Brexit

Lord Lipsey Excerpts

Saturday 19th October 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lipsey (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise in my place, but my heart is not here. My heart is with the hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens currently marching through the streets of London in support of a further referendum. I hope I may be forgiven for injecting a note of frivolity into this debate. There have not been many such notes so far. I am in favour of a four-way referendum: no deal, Johnson’s deal, remain—and “I do not give a stuff” because I think that is what quite a lot of our fellow citizens feel. They have lost all touch with this and they do not give a stuff what the outcome is. I think they are wrong to think that, by the way, as a no-deal outcome would be a disaster, but that feeling is there in the country.

I make that point in order to make a much more serious point. Over the past couple of weeks, the streets of London have been full of demonstrators against our indifference to climate change. The demonstration went on a bit too long and some of the tactics used were wrong, but climate change is about whether the human race survives and whether our planet continues. That is a crucial issue. At a lesser level, what about social care? Thousands of our elderly citizens sit neglected while the Government dither about their social care policy. What about housing? People are paying half their income in rent. Are we sure that we really have a sense of proportion about this European issue? I have listened to all the passionate speeches that have been made but in some ways, we could do with a bit less passion and bit more reaching out one to another to try to find common ground, without party politics.

I have been in politics here for 50 years. When I started out, it was the Labour Party that was divided about Europe. On the one hand, there were the Jenkinsites making powerful speeches in favour of Europe and on the other hand, the Bennites were making their speeches against. I worked for a man some noble Lords will remember, Tony Crosland. He refused to be strung out like that. He was a pro-European in principle, but he refused to think it was the most important issue facing the nation compared with how we achieved economic growth and greater equality, how we dealt with housing and so on. I think he was right then and that his philosophy has something to teach us now.

How did the Labour Party resolve that problem? It did so by a referendum, and I would like to see another one now.

Further Discussions with the European Union under Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union

Lord Lipsey Excerpts

Wednesday 27th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lipsey (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I have not addressed this House on Brexit since 31 January 2018, and I doubt whether many other noble Lords who have spoken tonight can say the same. This has partly been a matter of ill health but also, when I look back, I have found that I have nothing to say that I did not say the last time I spoke. I am not as passionately against leaving the EU on the right terms as most noble Lords who have spoken this evening, as the arguments are reasonably finely balanced, but I am totally against leaving without a further referendum. I do not see how a referendum in which the choice was between what exists and a blank piece of paper can bind a future Parliament. If there is a new referendum, it will be between what exists and a deal, whatever that may be. That seems to be a real choice, and it is cracking on immoral to deny that second choice.

My Trappist silence over this last year has not, I am afraid, set an example to the House. I see my great friend, the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, is laughing—her speech today was her 178th contribution in the course of these debates. I single her out because of the magnificence of the speeches she has given. A veritable Niagara of words has spilled out of this House, all of them eloquent, and most of which I agree with. However, I hate to be Eeyore-ish, but what effect have these words had on policy? None; sweet FA; less than Jacob Rees-Mogg has when he passes wind. There is a good reason for this. We as a House have taken the view, I believe rightly, that the will of the elected House must prevail. We have watched in horror, spoken in shock and awe of events down the Corridor, but we have mostly done so feeling that we are powerless to change the course of what is going on. That explains why I am breaking my Trappist silence this evening.

Over the last few months—certainly the last few weeks—the old argument that the non-elected House must give way to the elected House is no longer centre stage. We are now seeing something quite different, which is a battle between the Executive and Parliament. We have had the unedifying situation where the Prime Minister, no less, has decided to ignore the votes cast down there—huge votes against her deal. She goes round, gives it a little dust off, and thinks, “Next time, I’ll try again”. This is no way to run a country, and no way to treat Parliament.

I welcome Mrs May’s forced retreat yesterday. Nothing concentrates the mind like the imminent prospect of defeat, but even after she made these commitments yesterday, there were people in the Commons saying, “We can’t trust her on this. She has wriggled for so long, she’s ignored the Commons for so long; we can’t trust her to observe these”, and they were looking for statutory protections to prevent her doing it. I do not want to go down that road, or for us to be in a situation where we have to intervene. The true power of your Lordships’ House is not what we do; it is what we stop Governments doing because they are fearful of what we could do. We are here, to coin a phrase, as a backstop, and it is fear of the backstop that stops things happening.

I hope a way through can be found from here that avoids constitutional controversy. In noting the right reverend Prelate’s words, and without stirring things up, I would be willing, as a compromise, to allow Mrs May’s deal to go through, provided that she agreed that it would then be put to the people in a referendum, but there are other ways of solving it.

In a nutshell, my point is this. If there is a clash between an unelected House and an elected House, the elected House wins every time. We, as noble Lords, support that. But if the clash is between Parliament and the Executive—Henry VIII re-run, as it were—there is only one right course for us to take: we have to be unequivocally on the side of Parliament, wherever that may lead us.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Lipsey Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Wednesday 31st January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lipsey (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow my erstwhile political friend but I hope still personal friend the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews. Of the cornucopia of questions that have come up so far in this debate I will to address only one: namely, does the result of the referendum in June 2016 effectively compel Parliament to agree to Brexit, of which this Bill is part?

