European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Mandelson Excerpts

Tuesday 30th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mandelson (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Lord squeezed in very enjoyably. Following the referendum in 2016, as much as I regretted the result, I took the view that it must be upheld. I believed that the Government should deliver Britain’s exit from the European Union and that the duty of Parliament, including of this House, was to facilitate that. I no longer believe that to be axiomatic. The Government cannot behave as if they have a blank cheque to take Britain out of the European Union in any vandalistic way they choose.

Every day brings fresh evidence of the Government’s inability to agree what our future relationship should be. Last week, I listened to the Chancellor’s speech to the British business lunch in Davos. He clearly wants all the trade benefits of the single market without actually being in it. I admire his ambition but, like the Prime Minister, he is trying to dance on the head of a pin that does not exist. As President Macron said when he visited Britain:

“You can’t buy, by definition, full access to the single market if you don’t tick the box”.


The Government’s red lines mean that the box cannot be ticked.

Within an hour of speaking, the Chancellor was being attacked inside the Conservative Party. Some 90 minutes later, the Prime Minister, who first backed him after he had spoken, disowned him. By early evening, the Chancellor, rather than standing his ground, was tweeting a reinterpretation of his own words. This is what passes for a normal day at the office in this Government. It left British business leaders bemused and demoralised. To cap it all, at the end of the week, the Brexit Secretary was saying on the radio that, just because there are differences, that does not mean that the Government cannot negotiate coherently. Heavens! Is it surprising that the public are losing faith?

The only way to have coherence in a negotiation is if you adopt a unified view. I learned that much as a Trade Commissioner. Yet one side of the Cabinet says that it wants modest divergence from Europe and the other side wants to go it alone. As the noble Lord, Lord Hill, said, to govern is to choose. However hard it was inside her party, the Prime Minister should have adopted a clear position of principle from the outset and said that, because business needs stability in its dealings with Europe and has to protect its access to European markets, we will leave the European Union but continue in the single market and customs union. That would have given us a very advantageous negotiating position in Europe, where we would have met considerable flexibility and would have brought the whole country together—the 52% and the 48%.

I fully accept that that approach was not provided for in the referendum, but nor was it excluded. This is something that we should be clear about: the future relationship was not on the ballot paper. It cannot now be determined on the outer reaches of the Conservative Party as if the rest of the country does not matter. We are trying to come to terms with 40 years of intricate trading arrangements, intensified in recent times as a result of the single market, which Britain championed. That is why we should keep the economic disruption and damage to an absolute minimum and that, according to every opinion poll since the referendum, is the clear wish of the majority of the people.

We will not achieve this by Britain becoming a third-country exporter, like Canada, completely outside the regulatory perimeter of the EU, attempting to negotiate our goods and services back into Europe past a thicket of tariffs, customs and regulatory barriers, a world away from the frictionless trade that we now enjoy. The only option available to maintain frictionless trade in both goods and, crucially, services is to enter the European Economic Area, as Norway did when its people decided against EU membership in the 1990s. It is not perfect, because of the dilemma that we face: either we lose access to the European market that we need or we are bound by European regulation but lose our say, at least initially. That is the unpalatable choice presented by the referendum. It is joined to the further, difficult question of labour movement, but our starting point and guiding principle should be to put jobs and investment first.

The referendum result in 2016 cannot simply be ignored and no one is proposing to do so. The Government should be laying out all the options with enough clarity and detail that, before the final decision is taken on the implementation of the referendum, there is full debate and a truly democratic way of determining it. Ideally, in my view, this should be resolved by Parliament. Let us face it, though, as things stand both government and opposition parties are finding it hard to agree a way forward. So a referendum on a new question about the future relationship may become unavoidable, although that is not something on which we should be voting at this stage.

Brexit is the biggest decision that this nation has taken since the Second World War. We have to make a better job of it than the Government are doing now and Parliament must take seriously its responsibilities to ensure that the country does so. We should not duck that responsibility.

