have already identified if we are to have any hope of keeping to 1.5 degrees. We cannot do it. The argument of the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, is that we have this stuff so let us burn it. If everybody else takes the same view, we will get nowhere near even 2 degrees but go far beyond it. That is not a problem for the noble Lord, because these things do not matter to him. He thinks the whole net-zero thing is ridiculous and absurd, and he calls anyone who stands against that an eco-fanatic. But, for those of us who care about it, there must be a logical policy.

The Government have set ambitious targets for net zero which the Liberal Democrats welcome. However, it is no good having those targets if your policy tools contradict them. Maximum economic recovery in the North Sea, and the tax subsidies, absolutely do that. The noble Lord, Lord Lilley, said that the reserves in the North Sea should be used for the benefit of the people. The benefit of the people would be to keep those reserves where they are, not to burn them. It would certainly be to the benefit of future generations.

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

How long—or how shortly—does the noble Lord think it will be before we cease to use gas, both to heat homes and as the natural source of power to deal with the intermittency from renewables? Most people think we will still be using it in 30 years’ time.

[Lord Oates (LD)]

We have to transition away from using it by 2050, or at least without abatement of it. Exploiting the North Sea resources when we are trying to lead the world is not going to work. It is rank hypocrisy, and it is deeply damaging.

Let me just pick up on the point that the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, made about energy costs. It is a complete fallacy that the way to reduce energy costs is by scrapping all the green levies, as the GWPF and other people want to do. If you look at what happened to energy costs between 2010 and 2020, in terms of the bills that people paid, you see that total household expenditure on energy fell. It did not rise. One of the reasons it fell was because the levies funded insulation of properties and measures to reduce consumption. Consumption of gas and electricity fell significantly during that time. In fact, the eco levies save people money.

I understand the position of the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, of not worrying about net zero. I do not understand the Government’s position, because they claim to worry about net zero but take actions that show the exact opposite.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Scotland Office (Lord Offord of Garvel) (Con) (Maiden Speech)]

My Lords, it is a great honour to be here to make the final contribution to this short debate today. As a newly appointed Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, here I am making my maiden speech in this House.

Allow me to start by thanking noble Lords for the great welcome you have given me in this place, my supporters—my noble friends Lord Kirkham and Lord Forsyth of Drumlean—Black Rod, the Clerk and, especially, the doorkeepers, who look with great amusement at me as I wander around the place in circles. I should also give special thanks to my mentor and noble friend Lord Leigh of Hurley, and to my Whip and noble friend Lord Younger of Leckie, for sharing their invaluable knowledge of the workings of your Lordships’ House. We have an important debate to discuss this afternoon, but just before I do, I think it is customary on these occasions to spend a little moment on some personal matters, so let me get those out of the way now.

I was born in a modest but homely tenement at 33 Bank Street in Greenock, an industrial town west of Glasgow on the Firth of Clyde. I was educated at my local schools, Ardgowan Primary and Greenock Academy, and I got a first-class education for free. I am not the first alumnus of that school to be associated with this House; my noble friend Lady Goldie of Bishopton was a distinguished head girl of Greenock Academy, as indeed was the wife of my noble friend Lord Leigh of Hurley. I was dismayed when my old school was closed in 2011, having been founded in 1855. It was determined by the local council that, with Inverclyde depopulating post industrialisation, the schools needed to go down from eight to six, and it was decided that it conferred too great an advantage on the students who went to that school to study there, so it was closed. Surely that is an egregious example of levelling down in Scotland, and it was a personal motivator for me in joining this Government to support the levelling-up agenda.

So, why Lord Offord of Garvel? If you walk down Bank Street, where I was born, past the Wellpark to my local parish church, the mighty Mid Kirk, and cross the road past the magnificent Georgian Custom House on the Clyde, and then turn right along the river, you will come to Garvel Point. Garvel has long been a landmark in Greenock because it is where the deep water is located, and it was originally a safe harbour for the fishing fleets before the first industrial revolution transformed the town into a thriving trading port and shipbuilding hub. Greenock’s most famous son is the inventor and engineer James Watt, and the dock which bears his name today remains in use at Garvel Point. In fact, two of the three dry docks on the Clyde were located at Garvel, and a recent renovation project has repurposed one into the award-winning Beacon theatre.

That brings me neatly to the Question before the Committee today. One of my first ministerial duties was to participate in COP 26 in Glasgow—how fitting that the world came back to the Clyde to seek new solutions to this climate emergency. What a tremendous achievement of the UK’s two-year presidency it was to increase the global commitment to net zero from 30% to 90% of world emissions. Some say that the UK has a limited role to play in climate change as we account for only 1% of world emissions. Yet COP 26 proves that our leadership still counts, because we can demonstrate that it is possible simultaneously to grow our economy while cutting our emissions.

