European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Lord Reid of Cardowan and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town

Report: 4th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 30th April 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, the case has been made that should Parliament fail to approve the Government’s withdrawal deal, the Government should pause the Article 50 process and go back to the negotiating table. That might appear to be a sensible, common-sense—in the words of the noble Lord, Lord Cormack—possibly even essential proposal. Indeed, it was one of the arguments we used when we urged the Government to remove the fixed date for exit in the Bill—we will return to that next week but I am sure they are aware of that—to give the flexibility they may need in exactly those circumstances.

However, I fear that the particular route of Amendment 62 runs counter to the whole thrust of what we have just agreed in Amendment 49. Should the Government’s deal be voted down, the consequences of that failure to negotiate a satisfactory outcome and to win the support of Parliament for it would indeed be extremely serious. Amendment 49 says that in those circumstances it should be the Commons rather than the Government which starts to take charge. The Commons may well decide to take the route suggested in Amendment 62 with a quick letter to the EU asking it to consider an extension. It might consider as an alternative that it wants a referendum. It might decide that it wants to withdraw the Article 50 trigger altogether rather than just extend it, as set out in the later Amendment 57 from the noble Lord, Lord Wigley.

However, today is not the time to speculate which of those would be the right outcome for the House of Commons in those circumstances. We cannot know now and we certainly should not try to second-guess the correct option if there is not a majority in the Commons for the deal that has been negotiated.

It would be a shame if in any way the amendment appears to put the initiative back into the hands of Ministers, rather than the Commons. Amendment 49 said it was for the Commons, not the Executive, to take the next step should we find ourselves in that position. On that basis, we will be abstaining on Amendment 62—assuming that it is dealt with tonight, rather than early in the morning. Our reason is that it is tangential or even superfluous—rather than objectionable—and could be seen to conflict with what we have just agreed at 5 pm today in Amendment 49. It narrows, rather than widens, the options the Commons would have should the final deal be voted down.

[Lord Reid of Cardowan]

I welcome the constructive nature of my noble friend’s criticism, if you follow me. I am not sure that the two are incompatible. I am not sure that the House of Commons can actually, in international relations, speak for a sovereign state the way that a Government have to speak for a sovereign state. I take it from what my noble friend said that she is not ruling out the idea but objects to the imperative nature of it and the apparent conflicts with what was passed earlier. In that case, I hope that she and the Government will engage in seeing how we could reconcile those apparent differences.