European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 6) Bill

Lord Patten of Barnes Excerpts

Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 6th September 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord True]

If the noble Baroness is telling me that those six people are now the new governing group driving remainer policy, that is very interesting—but I rather suspect that others are involved. There may be one or two of them in this House, and I think we should know their names.

[Lord Patten of Barnes (Con)]

Perhaps I may ask my noble friend one simple question. Why did he leave out of the list of those who run the country Mr Dominic Cummings?

[Lord True]

My Lords, yet again, my noble friend, despite his distinguished Oxford degree, clearly was not listening. I was referring to those driving the policy of the remainer faction—and the public outside know this to be true—and seizing control of the conduct of our affairs without a general election.

European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 6) Bill

Lord Patten of Barnes Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 5th September 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

My Lords, the word “reveal” is a misnomer. The full reports of the alternative arrangements group exist. The summaries exist. All the background material is available for anyone to read. To what extent it has been pressed by government negotiators in Brussels—Mr Frost and others—I do not know. You do not need to reveal something that has already been published. These things have been worked out and are available. I am not saying that anyone will agree to them, and it pays people at the moment to pretend they do not exist or have not been revealed. They have and they are there.

[Lord Patten of Barnes (Con)]

Perhaps I can encourage my noble friend to help the House on one point. Can he name anywhere in the world where different customs unions share a border, without the sort of hard border which is of concern to everyone? Just name any one. The United States and Canada: no. Switzerland and France: no. Where are there two countries with different customs unions side by side that do not have a hard border?

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

I think Members of this House and others have visited the Norway-Sweden border.

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[Lord Howard of Lympne]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Campbell, with whom I have had the pleasure of jousting over many decades. Occasionally I have even agreed with him. I will not follow his speech in its entirety, but before I address the remarks that I prepared I will deal with one of the observations he made and challenge one of the myths that has grown about the role and achievements of the European Union.

It is often said and rarely challenged that one of the great achievements of the European Union was peace in western Europe after the Second World War. I do not believe that to be true. The peace that has existed in western Europe after the Second World War actually owes more to the Soviet Union than it does to the European Union. It was inconceivable for almost 50 years after the end of the Second World War, when western Europe faced an existential threat from the ambitions of the Soviet Union, that any further fighting should take place in the western part of the continent. They were obliged to unite to face that threat. That was why we had peace in western Europe for 50 years after the Second World War. Of course, happily, after that period had lasted and the Soviet Union had disintegrated, the countries of western Europe had got out of the habit of fighting each other and we have been able to enjoy peace ever since.

[Lord Patten of Barnes]

Does my noble friend seriously think that the only reason for Franco-German reconciliation after the war, which is at the heart of European peace and building a new Europe out of the moral, economic and political rubble, was the Soviet threat? It might have contributed, but there were far bigger political issues that produced that, thank heavens for all of us.

[Lord Howard of Lympne]

We can argue about whether it was the only reason. Of course other factors encouraged Franco-German reconciliation, but the peace of the western half of the continent was an inevitable consequence of the threat those countries faced from the Soviet Union to the east.

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[Lord Patten of Barnes]

My Lords, I had not meant to intervene in this debate—and that is true. Having sat through much of the night, benefiting from the wisdom of my noble friends Lord True and Lord Dobbs while envying my noble friend Lord Forsyth—by then in his sleeper on the way to Scotland as the rest of us dealt with the filibustering that he had launched with his usual panache—I thought that I had probably had enough of all of this. However, one of the dangers of coming in and listening to a debate is that one is provoked into wanting to make one or two contributions. This is particularly the case whenever I listen to my noble friend Lord Howard. I can honestly say that, while I have disagreed with him on many subjects over the years, I have never doubted that he was anything other than a good chap.

I will come back to good chaps in a moment. There were two points I wanted to make as prequels to three points—which I will cover very briefly because they have been dealt with admirably by the noble Lords, Lord Hain and Lord Mandelson.

I want to endorse what was said earlier about the departure from the Government of the Higher Education and Science Minister, Jo Johnson. I will not make the obvious points about Johnsons and one’s preference. However, Jo Johnson was at my university, where I am now a chancellor. I did not always agree with the legislation he brought forward on higher education in the last Session, but he was an outstandingly good and conscientious Higher Education Minister, as well as very intelligent. He is a real loss to the Administration, and I hope he is not a loss to public service for family reasons. He is a very good man.

Secondly, I want to identify myself with the remarks made by my noble friend Lord Cormack earlier about the treatment of some of our former, present colleagues. I am sure it was inadvertence which meant that my noble friend Lord Howard did not refer to them either. We were both colleagues of theirs in government. I am sure he shares my high view of their public integrity and public service. My noble friend has known one or two of them even longer than I have—he was at Cambridge with them. I am surprised that we did not hear about the appalling and hypocritical way in which they have been treated. I hope that will be undone as rapidly as possible; it was not Mr Cummings’s or Mr Johnson’s finest hour.

I shall briefly make three points, which have been touched on in particular by the noble Lord, Lord Mandelson. The first is on the trade negotiations. We have been told again and again that the reason this Bill is so suspect is that it cuts the Prime Minister off at the knees in the negotiations over our future relationship with the European Union but, as my noble friend Lord Hayward pointed out, the question is: what negotiations? There is no rustling in the shrubbery. You ask the President of the Council, the President of the Commission, the President of the French Republic, the Chancellor of Germany and the Taoiseach about the proposals that justify our Prime Minister in his observation that things are going well and the Government are putting forward all sorts of bright ideas, but there is no reply. It would be nice to hear from the Front Bench later this evening what the state of play is in these negotiations and what we are proposing—presumably somebody knows. Maybe we should just take it from Mr Cummings, the éminence grise in the regime—maybe one should call him the éminence—who has brought a new approach to personnel management at No. 10, that all this is a sham. But if it is a sham, that is all the more reason for having this legislation in place. If it is not a sham and we are making terrific progress, it seems very likely that we need rather more time to complete the progress, hence one of the advantages in a reply to a question posed earlier, and hence the advantage of a few more months being built in, if absolutely necessary.

