Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill

Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 9th February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howard of Lympne (Con)]

The answer to the noble Baroness is this: if legislation is put before the House of Commons and it fails because there is no simple majority for it, there is a simple answer—the legislation fails. You do not have a situation that could go on for years in which a Government remain in office in a state of paralysis because that is what a majority of the House of Commons wants. That is the mischief that would arise in relation to this Bill.

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)]

But why should a Prime Minister who cannot get a majority of the House of Commons for an election be entitled to a Dissolution?

[Lord Howard of Lympne (Con)]

Because our Government need decision. If you have a situation in which you have paralysis in the House of Commons, it is in the national interest that this should be resolved. The way in which it has traditionally been resolved and would now be resolved again if this Bill were passed would be by the Prime Minister asking Her Majesty, the monarch, to exercise the prerogative to provide a general election, which would resolve that paralysis.

I will say one more thing on Clause 3, because I do not want to trouble your Lordships again. The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, said that the ouster clause was completely unnecessary because no court would ever challenge the decision of a majority of the House of Commons. Had the noble Lord been present on Monday, he would have heard your Lordships’ House debate a number of occasions in which the courts had challenged legislation passed by a majority of the House of Commons. I am afraid that the noble Lord’s reliance on the reticence of the courts in these matters is considerably misplaced, particularly having regard to their decision on Prorogation. For that reason, Clause 3 is absolutely essential.

European Union (Future Relationship) Bill

Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames Excerpts

3rd reading & 2nd reading & Committee negatived & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & 3rd reading (Hansard) & 3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & Committee negatived (Hansard) & Committee negatived (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 30th December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD) [V]]

My Lords, the draconian limitation of our scrutiny of this Bill—with no Committee stage, no Report stage, no amendments and three minutes each to speak—flows directly from the Government being too cowed by the ERG to seek to extend the transition period beyond tomorrow. So we have a disgraceful Hobson’s choice between this agreement, which is rushed and inadequate, and leaving the EU without an agreement.

I will vote against the Bill, not because I want to leave the EU with no deal but in protest against this bad agreement and its chaotic, undemocratic implementation. The Bill is undemocratic not just in its timescale but in its content, with massive, all-encompassing Henry VIII powers in Clauses 31 to 33.

I turn to the justice system. The Prime Minister wrote to us all on Christmas Eve that the agreement prioritises the safety and security of citizens. Why, then, are we abandoning the European arrest warrant for an inadequate substitute surrender system that is, in effect, traditional extradition with probable court delays and many escaping justice?

Why, too, are we giving up real-time access to the Schengen Information System—our main source of criminal data—accessed, as others have said, by the UK police 600 million times last year? Why are we giving up our leading roles in Eurojust and Europol, the world’s most successful international collaborative policing body ever, for fig-leaf spectator seats and limited, conditional and slow information exchange?

In civil law, why are we losing the reciprocal recognition and enforcement of judgments and the choice of court rules under the Brussels regulations, leaving British litigants, including children, without the international co-operation and civil and family cases that have served us so well? Yes, we have the three Hague conventions that we recently passed into law, and we may ultimately have the Lugano Convention, but that requires unanimity among the Lugano members and cannot be achieved in time. The replacements are no match for what we are losing.

Why, then, this series of retrograde steps for security and justice? The answer lies in the Government’s wrong-headed fear of any involvement in the European Court of Justice, even in areas that plainly advantage the UK. There has been a lack of any attempt to negotiate some limited special UK judicial involvement in the court, where we, this country, have a clear and special interest.