This is what I learned at COP 26: we have the capital, the brains and the political will to meet the climate challenge. Participating in the Net Zero Technology Centre forum—funded by the Aberdeen City Region Deal—I was so encouraged to hear technologists from the oil and gas sector in Aberdeen collaborating with Houston, Calgary, Perth and Canberra as they repurposed their assets and people into low-carbon energy sources.

How gratifying it is that Scotland has such a prominent and world-leading role to play in rebalancing the UK’s energy programme to net zero by 2050. We have all the natural resources and the existing infrastructure, plus the scientists, engineers and skilled workforce required to build a balanced scorecard in energy. Scotland contributes 60% of UK wind and 40% of the 160,000 highly skilled jobs already working in energy across the UK. This is called punching above our weight in a UK where we contribute just 8% of the population but 33% of the geography.

However, we must remember that a key word in this climate debate, already mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Oates, is “transition”, and that it is to net zero, not to zero carbon. Some 35% of our energy needs in 2050 will still come from carbon; today it is 75%, so that will be a massive reduction—more than halved. It would be foolhardy and irresponsible to ditch our world-class oil and gas sector in the North Sea to increase our carbon footprint by importing, whether from Russia—bad—or Qatar: good.

The North Sea Transition Deal is an exemplar in the G7 of a domestic oil and gas industry working in partnership with government to ensure that net zero is met by 2050. The noble Baroness asked what milestones we have along the way. By 2030, the cash flow generated in oil and gas will contribute £15 billion of long-term investment into new energy technologies. On the transition of jobs, by 2030 the UK offshore energy sector in total will increase from 160,000 to 200,000 jobs, of which two-thirds will be in low-carbon energy sources.

One of my new responsibilities is the North Sea Transition Deal, and in the last forum we had there were presentations from oil and gas companies, talking about how their target for 2025 is 50:50 investment of capex and renewables to get a return on capital in the region of 12%. Speaking as a businessman, I asked what percentage return on capital you get on each side of the scorecard. There was a certain amount of silence, because it emerged that renewables on their own do not return on capital at this point. Therefore, it is essential for the cash flow made in oil and gas to be reinvested to produce renewables. We will get transition to renewables only if it is a managed transition, using cash flow from carbon as it reduces to invest in renewables. That is absolutely essential. The two go hand in hand; you cannot have one without the other.

I will directly answer some of the questions posed in this debate, turning first to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones. I must say, this is a baptism of fire. I do not recognise the country she mentioned as corrupt. Maybe if I am here long enough that will emerge for me, but I do not recognise that to be the case where we are today. The financing of parties seems to be a whole new debate and perhaps can be done another time. I am on the record as saying that parties should not be financed by taxpayers. However they are financed, as long as it is transparent and legal I suggest that it is fine, but perhaps we should park that for another debate at another time.

The key thing that has come through here is the use of language and the fact that the word “subsidy” is so misused. My noble friend Lord Lilley made it very clear that as a matter of business practice, whichever industry you are in, it is entirely legitimate to off-set costs against revenues. In this sector, because the lead times are so long there is quite often a mismatch, and therefore money flows back and forwards. Since the oil and gas industry began in this country, total tax revenues of £360 billion have been received, and £33 billion in the last 10 years alone, but along the way you will see ebb and flow: money in, money back.

Tax relief is a normal part of the corporate tax system. Genuine costs and injuries such as the safe removal of infrastructure at the end of a field’s life are not a subsidy but a tax deduction and quite often, in certain cases, money flows back to the Treasury. Therefore, it is just inaccurate—perhaps self-serving—to use an emotive word such as “subsidy” when something is regulated by our own accountancy businesses, as is the case for all sectors. I push back firmly on the idea that we subsidise. We are against subsidies in this country and generally want to have free trade.

As I said before, on the point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, it is essential that we transition jobs to renewables if we are to have two-thirds of jobs in low-carbon renewables. We have discovered from a study at Robert Gordon University that the onshore and offshore skills we currently have in carbon are absolutely essential to the new world. For example, when it comes to carbon storage, floating oil fields, et cetera, we currently have very transferable skills in the oil and gas industry and will transition them into renewables.

The noble Lord, Lord Oates, talked about his heritage in coal mining. We know exactly how that feels in Scotland; 40 years ago we closed the mines and started importing coal. What on earth is the point of that? Are we really going to make the same mistake again 40 years later, when we have a vibrant industry with 160,000 workers?