The second point, related to that, is touched on by the “good chaps” theory, which, to be operable, needs a sense that the people you are dealing with are good chaps. One thing we know, and which underpins some of the discussions about when there should next be an election, is that there is a strong sense and suspicion—I put the point no more firmly than this, but I use a word used by my right honourable friend Kenneth Clarke—of the disingenuousness of the Prime Minister. Maybe there are those who are not absolutely sure that he and the people who surround him are good chaps. We know that eight of them voted again and again as bad chaps against the proposals that the last Prime Minister brought forward. One reason we have had this long period of delay is the activities—the high productivity rates—of the ERG during the negotiations so far.

There is another aspect of the “good chaps” thesis of the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, which needs touching on. I thought my noble friend Lord Howard was rather curious in the division he drew between the Executive and the legislature in international affairs and international negotiations. I, like him, was a Secretary of State for the Environment. I used to go to international negotiations on the environment with the reports of Select Committees and with legislation from the House of Commons determining what I should try to do about ozone-depleting substances, or water or air quality. When I was a Development Minister, I had to operate within the terms that the House of Commons had agreed on the proportion of our GDP to be spent on overseas development. I had to comply with what the OECD said about that as well. When I was a colonial despot, I had to implement what Parliament had decided about the joint declaration and the terms within which Britain should exercise its stewardship in our last colonial dependency. So do not tell me that there is an absolute division between what Executives can do abroad and what the legislature has a right to determine.

My final point is about Northern Ireland. I shall not repeat the points made very well by the noble Lords, Lord Hain and Lord Mandelson, nor shall I repeat what I have said on other occasions in this House about the Northern Ireland border. It is a sign of the beginning of dementia when you start quoting your own speeches. However, in the second speech I made on the withdrawal Bill, I said that one of only two interventions made by the last Prime Minister during the referendum campaign was about the appalling difficulties of managing the border if we leave the European Union, which was true. Two points have regularly been made about the border. First, there are terrible difficulties as soon as you leave the single market for the customs union. Some of us posed a question to the intellectually sprightly Lord, my noble friend Lord Howell, about where else in the world one could find two countries side by side with different tax regimes and different customs unions that do not have a border, and the answer is that there are none. There are ways of making it easier to deal with a border, but when you have different customs unions and different tax arrangements side by side, there is no way that you cannot have a border. The problem with that in Northern Ireland is very simple.

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

There are different arrangements either side of the border; there have been for years. The VAT is different, the currencies are different, there are all sorts of differences, and many similarities. You cannot just brush these things aside with generalities.

[Lord Patten of Barnes]

The point I continually make is that absolutely everywhere, whether it is in Switzerland and France, Norway and Sweden or the United States and Canada, if one is in a different customs union from one’s neighbour, there is a hard border.

[Lord Howard of Lympne]

I am most grateful to my noble friend for giving way. I would be very interested to know how he reconciles what he has just said with the fact that when, for a few weeks earlier in the year, it looked as though we might be leaving the European Union without an agreement, the Government said that they had no intention of putting up a hard border on the island of Ireland, and Mr Varadkar, Mr Barnier and Mr Juncker also said that they had no intention of putting up a hard border on the Republic side of the border. If no one intended to put up a hard border in the event of no deal, there must be a way through.

[Lord Patten of Barnes]

My noble friend knows perfectly well that under WTO rules, and for other reasons as well, if the Republic of Ireland is in a separate customs union from Great Britain, there has to be a border. It is a WTO rule. There is a border and traffic is stopped there.

There is a point that resonates even more than the economic argument, which is the question of security. I am sorry to personalise this, but a lot of our knowledge—and our prejudices, perhaps—in politics come from our personal experiences. The first time I saw dead bodies, apart from those of my parents, was near the Newry customs post in Northern Ireland, where I saw part of a leg on top of a rhododendron bush. We know perfectly well that if we do not get this right, there is a danger of people being killed—not just of businesses being destroyed or communities being devastated, but of people dying. If people do not believe that, they should read what is said again and again by the Police Service of Northern Ireland and the Garda Síochána.

These are terribly important issues and I just hope that we will bear in mind these facts, as well as the questions of economics and trade, when we are determining the relationships between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland and between the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, which many people still seem to treat as though we have viceregal authority over it. These are great friends of ours and we should treat them rather better than we do.

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[Lord Callanan]

As far as I know, the latest information is that that meeting is still going ahead. Even if an election is happening, the Government and the Prime Minister remain in office and there are still live issues to be discussed. I am sure that there will still be intense value in having a meeting.

[Lord Patten of Barnes]

May I be, as usual, of assistance to the Minister, help him to develop the strength of his argument and encourage him to be a very brave Minister? Would he like to tell us that the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, Mr Cummings, who has featured quite regularly in this debate, did not say that the negotiations were a “sham”?

[Lord Callanan]

I am always wary when the noble Lord wants to be helpful, particularly when he quotes things taken straight from “Yes Minister” about being brave. All I can say is that he has not said it in any of the meetings that I have been at with him. Obviously, I am not at every meeting with him and I cannot comment on whether he said it. He says that he did not and nobody else in government has said to me that he did. I know Dominic well and I take his word when he says that he did not say that.

We know that member states want to avoid a no-deal exit. As set out by the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in the other place on Tuesday, we have accelerated our preparations for no deal. For example, as I informed the House in repeating the Statement on Tuesday, there is additional expenditure of £16 million to train thousands of customs staff, traders and hauliers, and an additional £20 million to ensure that traffic can flow freely in Kent and that trucks arriving in Dover are ready to carry our exports into the EU. In addition, the Chancellor has made all necessary funds available to support other preparations.