I express no view as to whether Brexit is a good thing or a bad thing, for the simple reason that, perhaps uniquely in this House, I hold no strong view. Of those eligible to vote in 2016, 37% said yes. That is 51.9% yes on a 72.2% turnout. Given the flaws in the electoral register and the exclusion of 16 to 18 year-olds from the poll, it must be doubtful if even a third of those who should have had a say voted to exit. But never mind—one is enough in an election, and it seems moany to question whether, in light of the result, the Government have a right to pursue Brexit. They do.

But we have a sovereign Parliament. Indeed, the sovereignty of Parliament was the absolute core of their argument for getting out of the European Union. It trumped by far silly scrawlings on buses about national health spending. To restore sovereignty from Brussels’s depredations is why we are leaving. To argue, on the one hand, that the sovereignty of Parliament is the supreme virtue and then, on the other, that sovereignty should not apply in this one case is surely a paradox too far.

Let us be clear. Parliament under our constitution is entitled to overrule the referendum result if that, in the considered opinion of its Members, is the right thing to do. No Parliament can bind its successor, and no election result remains the result for ever. In this case there is a clear and important difference, I think, between the remain side and the leave side in the referendum. The remain side was for remaining on the terms renegotiated by David Cameron. The leave side was for—what? Soft or hard? Single market or not? Customs union or not? Irish border or not? What movement of labour? There are as many answers as there are Brexiteers, as the current debate in the Cabinet illustrates.

Following the negotiation, there will be a single alternative to membership. Some who were remainers might then say, “Well, that is a good result. I think I should have voted leave after all”. Some who were Brexiteers might say, “That’s not what I really voted for. I want another go. I don’t like this”. It is between remain and that single alternative that the choice will then lie, and the sovereign Parliament, as I think the Government have now conceded, must ultimately make that choice.

I am very sympathetic to the view of the noble Lord, Lord Higgins, that it would be best if we made the choice ourselves, with a strong eye, of course, to public opinion but also bringing to the question the epistocratic virtues of our parliamentary democracy. That is not practicable. Having asked the people once, and having said wrongly that we would abide by their verdict, we cannot, without damaging national unity in the long term, simply overrule them.

The only answer, therefore, is a second referendum, where the terms are known. Judging by the poll in the Guardian this week, it is a choice which the people of this country would by a substantial majority welcome. Let us hope it would be the referendum to end all referendums.

European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Lipsey Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Tuesday 21st February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lipsey (Lab)]

My Lords, it is rather difficult to stand out in a debate of 185 speakers, but I am perhaps almost unique in one aspect, in that I really do not have terribly strong views on Europe. I voted no in 1975, rather to the horror of Anthony Crosland, for whom I then worked. Even this time, I hummed and hawed a good bit before voting to remain, partly for fear of the unknown but more because I found the egregious lies told by the leave campaigners even more offensive than the egregious lies told by the remainers. So I am not passionate about Europe, but I am passionate about the British constitution and parliamentary sovereignty, and I am a particular opponent of the concept of binding referendums.

Last year, with the noble Lord, Lord Cooper, I arranged a series of seminars at St Anthony’s College, Oxford about aspects of direct democracy, including referendums. I therefore had to read up on the subject. I now know more than I would like to admit about referendums in Uruguay, which is the referendum capital of the universe as well as one of the most unequal countries on earth. The more I read, the more the concept of referendums seemed to me to be flawed. I was delighted in the last Parliament when I had the opportunity to block the private Member’s Bill providing for the referendum here by proposing the adjournment of the House. But it was a short-lived triumph, and this Government brought it back in.

Let me run through the arguments, not in my words but those of the rather remarkable 2009 book by James Fishkin, When the People Speak. He identified the following defects in referendums. First, the difficulty of motivating citizens to become informed. This is particularly so because each individual knows that his or her voice does not count for much and it is not therefore rational to spend their whole time investing in acquiring great knowledge.

Secondly, citizens hate to admit to being ill informed. A famous piece of American research showed that citizens had very strong views on the public affairs Act. In fact, save for in the minds of the researchers, there was no such Act.

Thirdly, the model of the individual rationally deciding his or her view is a distortion of what really happens in families and groups. For one thing, people have a strong inclination to discuss things with people whom they know agree with them. I do not suppose that many Members of this House know very many leavers, but they are 52% of the population. However, this inclination has got much worse in the age of Facebook and social media, which means that we try very hard—and usually successfully—never to read anything with which we are certain we are going to disagree.

Fourthly, and critically, the process is manipulated by politicians. It is not something that grows on its own—the timing of the initiative lies with the politicians. The decision to hold this referendum, now seen almost universally as a disastrous one, was taken without a thought to the national interest and solely in the partisan interests of the Prime Minister of the day and his party.

Today, we are in a position that defies belief. Four-fifths of the Members of the House of Commons are remainers and believe that this is a disaster for Britain, and yet four-fifths voted for this Bill for exit. It would have been better for Parliament to wait until negotiations were much further advanced and see what the temper of public opinion then was, then either hold a vote in Parliament or—fingers firmly clasped on the nose—hold a second referendum, which is the course being put before this House. However, we are not yet at the end of this tale. Negotiations will take place and they could be prolonged. There are scenes, indeed whole acts, to come before the fat lady sings. Will Brexit mean Brexit? We shall have to see.