We are talking about a new Britain here, are we not? This is a new global Britain—a high-production, high-wage economy, with highly skilled jobs. This is an exemplar of highly skilled jobs in this country that we should be very proud of. Certainly, from a Scottish perspective, this is our second biggest industry, after fisheries, food and drink. It is one of our five exemplars in the UK, and we need to protect it.

Before I come to the end of my piece, the answer to the Question—for Hansard—is that the Government do not give subsidies to fossil fuel companies. The licences are awarded by an independent regulator, the Oil and Gas Authority, within the framework of achieving net zero. In fact, on Tuesday the High Court dismissed a case brought by climate activists that the regulator was giving unlawful subsidies.

The OGA is an independent regulator. Its staff are classified as public servants and are subject to rigorous standards and codes. Therefore I would say that the oil and gas industry is subject to a robust, multilayered regulatory system, which is independent and transparent, and there is no

“undue influence from outside interests”.

In closing this debate, let me be quite clear that the Government do not believe that decarbonising our economy means shutting the oil and gas industry, as has been said in this Room. We certainly do not believe in demonising a world-leading industry with the sort of intemperate language used by Patrick Harvie, Green Minister in the Scottish Government, who recently said that only those on the “hard right” would support oil and gas extraction. What an insult to the 160,000 workers in this vital sector. A broad range of stakeholders, from entrepreneur Sir Ian Wood to the GMB trade union, have warned politicians against creating an adverse investment environment for this vital sector. There is nothing just or fair about that, and it would set us back on the road to net zero.

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

May I intervene, on behalf of the Committee, to congratulate the Minister on his maiden speech? It was an eloquent, fascinating account of his background. His is a welcome Scottish voice in this House, and he will bring his experience of developing industries and business to our debates. We look forward eagerly to hearing his future contributions to our debates.

[Lord Offord of Garvel (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for those kind words.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Lilley Excerpts

Thursday 13th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate both maiden speakers, whose excellent speeches showed what valuable contributions they will make to our deliberations, and it is a privilege to follow the very thoughtful remarks of my noble friend Lord Dunlop. I want to discuss the Northern Ireland protocol. It was negotiated in haste in the 100 days between Boris Johnson becoming PM and the EU’s deadline for the UK leaving with or without a deal.

We all knew that the protocol, though better than the previous backstop, which the Commons rejected with historic majorities, was full of internal contradictions and unresolved issues. The Government and Parliament none the less accepted it, because it contained a mechanism for resolving those issues—the joint committee, which has unlimited powers to rewrite the text and in which both parties are committed to negotiate in good faith to uphold the peace process and respect the integrity of one another’s internal markets. If that does not work, Article 16 allows us to override the protocol, as does Clause 30 of the withdrawal Act. However, the EU has refused to revise one word of the protocol, even though it is causing communal tension and economic dislocation. It insists that all goods for the EU must submit to, and usually prove compliance with, every one of the single market regulations, whose titles alone fill 73 pages of the protocol. It argues that the huge problems this will create can be avoided by the UK adopting that legislation throughout the UK.

It is now as clear as daylight that the EU cynically sees the protocol simply as a lever to force the UK as a whole to align with its single market legislation, past and future. But the EU conceals that objective behind three excuses, and it is time we challenged them. The first is that the protocol is necessary to protect the peace process. If anything, the reverse is true. It was always absurd to say that checks on goods between Northern Ireland and the Republic would threaten the Good Friday agreement and possibly even the peace, whereas checks on the far larger volume of goods between Northern Ireland and Great Britain would have no such consequences. Now we see that invoking the threat of violence as a reason not to have even virtual checks on trade with the Republic has directly provoked violent demonstrations against the Irish Sea border.

The EU’s second excuse for its intransigence is that the protocol is necessary to protect the integrity of the EU internal market. This raises several obvious questions, which I hope the Minister will answer or put to the EU. Why are checks on goods from Great Britain to Northern Ireland, even those destined to remain in Northern Ireland, necessary to protect the integrity of the EU market, whereas no checks at all are needed on goods entering Great Britain from Northern Ireland to protect the integrity of the UK internal market? During the prolonged grace period, have any actual threats to the EU internal market emerged, threats to the health and safety of EU citizens? If not, why not prolong the grace period indefinitely? Is it credible that trade in non-compliant goods across the border with the Republic and onwards into mainland Europe would be remotely profitable? Will lorry-loads of Dyson vacuum cleaners, lacking the EU’s misleading energy labels, be smuggled over the border then shipped to Holyhead, across Britain to Calais and onwards to Paris? I think not. Either smuggling of non-compliant goods will be small-scale and local, which would be nothing new, or, if large-scale, impossible to conceal, easy to stop at their destination or be apprehended by trading standards officers when they reach the shops on the continent. The largest item of cross-border trade is alcoholic beverages, on which duty rates have long been different north and south of the border, yet this has been successfully managed without checks at the border, so why not other products too?