Perhaps I might say a few words about the Bill itself. Although today’s debate has been of the usual high standard, it was remarkable that very few noble Lords addressed the legislation that we are talking about. However, it is true that continued EU membership would cost the UK roughly £1 billion net a month. The Bill, as it currently stands, would require the Prime Minister immediately to accept any offer made by the EU of an extension to 31 January 2020.

European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 5) Bill

Lord Patten of Barnes Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 8th April 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goldsmith]

I will not attempt definitions of words; I am a lawyer, not a grammarian.

[Lord Patten of Barnes (Con)]

The Government distinguished by the leadership of Lady Thatcher came into office on the basis of one vote, as I remember. All of us, including my noble friend—and he is a friend—benefited from that.

Brexit: Withdrawal Agreement and Political Declaration

Lord Patten of Barnes Excerpts

Monday 14th January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Patten of Barnes (Con)]

Like others, I return to the scene of the accident to discuss this deal. I do not think that I imagined hearing the Secretary of State for International Trade on the radio this morning say that it was the “least damaging” way of leaving the European Union. I thought that it was a pretty spectacular example of how to pay a compliment.

I will make two points about assurances and two points about threats. I have no difficulty accepting that the backstop is temporary—or that “temporary” is a word in every known European language. I am sure that we can find ever so many examples of the President of the Commission and the President of the Council smothering the word “temporary” in warm milk and honey. That is not really the point. The point was made with pellucid clarity during our aborted debate before Christmas, when my noble friend Lord Howard pointed out that under Article 50 we have the unfettered ability to leave the European Union, but we cannot leave the backstop without the agreement of 27 members of the European Union.

The second assurance touches on that. We are told that we should not worry about the future because everything is taken care of in the political declaration. However, the political declaration is a bucket list. If you look up “bucket list” on the internet, the first thing you get is “abseiling down a waterfall”. At least that is not in it, but everything else we could conceivably want is put into that bucket list—with no guarantee that any of it will be deliverable.

The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, made a remarkable speech before Christmas about the future of research and science if we leave the European Union under any terms, even with the backstop. There are no guarantees about what will happen to our research community and to universities in the future. That is why all the university leaders have written to us expressing their grave concern about what is happening.

I turn to the threats. The first threat, which has been touched on already, is the suggestion that if we do not accept this less than perfect—I think that is the polite way of putting it—deal to leave, it will be no deal. It will be what the Leader of the House of Commons called—as the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, said, this is a somewhat oxymoronic concept—a “managed no deal”. It will be managed presumably with all the competence we showed in dealing with the change in railway timetables last year; with all the competence, panache and swagger we showed in dealing with a drone at Gatwick; and with the competence we showed last week in managing a traffic jam in Kent—now there is a big thing to do.

I am sure that most members of the Cabinet agree with the Secretary of State for trade and industry, who said that it would be damaging to this country—and I cannot believe that the Prime Minister, too, does not believe that it would be damaging to us. So why on earth are they flirting with it as a way of trying to press us all into doing something which most of us think would be extremely unwise and would keep the debate about the European Union going indefinitely—because that is what the political declaration is all about?

The other threat is the idea that unless we vote for the Prime Minister’s proposal, or leave without it, the country will be divided for the foreseeable future. What the hell do we think the country is at the moment? I have never known it so divided. This is partly because of decisions taken to try to manage members of a part of the Conservative Party, my party, who have for years, with commendable fortitude—although I think they are wrong—worked away to get us out of the European Union. We could deal with the idea that if we vote for this deal on April Fools’ Day people will sit around on the village green singing “Kumbaya” and holding hands—or perhaps, in the presence of the right reverend Prelates, “Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah”—but the idea that this will end the debate is for the birds. I am afraid that this argument will pollute British politics and British society for a long time to come.

As I said, I recognise the fortitude, determination and intellectual honesty of some of my noble friends who have pursued this over the years. They have, to borrow from Iain Macleod, schemed their schemes and dreamed their dreams. But now we wake up to this terrible shambles—never glad, confident morning again. The trouble about civil wars—even civil wars in political parties—is that they do one hell of a lot of collateral damage: in this case not just to the Conservative Party but to the country. I feel passionately that in the days ahead we should do what we can to limit the amount of collateral damage. Even though we cannot do it completely and even though we recognise that there will be an impact on British politics for the foreseeable future, we should at least try to do it in a way that does not make this country poorer or less influential in the world, and in a way which will enable us to look our kids and their children in the eye in the years ahead.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Patten of Barnes Excerpts

Report: 6th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 8th May 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

I know that my noble friend is not very keen on the Foreign Secretary, and that he has made a number of attacks on Boris Johnson in this House, including calling on the Government to sack him. I point out that Boris Johnson played an important part in the referendum campaign and that the people voted—

[Lord Patten of Barnes (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

In a second. Can I just deal with this intervention? I did not think that we had interventions on this scale on Report.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

On Report—I am just referring to Standing Orders.

The Foreign Secretary set out his case, which was not to be in the customs union or in the single market, and the British people voted overwhelmingly. This House is seeking to undermine that vote, and in so doing it is damaging its own standing and reputation in the country.

[Lord Patten of Barnes]

My noble friend has just made, unusually, an unforced error, as they say in tennis. Did he not—perhaps he did not—agree strongly with the Foreign Secretary during the referendum campaign, when Boris Johnson made it absolutely clear that he was in favour of us staying in the single market?

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

No, I did not, and I was not aware that he had done that. I do not think that my noble friend and I would be at loggerheads or in disagreement if I said that the Foreign Secretary does not always get everything right. However, he argues passionately for the democratic mandate which was given to this Parliament and to this Government, and which this Government are determined to carry out.