European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Mandelson Excerpts

Monday 20th February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mandelson (Lab)]

My Lords, I am very pleased to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hill, and his very intelligent contribution to this debate, but I want, first, to make a remark about the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Hague. Contrary to what he said today, the noble Lord believes that we should stay just,

“one step short of the single market”.

I know this because he wrote it. He could therefore not possibly agree, in my view, with the Government’s present approach.

George Osborne was right when he said that the Government are being driven by politics not economics in their approach to Brexit. This is what has changed since the noble Lord wrote his original article. That is why the Government can contemplate Brexit at any cost: the economics are secondary; the trade is secondary; the investment and the jobs are secondary. What matters instead is assuaging the ideologues. Herein lies the danger for the country: the Government have lost their sense of perspective in this matter. The Prime Minister is terrified of looking less than full-hearted, so she is overcompensating. Debate is discouraged in case it gives the impression of being faint-hearted. Critics are attacked in case their arguments catch on.

As is well known, I was a remainer: not, I might say, because of my pension rights but because I am a patriot—a patriot rather than a nationalist. That is why I think that the approach the Government have chosen to take to Brexit is wrong. Instead of saying, “We are leaving the European Union but want the closest possible relationship with the European Union” and meaning it, the Government have decided that we are not just out of the European Union, but fully out of the entirety of the single market and the customs union as well. We do not want to have anything to do with one single bit of it, as Mrs May wrote in her article on Friday. In other words, to all intents and purposes we are going to be out of Europe altogether and we will be the worse for that as a country.

I can tell noble Lords that our former EU partners have heard the Government loud and clear. I travel on the continent still: the people with whom we are going to negotiate have got the message that we want clean out of the place. This cannot avoid having consequences in the negotiations.

However, the most important point, and the main point I want to make in this debate, is that this is not what a lot of leave supporters backed when they voted in the referendum. Yes, they wanted to leave the European Union but they did not want to turn Britain into a poorer, politically isolated offshore tax haven without reach or influence in the world. Once they see the consequences, they may—I stress may—want to think again about the outcome of the Government’s chosen path, and Parliament’s job will be to reflect that change of view and create the means of expressing it.

I will conclude by saying one thing about trade, and I have been a Trade Secretary at home, as well as a Trade Commissioner in Europe. The Government can say they want a comprehensive trade agreement to give us,

“the exact same benefits as we have”,—[Official Report, Commons, 24/1/17; col. 169.]

as David Davis said in the other place some weeks ago, but unless we comply with Europe’s market rules and accept its common product standards and the regulation of services that it prescribes, we will not have the same trade. We will not have the equal benefits, and to say otherwise is a fraud on the public. We can pay for access—and no doubt we will have to pay through the nose for this—but it will not bring the same volume of trade or the same rights, and we will not have the same means of enforcing those rights in our trade in Europe.

That is why, when all this becomes apparent—it having been carefully obscured in the referendum—the political circumstances will change and so might people’s minds. We cannot foretell exactly what the context will be in 18 months’ or two years’ time but I believe, and I hope noble Lords will agree, that we cannot simply consign Britain’s economic future to this headlong rush towards Brexit at any cost. We have a responsibility not to next year’s growth figures or inflation figures but to the prosperity of our country for decades to come.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)]

My Lords, first, I draw attention to my interests as declared in the register, in particular as a partner in the international commercial law firm DAC Beachcroft and as chairman of the British Insurance Brokers’ Association.

I join many other speakers in congratulating the Government on bringing before us such a short and simple Bill. Whether we like it or not, on 23 June last year the people of the United Kingdom voted on a single, simple proposition and made their decision. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Newby, that it was not just an expression of view, and I say to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwark that I am not sure where he got the word “quixotic” from; the decision had nothing to do with tilting at windmills or Don Quixote. Perhaps he was just expressing an anacoluthon. It is entirely appropriate that Parliament should respect the decision in the clearest possible terms. I also applaud the decision to convert the body of existing EU law into domestic law, which is by far the best way, in the Government’s own phrase, of “providing certainty and clarity” at a time of great uncertainty and obscurity.