The EU’s third excuse is that it is necessary to put these restrictions in place on GB trade now, since, in future, British and EU rules may diverge. But, surely, measures would only be needed, if at all, for the minority of products where rules diverge; then only for consignments at risk of crossing the border into the Republic; and then only if the divergence introduced is a potential threat to the health and well-being of citizens of the EU.

In short, it is time to debunk the case for implementing the protocol until it is slimmed down to focus on tangible, not imaginary, problems.

Rule of Law: Law Officers

Lord Lilley Excerpts

Tuesday 15th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Keen of Elie (Con)]

My Lords, with great respect, I adhere completely to my previous observations about the importance of the rule of law, and I have no difficulty with those statements. What is contemplated is a contingent situation, one in which we find that the EU has materially breached its treaty obligations and in which we find that it may have acted in such a way as to fundamentally alter our obligations under the treaties. In those circumstances, we have Article 16 of the Northern Ireland protocol. We also have Article 62 of the Vienna convention with regard to withholding our operations. However, we have to look at our dualist system: not only do we have obligations at the level of international law, pursuant to Article 4 of the withdrawal agreement, but we have drawn them down into domestic law by virtue of Section 7A of the withdrawal agreement Act. Article 16 of the international treaty does not confer upon the Executive the power or right to ignore that primary legislation. That is why an instrument and means of dealing with this matter rapidly and effectively needs to be in place lest there should be such a material breach.

[Lord Lilley (Con) [V]]

Can my noble and learned friend confirm that, if the Government invoke Article 16 to tackle the problems that they foresee, they would still need legislation like the Internal Market Bill to implement it? Do not we need that legislation on the statute book before the end of the transition period to reassure businesses that they will not have to either submit export declarations or pay tariffs on all goods between Great Britain and Northern Ireland?

[Lord Keen of Elie (Con)]

My Lords, I entirely concur with the observations of my noble friend. As I indicated before, it is one thing for the Executive to determine an issue at the level of international law in terms of a treaty, but they cannot utilise that in order to ignore primary legislation of our domestic Parliament. Therefore, a means has to be in place to address the effect of that domestic legislation, and that is the purpose of Part 5 of the UKIM Bill. It will enable us to bring forward regulations that will do that—and, indeed, regulations that will require explanation and the affirmative approval of this House.

Brexit: Powers of EU-UK Joint Committee

Lord Lilley Excerpts

Wednesday 20th March 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Keen of Elie]

It means that her intention is to bring the deal back to the other place.

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

My Lords, does the issue of the appalling committee of two civil servants that will be able to make law for this country not dwarf that of Henry VIII clauses and so on, which has caused this House so much concern in the past?

Brexit: Withdrawal Agreement and Political Declaration

Lord Lilley Excerpts

Monday 14th January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow a thoughtful speech from the noble Earl.

The Prime Minister claims there is no alternative to her deal—but there is. It is not mine, not Jeremy Corbyn’s—whatever that is—but Donald Tusk’s Canada-style free trade deal he offered in March and repeated in October. As he said, that is the only deal compatible with leaving the customs union and single market, as promised in the referendum and in the Conservative manifesto. It must cover the whole UK, which means replacing the backstop by a commitment by Ireland, the EU and the UK that we will all retain an invisible Irish border, as we have all pledged to do if there is no withdrawal agreement. Under Article 24 of the WTO, if we agree such a deal in principle we can continue to trade with zero tariffs after 29 March while fleshing out the details.

To get such an agreement we must be ready, and be seen to be ready by the EU, to leave on WTO terms. As Trade and Industry Secretary, I helped negotiate the WTO to provide a safe haven for trade and I also implemented the single market programme. I predicted that both would boost trade—wrongly in the case of the single market, to which our exports have grown by a miserable 18% over 25 years, but rightly for the WTO as our exports to the rest of the world have grown by 72%.

If we leave on WTO terms there would be four obvious pluses. First, far from crashing out, we will be cashing in, as my noble friend Lord Hamilton, predicted I would say, and we will keep £39 billion. Your Lordships’ own committee concluded that:

“Article 50 allows the UK to leave the EU without being liable for outstanding financial obligations”.


To show good faith, we should confidently submit the issue to international arbitration. Secondly, it would end corrosive uncertainty—economic and political—which would continue for over two more years under the PM’s deal. Thirdly, both sides will have to solve the Irish border issue by administrative measures without border posts, as they have promised if there is no deal. Mr Varadkar has said:

“In … a no deal scenario … we won’t be installing a border between Northern Ireland and Ireland, and everyone knows that”.