These amendments are doing no good whatever to this place or to our ability to get the best deal for the British people. If my noble friend Lady Verma said that, like the Prime Minister, she has in all conscience to get the best deal for the country, I suggest that the difference between her and the Prime Minister is that the Prime Minister is elected and the responsibility is hers, and my noble friend should give her her loyalty and support.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Patten of Barnes Excerpts

Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords
Wednesday 18th April 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard]

Am I allowed to respond? I thank the noble Lord for his question. The Government would be required to negotiate for a customs union and make a statement about the outcome of the negotiations, which would be before the withdrawal implementation Bill came to the House. It seems to me that the requirement on the Government is simply to negotiate. I may be wrong about the willingness of the other side to envision a customs union—we cannot require the Government to come back with a customs union—but we can require the Government to explain how hard they have tried and what kind of customs union they think might be available.

[Lord Patten of Barnes (Con)]

I am delighted to second the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, and I will seek to do so as briefly as he did, partly because he was so comprehensive in the arguments for a customs union and partly because we chewed over many of these issues in Committee and we plainly should not deal with them again. So I will not go into the issue of Northern Ireland’s border with the Republic of Ireland, because I spoke twice on that in Committee.

I assume straightaway, because I have a regard for his intelligence, that the Minister responding to this debate is not going to suggest that the referendum result or the Conservative manifesto disqualifies us from proceeding in the direction suggested by the noble Lord. If I am wrong about that, I would be delighted to come back to it later. But there is one point made in the manifesto that I will dwell on for a moment—and, as clergymen occasionally say at the end of sermons, share with you all—because it allows me to bridge to the main argument we have today, which is about trade and trade opportunities for this country.

I confess to the House straightaway that I used to make my living helping to write manifestos, and so I have a certain regard for these things. The manifesto said at the beginning:

“People are rightly sceptical of politicians who claim to have easy answers to deeply complex problems”.


So I ask the House to turn its attention to what we have been promised on trade.

We are told by the Secretary of State for International Trade that a free trade agreement with the EU will be one of the “easiest in human history”. He also told us that, by the end of March 2019, the Government will have put in place or drafted or agreed up to 40 trade agreements with other countries. That is the backdrop. It seems to me that those propositions invite a little scepticism, and in a moment or two I will suggest to the House why that is the case.

I have a degree of expertise in this area for which I do not seek to make extravagant claims—I do not know as much about trade as the noble Lord, Lord Mandelson, does, and I know that expertise is a dangerous thing in the present climate. But I did, either on my own or with others, negotiate free trade agreements between the European Union and Mexico, Chile and most of the countries of the Mashreq and Maghreb region. We were part of the negotiation team for China’s accession to the WTO. We failed with Russia—for all sorts of reasons which the House will not be surprised about—and we made only limited progress with Mercosur, the San José dialogue and the Andean pact countries. So I know how difficult these things are, and some of the problems that will be faced in addressing the agenda mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Kerr.

The first thing we have to do is secure our market in the European Union—50% of our trade. We then have to think about the 12% of trade with countries with which the European Union has concluded agreements already and the 8% with which it is negotiating trade agreements already. That adds up to about 70%. Of the remaining 30%, about half is with the United States, a quarter with China and Hong Kong, and the rest with everyone else.

How are we going to manage with the countries with which the European Union has negotiated deals already? I spent a particularly dreary afternoon on Maundy Thursday looking through the European Union-South Korea trade deal. It was dreary not because it is not a good deal—indeed, it is such a good deal that the Foreign Secretary not long ago boasted about the great increase in British trade with South Korea—but because it is even longer than a long day’s journey into night. It runs to 1,400 pages, 900 of which just list tariffs. The idea that you can simply Snopake the words “European Union” and insert “United Kingdom” and grandfather that trade agreement in nanoseconds—even nanoyears—is absurd.

First of all, the South Koreans know that we are the demandeur. They will know that we have a trade surplus with South Korea at the moment, which might make them a little resistant to being as helpful as they were with the European Union, which is, anyway, a much bigger market than the United Kingdom—500 million to about 65 million. There are technical issues as well that will be particularly demanding. I will not try to explain to the House—because I have only a vague notion of what it means—the problem with trigger volumes preventing surges of agricultural imports to a country. But that issue is one that will involve not just negotiations with South Korea but tripartite negotiations between us and the European Union as well as the South Koreans.

Even more important are rules of origin—something that used to be well understood by the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union. Not long before the Foreign Secretary made a speech saying that there was no reason why we should not, after leaving the European Union, stay in the single market, the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union pointed out that, on balance, he was in favour of staying in the customs union because, even though you would not then be able to do independent trade deals on your own, the issue of rules of origin was so important that we had to stay within the union so that that did not present problems for us.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Patten of Barnes Excerpts

Monday 19th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Garel-Jones]

One of the interesting aspects of our country is that, unlike almost every other country in the world, we do not have a written constitution. Britain’s unwritten constitution could be summed up in one sentence—Parliament is supreme. I myself take the Thatcherite view on referendums, as indeed does my noble friend Lord Patten, but since this particular referendum was approved by Parliament, like it or not, I have to accept it. However, I remind the House of the Supreme Court’s ruling on this matter, of which quite by chance I happen to have a copy in my pocket:

“The 2016 referendum is of great political significance. However, its legal significance is determined by what Parliament included in the statute authorising it, and that statute simply provided for the referendum to be held without specifying the consequences. The change in the law required to implement the referendum’s outcome must be made in the only way permitted by the UK constitution, namely by legislation”.


That means that the outcome of these discussions must be laid before Parliament, and given that our unwritten constitution gives that right to Parliament, I have no doubt whatever that Her Majesty’s Government will abide by our unwritten constitution—the supremacy of Parliament.