Like many others in the Chamber, throughout my political career I have always been an advocate of closer co-operation among the Governments and peoples of Europe, but it saddens me to say that the European Union simply failed to adapt to the complex, rapidly shifting challenges of what I describe as the new world order. Last year’s referendum exposed the inherent conflict between global aspirations and domestic fears. For many, globalisation has created a sense of near panic and of a loss of control, and it was powerful, simple, powerfully simple arguments about regaining control that narrowly won the day on 23 June last.

The Government’s White Paper speaks of an “outward-looking” nation. I believe that attitude, that policy and that philosophy can heal the wounds left by the referendum and re-establish “One Nation”. Our intuition and surely our reason combine in warning us that, while “Island Britain” must always be a physical reality, it can never again be a geopolitical reality. That is why I very much welcome the title of the Government’s White Paper—The United Kingdom’s Exit from and New Partnership with the European Union—and its consistent tone of grown-up, hard-baked and thoroughly considered realism about where we stand. Of course the precise nature of this new partnership needs to be fleshed out, but it will surely be founded upon what we in the United Kingdom can uniquely offer to the world.

The White Paper also recognises that the UK is one of only two global full-service financial centres, and the only one in Europe. Over 75% of the EU 27’s capital market business is conducted through the United Kingdom. Our insurance sector—the sector I know best—has in my view no equal anywhere in the world. The expertise we possess here is in no hurry to emigrate, but we must ensure, through a positive approach to mutual market access, that it is not forced to go elsewhere in order to carry on trading. I also believe we lead the world in our independent legal profession, our independent judiciary and the concept of the rule of law. I join the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, in warmly applauding the judgment of the Supreme Court. Whether you read the consenting judgments or the dissenting ones, it reads like one of the great judgments of all time, and I commend it to colleagues.

The closing section of the White Paper contains the compelling confirmation that, in the words of the Prime Minister,

“the British people voted to leave the EU, but they did not vote to leave Europe”.

I respect the noble Lord, Lord Mandelson. How long ago was it that he was chairman of the Young European Left and I was chairman of the Conservative Group for Europe?

[Lord Mandelson]

Too long.

[Lord Hunt of Wirral]

However, we have to move into this new world, and we must do so in a positive frame of mind. In that spirit, I was delighted to note a commitment to negotiating,

“a phased process of implementation … This would give businesses and individuals enough time to plan and prepare for those new arrangements”.

That again underlines why it is so overwhelmingly in our national interest that these negotiations should be successfully concluded within the two-year timeframe set for them. I have every confidence that outcome can and will be achieved, and we in this House have a responsibility to help. The last thing we should do is to break the Prime Minister’s bat just when we most need her to go out and play the innings of her life for her country, and complicating amendments to the Bill would do just that.

In my view, the Prime Minister deserves our full confidence. That is why, on the basis of this short, crisp Bill and the broad assurances and sound common sense of the White Paper, I believe the Prime Minister will be set fair to negotiate not only for our exit from the European Union but also for the best possible new strategic partnership with our close allies, colleagues and friends on the continent—our continent—of Europe.

Outcome of the EU Referendum

Lord Mandelson Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

The right reverend Prelate’s remarks covered a large amount of ground. Although I said that we could, perhaps, do with a little less politics in this House than in the other place, I would not go quite as far as his proposal for the future. But he makes an important point about us avoiding becoming a divided nation as a result of the referendum. All of us who are involved in politics, or business, or who have other positions of authority and responsibility, have to properly understand what people feel when they express their views. During the campaign and over the last few months, I was interested in comments about people no longer wanting or respecting experts. I do not agree with that analysis but people want to feel, more than they do now, that experts understand why they feel the way they do. People may not feel they have benefited from the turnaround of the economy, or have felt left out of many of the advances we have made over the last 10, 20 or 30 years. As we proceed, we all have a responsibility to keep trying to reassure them that we understand why they feel the way they do and why they voted the way they did. We must now make sure, in the way that we implement the country’s decision, that we bring everyone along with us and that everybody in this country feels that they have a proper opportunity to fulfil their potential.

