European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 6) Bill

Debate between Lord Lilley and Lord Rooker

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 6th September 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lilley]

My Lords, I am not a lawyer but, from what I have heard, I believe that this amendment carries considerable weight. I am not persuaded, even by the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, that conditions could not in practice be imposed. We know that that has been talked about frequently by the leaders of our partners in Europe and by European Commissioners. Are noble Lords able to tell me what would happen if, when we asked for an extension, those in the EU asked what it was for? They have repeatedly asked us that. What if we said that we did not know, and they then told us that we could therefore not have an extension? Or what if we told them that we were going to have a referendum, and they then said that we could have an extension? Is the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, saying that that process of discussion and dialogue could not happen? It seems to be quite compatible with paragraph 3 of Article 50, which says:

“The Treaties shall cease to apply to the State in question from the date of entry into force of the … agreement or, failing that, two years after the notification referred to in paragraph 2, unless the European Council, in agreement with the Member State concerned”—


implying that there may be a range of things to be agreed—

“unanimously decides to extend this period”.

What I originally wanted to ask was this. To my mind, this amendment raises a rather more fundamental question about Clause 3(1), which begins:

“If the European Council decides to agree an extension”.


It can decide only by unanimity. Once it has decided, its decision is European law and binding upon us. There is therefore no possibility of coming back to the House of Commons and overruling that decision. We were told that in March, when the Prime Minister went to the Council and agreed an extension. When she came back, people in the House of Commons wanted to have a vote on it and were told, “You can have a vote if you like but it is law anyway”. The assurances we have been given that Parliament itself could overrule an agreement, or not agree to a decision made by the Council, if we did not like its length or any terms that might be implicit in it are, as far as I understand it, simply not true. Now, I am not a lawyer —those were my opening remarks—but if a lawyer is prepared to stand up and say that a decision of the European Council is not binding in European law, and therefore not binding on us before we have left, my objection falls. If not, we have found a very major weakness in the Bill.

[Lord Rooker]

My Lords, it would appear that everybody in the House is toing and froing to Brussels. I have to make it clear that the last time I was in Brussels, when I was still a Northern Ireland Minister, on the day that the beef ban was lifted I was serving Northern Ireland beef to trade delegations to rebuild that industry. That was my last time in Brussels, so I am not party to any of the discussions.

The point about the amendment, which has been sufficiently answered in a much better way than I could do, is that it is built on an assumption about the unconditional extension of time. It would actually confuse Clause 3. Clause 3 is precise in some ways but subsection (4) gives it flexibility. It is interesting that an amendment has been tabled by the same group of people to knock out subsection (4), because that provision gives the Prime Minister the capacity to agree a different date. That flexibility and precision are built in to achieve the objectives because, at the moment, we are in an unknown area. To be honest, to add the amendment would be confusing.

I am not going to get into disputes with lawyers and drafters of legislation, but the fact of the matter is that I would take the explanation of the noble Lords, Lord Kerr and Lord Cormack, over and above legalistic nitpicking of what is quite a precise clause. In fact, when you look at the Bill, this is probably its best drafted clause.

[Lord Lilley]

Did the noble Lord notice that the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, did not come back to deny that the sort of discussions I suggested could take place, which would implicitly involve conditions?

Climate Change Act 2008 (2050 Target Amendment) Order 2019

Debate between Lord Lilley and Lord Rooker

Wednesday 26th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rooker]

In this rewriting of history we are listening to, we need to remember that when the noble Lord talks about receiving the Bill, he was in the Commons. The Bill had undergone four to five months of scrutiny in this place, where it started life. I moved the Second Reading in November 2007. Therefore, all the scrutiny that took place here and all the questions that I and other Ministers were subject to were continually worked on by our officials. We could not answer all the questions to start with, and it was inevitable that changes would be made after it reached the Commons and went on the statute book. I reject entirely the rewriting of history; it is as though the noble Lord suddenly discovered something when the Commons was scrutinising the Bill. It was this place that did the scrutiny on the Bill before it even got to the Commons. I think we spent twice as long on it as the House of Commons.

[Lord Lilley]

I am sorry; I obviously have not made my point clear. An impact assessment was produced before the Bill went through either House, and a second was produced after it had been enacted by both Houses. Those two things differed in the dramatic way I have described. I asked my research assistant to go through the entire proceedings of both Houses; he could find no serious scrutiny of the cost either way, but if the noble Lord recalls otherwise, naturally I will change my assessment and realise that he missed something.

My opposition has always been based on the economics of what we previously committed ourselves to, and my concerns today relate to the economics. I recall that when the Third Reading of the 2008 Act finally took place, I and the four others who had decided to vote against it—just as a matter of principle on the economics —retired to the Smoking Room to drown our sorrows and noticed as we did that it was then, in October, snowing outside. I went back to remind the House that we were passing a measure in the belief that the world was getting warmer when it was snowing in London in October for the first time in 74 years.