[Lord Patten of Barnes (Con)]

My Lords, perhaps I may put one point to my noble friend. Is he, as I am, mildly amused by the fact that so many of our noble friends seem particularly keen to quote the views of present and former leaders of the Liberal party but do not seem keen to remember what the most distinguished leader of the Conservative Party over the past few years said explicitly about the danger of referendums being an example of the worst sort of plebiscitary democracy?

[Lord Garel-Jones]

Indeed, I agree with my noble friend. What they are saying in fact could possibly mean that were the outcome of the deal to involve the killing of the firstborn child of every family in Britain, we would have to accept that.

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[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

I thought I heard my noble friend argue not a few moments ago about the supremacy of Parliament. I believe in the supremacy of Parliament and that judicial interference is one of the worst aspects of our membership of the European Union, and another reason why we should get out of it. I give way to my noble friend Lord Patten of Barnes.

[Lord Patten of Barnes]

I am very grateful to my noble friend and am always keen to build bridges with him. Given what he has said about the importance of the supremacy of Parliament, which happens to be my view, and about the extent to which referendums are an assault on the way in which we have done things for decades in this country, would he support a free vote in Parliament when the outcome of the negotiations is known?

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

I have always regarded my membership of this place as giving me a free vote. Members of this House are not whipped to the extent that they are—

[Lord Patten of Barnes]

What about the vote in another place? Is my noble friend in favour, as Sir John Major suggested the other day, of having a free vote when the terms of the deal are known? Given what he has said already about the majesty of parliamentary democracy, I imagine that he would be keen on that.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

What I am keen on is people delivering on their promises. Not only did we promise in our manifesto that we would implement whatever the people decided in the referendum, but something like £8 million of our money was spent on putting leaflets through every door in the country, saying “What you decide we will implement”. The Government of the day promised to do that. Not only that, we stood in the general election with a clear manifesto commitment. So no, I would not be in favour of giving a free vote on a matter where we made a manifesto commitment, nor am I in favour of this House trying to overturn such commitments given by elected Governments.

All this is a distraction. It is the last gasp of the remainers. If the result had gone the other way, they would not be standing up making speeches “Oh well, it is a matter for Parliament and we cannot possibly accept the result of the referendum”.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Patten of Barnes Excerpts

Committee: 7th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 14th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan]

I think I have made clear that we are not going to accept them because we do not want our negotiating position to be constrained by them. We want to be as flexible as possible in the negotiations.

As I was saying, the UK will also seek to continue to collaborate with EU and international agencies to maintain critical safety and regulatory arrangements.

Finally, I turn to Amendment 227BF, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. Ministers and officials recognise that vehicle type approval can be a key enabler in such international trade and that the automotive industry in the UK and across the EU wants to be able to plan for future production and development with certainty at the earliest possible stage.

[Lord Patten of Barnes (Con)]

I thank the Minister for his comprehensive reply, but could he comment on a point made by my noble friend Lord Moynihan on competition policy and state aid? Will he remind the House what the Prime Minister said in the Mansion House speech about the Government’s attitude to competition policy and state aid? As I recall it, she said that we want to stay in that domain of policy. Can the Minister confirm that from the Dispatch Box today?

[Lord Callanan]

The Prime Minister did indeed refer to these important level playing field issues and said that we do not want to see a significant diminution of standards in these areas.

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[Viscount Hailsham (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 216 and 217 in my name. I will come to the detail in a moment, but for present purposes suffice it to say that these amendments, individually and collectively, would give to Parliament—here I acknowledge the primacy of the House of Commons—a decisive and conclusive say over the outcome of the Brexit negotiations. It is for Parliament, not the Government, to determine whether we leave the European Union and, if so, on what terms. If Parliament thinks it appropriate that that decision should be tested by a second referendum that would be wholly appropriate. These conclusions are wholly in accord with our constitution and history, and are, in my view, quite unchallengeable.

I acknowledge that the amendments might be clumsily drafted; I am no parliamentary draftsman. So I say to your Lordships that if others on Report draft different positions that are more happily phrased but achieve the same purpose, I shall be pleased to rally behind them.

My purpose now is to explain in greater detail the nature of these amendments and the reasons behind them. I turn to the text of the two amendments. They are inevitably cast in the statutory language and I do not want to test your Lordships’ patience by going through each clause. I hope that your Lordships will forgive me if I summarise them. My intention is that Parliament shall have the decisive say over the outcome of the negotiations. In that determination, the House of Commons must have primacy. Its decisions must be conclusive. This House does not have the authority to reject Brexit—only the Commons can do that—but we can encourage and facilitate that process. That is what these amendments enable.

Taken separately or collectively, the amendments enable Parliament to approve or reject Brexit whether or not terms have been agreed. They enable Parliament to require the withdrawal of the Article 50 notification and the UK to remain within the European Union, which is indeed my preferred outcome. If Parliament thinks it appropriate, these amendments provide for a holding of a referendum either to test public opinion or to ratify a parliamentary decision. That is wholly correct. Most importantly, the amendments enshrine and protect the primacy of the House of Commons. Without going into detail, although I happily would, the method is set out in subsections (7) and (8) of Amendment 216 and subsections (5) and (6) of Amendment 217. These provisions are based on the Parliament Acts, suitably modified to deal with resolutions.

I will explain the differences between Amendments 216 and 217. Both are designed to ensure full parliamentary control over the outcome of these negotiations. Amendment 216 is simple and is based on a cross-party amendment which was tabled during the European Union (Notification of withdrawal) Bill. Its basic attraction is that it has achieved all-party endorsement. Amendment 217 is a little more complex. It is more explicit in its provisions for the withdrawal of the Article 50 notification: it enables the holding of a second referendum and deals more fully with what should be done in the event of no deal. However, in substance these amendments are designed to achieve the same result: namely that these decisions are to be taken by Parliament, primarily the House of Commons, and not by the Government.