[Lord Mandelson (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Lawson of Blaby (Con)]

My Lords—

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

I certainly agree with my noble friend that the campaign is over. The public have spoken and we now all have a responsibility to implement that decision—and, as I have said, in a way which means that it is successful and in the best interests of this country. As my noble friend says, it is right that we are using the brightest and most talented civil servants to that end. Indeed, I am sure that we will draw upon a wide range of expertise outside Whitehall as well.

[Lord Mandelson]

My Lords, for the next two years the United Kingdom is entitled to have a commissioner in Brussels during a time when vital national interests will be considered by the Commission and the other EU institutions. Will the noble Baroness inform the House when that vacancy is going to be filled?

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for that direct question but, unfortunately, I am not in a position to answer it in a direct way. At some point, I hope very much that I will be able to come back to him and make that information more widely available.

Leveson Inquiry

Lord Mandelson Excerpts

Thursday 29th November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathclyde]

My noble and learned friend has a great deal of experience and knowledge on this subject, and I agree with him that what we asked Lord Justice Leveson to do was extremely difficult—yet what he has done is to bring his intellect to bear and publish an extremely impressive report and analysis. I agree with much of what my noble friend said; there is an opportunity for us to work together on a cross-party basis to bring about some extremely good results as quickly and effectively as possible.

[Lord Mandelson]

My Lords, the Prime Minister said at the beginning of his Statement that above all we should put the interests of the victims first. I am afraid that in his response to Leveson he is doing the very opposite of that: he is putting politics and the perceived power of certain sections of the press before the interests of the victims. Let us be honest, he is not the first Prime Minister to be in that position.

The Leveson report is a very moderate and realistic set of proposals that seeks to achieve two things. First, it seeks to achieve high standards of journalism in this country and the untrammelled ability of journalists to pursue those high standards, while at the same time putting in place a rudimentary protection of the rights and freedoms of individuals. It is perfectly clear that what certain sections of the press—they are by no means unified—want to put forward instead is a variation of the PCC, which, as we know, is and always has been a plaything of the Daily Mail and News International—nothing more or less than that.

Leveson is right: we need a statutory longstop to a genuinely independent system of regulation—a statute that should give privileges to the press because of the unique role that they play in our society, but should make absolutely clear that while they enjoy those unique privileges, they are none the less not above the law in how they behave.

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, it is truly astonishing to hear the noble Lord complain about politicians being political. I cannot join him in his accusation that my right honourable friend is afraid of the power of the press; in fact, I think that my right honourable friend has accepted most of the criteria set out in this report. Where I agree with the noble Lord is that we should have uppermost in our minds the interests of the victims, and should judge the criteria and the new system of regulation against that. The new regulatory system, unlike the current one, will be devoid of editors and members of the Government on its governing board. That is an enormous strength to ensure that it can never again become a plaything of any newspaper group.

European Council

Lord Mandelson Excerpts

Monday 12th December 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mandelson]

My Lords, people will differ in their view about whether the Government’s negotiating position last week was tenable or realistic. Will the Government reflect on the utterly shambolic way in which they prepared their position and sought support for their proposals at the summit last week? Why were the Government’s proposals only shared with the legal service of the Council literally the day before the summit? Why were they not shared with, and why was support not sought from, more than a handful of German officials? The French were not informed or consulted at all about these proposals. In view of such lamentable incompetence, is it really surprising that we ended up in a majority of one?

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, I cannot agree with the noble Lord, even though he brings immense experience to this House. We believe that we issued every signal possible by the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and many others as to what we regarded as vital British interests. In the run-up to last Thursday’s summit everyone should have been entirely clear what the implications of that were.