Mr Junker reassured the Irish Parliament that:

“If negotiations fail … the European Union will not impose a border, customs posts or any other kind of infrastructure on the frontier”.


And Britain has said it will not,

“require any infrastructure at the border … under any circumstances”.

We already tackle smuggling of tobacco, alcohol, red diesel and drugs without border checks, so the UK can certainly stop illicit trade in Dyson vacuum cleaners if our regulations deviate from those of the EU. Finally, once we all resolve the Irish border issue administratively, we can take up Tusk’s offer of a free trade deal for the whole UK.

Not one of the noble Lords who has railed against no deal in these debates has addressed these benefits of a WTO Brexit, even to refute them. More remarkable, only two or three noble Lords have spelled out specific concerns about a WTO Brexit. The others simply demonised it with a lexicon of lurid adjectives which were last deployed to warn against leaving the ERM, not joining the euro or the millennium bug.

Let me address the specific concerns that a couple of noble Lords have raised. The first was given by the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, opening the debate in December, who said, “Planes will be grounded”. She was apparently unaware that on 13 November the European Union Commission had already promised legislation allowing air carriers from the UK to fly over, to and from the EU provided the UK reciprocated. The Commission also announced that hauliers will continue to get licences, that Airbus can export its wings, that the UK will be swiftly listed as a safe country to allow entry of live animals and animal products from the UK, and more.

The other concrete concern came from the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury. While temporal Lords have been demonising a WTO Brexit with odium theologicum, it took a Lord spiritual to bring us down to earth with the request for proof that it would not have a significant negative effect on people in his diocese, such as when Operation Stack has been in force. Of course it is impossible to prove a negative or that Operation Stack will never be necessary regardless of Brexit, as it has been invoked on 211 days over the past 18 years, although without any archiepiscopal moral censure of those responsible.

I can explain why Brexit should not add significantly to such delays. First, HMRC expects roughly the same number of physical checks of vehicles at Dover as at present because its checks are based on risk, notably of smuggling tobacco, drugs and illegal immigrants, none of which will increase because of Brexit. Moreover, HMRC promises to prioritise flow over compliance. That means waving lorries through even if their declarations are incomplete.

The concern in the past has been not about Dover but about Calais. However, the good news, brought to the most reverend Primate’s attention by my noble friend Lord Forsyth, is that the chairman of Calais ports says that they too will have no more checks than at present. They are determined and confident that traffic will flow freely—not to be nice to Britain but to avoid losing trade to Zeebrugge, Rotterdam and Antwerp. They are installing three extra lorry lanes, an inspection post for animals away from the port and a scanner for trains moving at 30 kilometres an hour. Monsieur Puissesseau was indignant that the British Government were—quite unnecessarily in his view—hiring ferries to take trade away from his port to other ports.

Problems one prepares for rarely happen, as we discovered with the millennium bug. The Government are now being rather coy about how advanced their preparations are for leaving on WTO terms because they want to frighten MPs into voting for their deal, but I am confident that if we leave on WTO terms on 29 March events will be far closer to a damp squib than the apocalypse. That may disappoint some fanatical remainers in this House, but they will get over it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Lilley Excerpts

Wednesday 20th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

The hon. Gentleman is right to draw attention to the employment figures, which we must never be complacent about. There is always so much more work to do, but the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) did not ask about the figures, which show a quarterly fall in unemployment of 51,000, the rate of unemployment coming down in the quarter and, importantly, youth unemployment coming down by 29,000 in the past quarter, although long-term unemployment is still rising and remains a challenge. Scotland, as part of the United Kingdom, is an attractive place to invest. I congratulate many Scottish people and businesses on their work. They would have much harder work to do if Scotland were not part of the United Kingdom.

[Mr Peter Lilley (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)]

Q10. While welcoming overseas students who come to this country to get a world-class education and then return home to benefit their countries, will my right hon. Friend look extremely sceptically on vice-chancellors who believe they cannot compete unless students are given an additional incentive to stay on in this country, legally or illegally, especially as last year 120,000 students sought and were granted the right to extend their stay here?

[Mr Hague]

Yes, as my right hon. Friend knows, the Government have introduced radical reforms to stamp out abuse and restore order to a student visa system that was out of control, making the immigration system easier for students, universities and the UK Border Agency. We are closing bogus colleges and regulating the remainder, restricting the right to work here and bring dependants and making sure that all but the very best go home at the end of their studies. On that basis, of course talented students from around the world are welcome here in the United Kingdom.