Let me briefly explain the fundamental justification for these amendments. I believe that Brexit is the single most disastrous peacetime decision that we have taken since at least the end of the 19th century when we failed to offer effective home rule to southern Ireland. Indeed, I am inclined to think that Brexit is even graver than that. I do not think that the referendum of 2016 was authority for Britain to leave the European Union, whatever the terms or in the absence of terms. The electorate neither could nor did know what the outcome of the negotiations would be. In my view, the proper interpretation of the referendum is that it was an instruction to the Government to negotiate the best exit terms that could be achieved. However, that leaves open the fundamental question of who will determine whether the terms, or the absence of terms, are an acceptable basis for leaving the European Union. In my view, the only proper answer to that question is that it is for Parliament to make that decision, and, if Parliament thinks it appropriate, the decision should be tested or ratified by a decision of the electorate expressed in a second referendum.

In most political careers, and certainly my own, party and national interests are not seen to be dramatically divergent. Occasionally, they are. The debate in 1940 which led to the fall of Chamberlain is perhaps the most dramatic of recent examples. Going back in history, the decision of Sir Robert Peel in 1846 to repeal the corn laws was another. I happen to believe that we now face another such moment. None of us should put party interest before our assessment of what is right for our country. Our decisions may lead to the fragmentation of existing party structures—I hope not—but our duty is to put our country first. Whatever the cost to our respective parties, we must give Parliament the decisive say on the outcome of these negotiations. That is the purpose of my two amendments and I commend them to this Committee.

[Lord Patten of Barnes (Con)]

This debate should be what I think is called a “no-brainer” for anybody who believes in parliamentary sovereignty. I do not want to add to what has already been said on the subject. I find myself in the curious position, for the first time in my life, of beginning a speech by quoting the Prime Minister of Luxembourg. As the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, pointed out, his description of the—in many respects admirable—Mansion House speech was spot on: here we are, going down this flower-strewn path, from a position where we were members of the European Union with loads of opt-outs to one where we want to be outside the European Union with as many opt-ins as you can get on the back of a lorry. It is called a “bespoke” deal. I do not have many bespoke suits—most of mine are off the peg and on to the floor—and I think that it is more an “off the peg and on to the floor” deal.

However, it was after the Mansion House speech that the most significant question that anyone asked the Prime Minister was raised. After questions from all the “trusties”, a German journalist got up and asked the Prime Minister: “Is it all worth it?” The Prime Minister, perhaps excessively honestly, did not reply directly but just pointed out that we had had a referendum which had to be honoured. I think that some others, including some of her supporters, would have put the point rather differently. They would have said that it is of course worth it because—to use a phrase which has occurred again and again in this debate—we are going to take back control. I think that most of them would at least in principle have conceded that taking back control means this Parliament—the House of Commons and the House of Lords—having control.

I have been struck as we have sat through these debates by the elephant in the room: the person who in many respects is more responsible for us being here and having this debate than anybody else, the regularly occasional leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party, Mr Farage. When Mr Farage talks about taking back control and when some of our tabloid newspapers talk about it, they do not mean Parliament having that control—they mean them; they mean a populist way of running this country. I spent some time this morning looking at Dicey—I have not done that since I was an undergraduate. I looked too at what I think is the best book on the rule of law, by that great jurist and great man, Tom Bingham—I recommend it to noble Lords. I read again what he says about parliamentary sovereignty—the keystone of our constitution. When people talk about taking back control, what they should mean is Parliament having that control. When they talk about a “meaningful vote”, they should not mean a vote which does whatever they want. A meaningful vote does not mean that it cannot make any difference to the whole process of Brexit, which was more or less said the other day by the Secretary of State, David Davis —who had said that there would be a meaningful vote.

I hope that it is not unparliamentary for me to make this comparison, but the Secretary of State increasingly reminds me of a character in a PG Woodhouse novel, of whom it is said, “He’s like one of those people in a Tolstoy novel, living in those dreary birch woods, who’s just chopped up his wife, thrown the baby down the well, goes to the cupboard, opens the cupboard and finds that there’s no vodka in the bottle”. That is the position in which our negotiators are increasingly finding themselves.

On the constitution, the Secretary of State seemed to be absolutely clear: we must have a meaningful vote, but you cannot actually change what happens. It is important for this House to give an absolutely clear message that parliamentary sovereignty in our system is what happens in this House and, above all, in the House of Commons—I agree with what my noble friend Lord Hailsham said on this. This is an occasion when a lot of us will have to make speeches and say and do things which we never imagined we would have to in our political careers. I hope more people in future will take the advice of my noble friend Lord Hailsham and follow their conscience on this issue and assert the principle of parliamentary sovereignty.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Patten of Barnes Excerpts

Wednesday 14th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Spicer]

Giving an option to stay in is saying that we will go over the whole question again.

[Lord Patten of Barnes (Con)]

I invite the Minister to explain to my noble friend—who I have known for years and like very much—the difference between parliamentary sovereignty and plebiscitary democracy. It is quite a fundamental difference in our constitution.

[The Minister of State, Department for Exiting the European Union (Lord Callanan) (Con)]

If my noble friend will forgive me, I will concentrate on the amendments before us and leave this existential debate for my two noble friends on the Back Benches to conduct among themselves.

The approval of the UK’s final deal with the EU has already been the focus of a great deal of sustained debate during the passage of both the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Act and this Bill. The Government have committed to hold a vote on the final deal in Parliament as soon as possible after the negotiations have concluded. Let me say, in direct response to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, and the noble Baroness, Lady McDonagh, that this vote will take the form of a resolution in both Houses of Parliament and will cover both the withdrawal agreement and the terms of our future relationship. The Government will not implement any parts of the withdrawal agreement until after this vote has taken place.

As we have repeatedly made clear, we fully expect, intend and will make every effort that this vote will take place before the European Parliament votes. However, I hope noble Lords will understand that we do not control the EU’s timeframe for approving the withdrawal agreement and therefore cannot make any statutory assurances where it is concerned. This would be the case with Amendment 150 tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, Amendment 151 tabled by my noble friend Lord Cormack and Amendment 216 tabled by my noble friend Lord Hailsham.

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[Lord Callanan]

I do not control the proceedings of the House of Commons. I can only set out the Government’s position on this matter.

The strength of that commitment and the political and public expectation that accompanies it mean that the Government could not conceivably renege on that commitment.

[Lord Patten of Barnes]

Perhaps I can help. This is becoming a rather complicated discussion and some of us are trying very hard to follow what the Minister is saying. Perhaps we are not being as intelligent as we should be. In the phrase “a meaningful vote”, what does the word “meaningful” mean?

[Lord Callanan]

We have never used the term “a meaningful vote”. We recognise clearly the desirability of maximising as much as possible the time between negotiations concluding and a deal coming into force. Knowing the terms of a deal as early as possible is good for business and the public in being able to prepare.

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[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard]

Certainly, I was unwilling to impute evil motives to the Government, but I am even more unwilling to try to interpret the tergiversations of the Foreign Secretary.

[Lord Patten of Barnes]

My Lords, I was very moved by the speech of the noble and right reverend Lord, the former Primate of All Ireland. I hope I can say without causing too much offence that I wish all the leaders of Christian denominations in Northern Ireland and Ireland as a whole had behaved over the years with his generosity of spirit. In saying that, I include the members of the Church of which I am a member. In his remarks, he reminded us of the terrible collateral damage we can do to things that really matter if we simply blunder forward, motivated in some cases by dogma in what is, after all, very largely a faith-based project. I am sorry to use that expression after referring to the noble and right reverend Lord, but that is what it amounts to.

I do not want to go through all of the arguments that have been so persuasively used or all the evidence that has been stacked up. I spoke about this issue briefly at Second Reading because I feel passionately about it. As an addendum to the Good Friday agreement, I chaired the Independent Commission on Policing for Northern Ireland. The report was denounced at the time by some Members of this House and by some present members of the Government. I remember one calling that policing report “a moral stain”, but it has stood the test of time. I am delighted that we have not had the same number of police officers killed in the last 20 years that we had in the preceding 25 or 30 years, when 300 died. I therefore feel very strongly about this and I entirely endorse what the noble Lord said earlier about the relationship between the United Kingdom and the European Union in taking these things forward.

I remember when I was a junior Minister in Northern Ireland—a destination, according to the Prime Minister’s friends, that she regarded as a Siberian power station. I remember how important it was to meet Ministers from the Republic in Brussels. Very often, they were meeting representatives of Northern Ireland or the Northern Ireland Government for the first time in serious official discussions, so all of that matters. I want to point out the dangers involved when you wrap up together the border.

There is a wonderful book about the border by Colm Tóibín, called Bad Blood. That is not the sort of place for which you can provide easy technological solutions. We have heard a lot about that Smart Border report, which was a consultant’s report to the European Parliament. I thought I had to take it seriously, because I heard it advocated on the “Today” programme by one of the self-titled “Brains for Brexit”, who gave a whole interview about the importance and the value of this report. So I read it, and the first thing he says is that he does not know very much about Northern Ireland. You can say that again. He goes on to point out that the report does not cover agrifood or things such as phytosanitary standards, and says that while he talks about how you can speed up customs arrangements, he does not remotely suggest that you can do without a border or customs arrangements between Northern Ireland and the Republic.

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[Lord Patten of Barnes]

I think the most explicit reference to the dangers of a hard border—of border crossings and customs officials being re-established—and the most serious warning about those has come from the chief constable of the Northern Ireland police service. He was very explicit on this subject, and I think he was much more explicit about the dangers than anybody has been in this House. I do not want to question the importance of what the noble Lord is saying, but it is worth recalling that the most outspoken remarks have come from the chief constable.

[Lord Empey]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for that. I have to say that the chief constable was using as an example the erection of customs posts and things that used to exist in the 1950s and 1960s, as well as all sorts of other concrete establishments and so on which we are not going to have. In many respects, the United Kingdom Government have committed themselves not to produce that material at the border. Whether Brussels wants or would insist on the Irish Government doing so, no Irish Government I can conceive of would do anything of the sort. I just do not believe they would—it would be politically impossible for them to do it. Brussels may have its own objectives and determinations to protect the single market—we understand that—but when push comes to shove. I do not believe it is possible.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Patten of Barnes Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 26th February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I will talk about two aspects of Horizon 2020. One is the question of certainty and the other is how this links with freedom of movement. I declare two interests. My wife has been on some of the advisory committees concerned with the definition of Horizon 2020 and what happens beyond it. British participation in defining research priorities across the European Union has been high in the last two or three exercises. That is not something that has been imposed on us and it is one of the things that we will lose.

My second interest is that I have a son who is a mathematical biologist and who spent his graduate and postgraduate years—up to 10 years—in the United States and came back to this country under an EU-funded scheme to bring bright young researchers back to Europe. He had his two-year Marie Curie fellowship and was advised not to apply for European Research Council fellowship, which would have naturally followed on, because we were perhaps leaving the European Union and that would make it difficult for him. The uncertainty is absolutely there. Happily, he now has another grant. He was persuaded to return to the University of Edinburgh by an Italian professor who led a multinational team there. That is how British universities work. I have been to many universities in other European countries where the overwhelming majority of staff and students come from that country or, in one or two countries such as Belgium and Spain, from that region. Those universities are not of the same quality or calibre.

I sometimes fear that there are hard Brexiteers in this country who think that we have too many foreigners in our universities already and that it would be much better if we went back to being proper British universities again, which would be much more in tune with the British national spirit.

As a mathematical biologist, my son is currently in Paris for six weeks at the Institut Pasteur, having spent some weeks last year in Heidelberg, because the sort of work you do in the life sciences is multinational and naturally collaborative. That requires easy movement, short term and long term. Anything which raises difficulties of travel in and out of this country, which is part of the intention of leaving the European Union, will make it much more difficult for our universities to go on being quite as good as they are. So I stress that, as we leave the European Union, we have to ensure that we remain internationally competitive and, in our universities, this matters.

Since the Government intend to leave the European Union in 13 months’ time, we need some rapid certainty on Horizon 2020. I suggest to the Minister that, well before the Bill leaves this House, the Government should have a clear answer, highly relevant to the Bill which takes us out of the European Union, on what the implications are of leaving and on which bits we are not leaving. Please may we have an answer?

[Lord Patten of Barnes (Con)]

My Lords, I will not only say that I will be brief but will be brief. I shall not pursue what has been said about Erasmus, with which I strongly agree—Erasmus must have been very grateful for all we have said about him today, although I think he would have some doubts about the present state of rationality in some of our political debate in this country.

I will instead follow the point made so well by the noble Baroness, Lady Royall. I declare an interest, which is not financial. As the noble Lord will know, I was chancellor of a Russell group university in the north-east of England. I am chancellor today of another Russell group university. Perhaps just as significant, when I ceased to be a European Commissioner, I was asked to chair the committee which established the European Research Council. It did so on the basis of the recommendations in particular of Lord May, one of the greatest contributors to the debate about research and about universities in this country.

We established the research council on the basis that it would distribute funds by peer group review—not according to what individual countries had contributed but according to the research capacities of those countries and of particular institutions. And guess what? It demonstrated that we have the second-best higher education system in the world and arguably the best higher education system in Europe: we did extraordinarily well out of that research budget. As the noble Baroness pointed out, we get a great deal more back from the European budget than we put into it, which indicates how good our research community is in this country.

I realise that there are constraints under which the Minister has to operate—he has our sympathy and our prayers as he moves forward. I agree with what my noble friend Lord Deben said earlier: we do not expect him to do wonders. I am not sure that he will be able to tell us now what the Government’s intentions are in relation to the European research community. I do not blame him if he cannot do that, because I do not think that anybody in the Government has the faintest idea—certainly, I do not know anybody in Europe who has the faintest idea of what we want to happen—but I hope that, at the end of the day, as right reverend Prelates might put it, we will still be members of that research community.

So I do not expect the Minister today to be able to spell out precisely what arrangements we will have in the future—whether they will be similar to those which Switzerland has today, whereby it is part of the community but takes no management decisions about it. Israel is in a similar position. However, I hope that, even if he cannot tell us exactly what the relationship will be, he will at least give us one simple guarantee—and I am sure that the Chancellor of the Exchequer would want to stand over this very strongly.

When we leave the European Union we will lose the considerable surplus that we have at the moment in research spending—as I said, getting back more than we put in. Will the Minister guarantee this evening, even if he cannot give us any details about our future relationship with the European research community, that any shortfall in that funding after we leave the European Union will be made good by the Government?

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[Viscount Trenchard]

I hear what the noble Lord says but I am not sure whether that follows at all. As far as the Horizon 2020 programme is concerned, presumably our contribution would still be assessed and valued in the same way that it is now. The deservability of the programmes for which we seek support would also be considered on the same basis as now, so I do not see why it should make any difference. But overall, we will have a considerable amount more money to spend, not less, because we will not be making the very large net contributions to the European Union budget that we make at present.

[Lord Patten of Barnes]

Can I clarify for my noble friend the position of countries from outside the European Union sharing in the European Research Area? I am sure he is aware that while some of them participate—I mentioned Switzerland and Israel– they play no part whatever in managing the programmes. They do not determine the priorities or what the money will go on. We could negotiate membership of the research council, I guess, although it would be with the financial consequences that the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, mentioned and the additional consequence that we would have no say in managing the programmes.

[Lord Kakkar (CB)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Patten of Barnes, and in so doing I remind noble Lords of my declared interests at Second Reading.

This has been an important debate because it has highlighted the vital contribution that European Research Council funding, in the Horizon 2020 programme and others, has made to our national research effort—both the research effort delivered by our universities and, more broadly, the research undertaken through industrial and SME participation in such research programmes. It has also identified the invaluable contribution we have made as a nation to the delivery of those programmes by the European Union. The leadership provided by UK institutions has ensured strong delivery by those programmes and the global impact of that research effort.

In that regard, it is vital that Her Majesty’s Government are able to identify a way forward for our continued contribution to the development of the programmes that follow Horizon 2020. That is a matter of negotiation currently and the discussion takes place at a sensitive time, with Horizon 2020 coming to the end of its life and a new framework programme 9 being established. It would be useful for Her Majesty’s Government to identify how they are currently participating in that negotiation. How are they trying to influence that agenda while they define their final position on our future participation as a nation?

For instance, coming together at this moment is UK Research and Innovation, which will bring together our research councils and our national innovation structure. What role will UKRI potentially play in focusing our national research contribution with regard to those ongoing negotiations? Can Her Majesty’s Government confirm that they will not only secure funding for our research base beyond departure from the European Union but ensure that that funding can be directed towards continuing collaboration in European networks? It is the network participation, as much as the quantum of funding available, that has provided the strong base for our research effort and the high-quality outputs that we now enjoy.

There is very deep anxiety about this question because if we are unable to make an appropriate contribution to framing future programmes and ensuring the priorities that those programmes will address, then whether or not we participate in future the value of our own national contribution and the ability of our nation to benefit from that participation will be diminished. That is a question beyond the final disposition of our participation in those programmes, which is of course a matter of broader withdrawal negotiations.