European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Lord Reid of Cardowan and Lord Adonis

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

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, I am a great admirer of my noble friend Lord Reid and therefore, if he presses this to a Division later on in the evening or at whatever hour of the night we get to it, I will of course support him. I have nothing against the contents of the amendment because it is clearly desirable that, if we cannot support the Government’s treaty, the default should be that we stay in the EU unless the House of Commons has a better set of propositions that it wishes to agree to.

However, my concern is that there is a certain element of unreality to the proposals to try to bind the hands of the House of Commons as to what it may or may not do in the autumn. One of two things will in fact happen when the Prime Minister presents her treaty. The House of Commons will either vote for it or vote against it. There are no other alternatives. If the House of Commons votes against the treaty, that is, to all intents and purposes, a Motion of no confidence in the Government. There has not been an incident since Gladstone’s Home Rule Bill in 1886, which was rejected by the House of Commons, where the central plank of a Government’s policy was rejected outright by the House of Commons. The idea that there could be a further negotiation after that is entirely unrealistic. The negotiation would have been concluded with the European Commission and the Council of Ministers, and ratified or not by the European Parliament and so forth. It is not realistic in the real world to expect that there would be further negotiation.

In the eventuality that the treaty is rejected, there are only two things that could conceivably happen. Either there will be an election because the Government have been defeated on what is in effect a Motion of confidence—it might take a formal triggering Motion under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act to produce it—or there will be a referendum, which we discussed earlier. A referendum could happen if the House of Commons itself resolved that there should be one immediately after the defeat or perhaps as an amendment to the Motion that the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, has said would be tabled. Everything else beyond that seems to be superfluous. The policy of the Government will then be the outcome of the referendum or the outcome of that election. A Government will have to be formed after the election, which will have to have a European policy and that will then be the policy of the Government that they would seek to negotiate in Brussels. There would either be some amendments to the treaty, if that is possible or—as I hope there is a Labour Government—there will be a decision not to proceed with Brexit, or there would be a referendum and we would proceed with the outcome of that referendum.

I say all that mainly to my noble friend on the Front Bench and her colleagues in the other place. There is no point in engaging in this displacement activity at the moment and making it sound as if we are being very tough on Brexit by placing ever more elaborate manacles and handcuffs on what might or might not happen in the vote in October. The only thing that really matters is the attitude of the Labour Party when the Government present their treaty. Either we are in favour of it or we are against it. If we are against that treaty, I can assure my noble friend that everything else will take care of itself. If we are against the treaty and vote against it, we do not need all the protections in this Bill. One of two things will happen. Either there will be another referendum or there will be an election. If there is an election, what matters is the policy of my party in that election. Will we or will we not proceed with Brexit if we win the election? Very simple facts of political power come into play.

What happens in Parliament after that will depend on those decisions. Ever more elaborate provisions in this Bill are, I say respectfully, entirely beside the point because they miss the reality of political power. That is that there has to be a Government, they have to have a policy and that can come from only one of two ways. Either a new Government are returned if this Government are turned out on the treaty or there is a referendum that will determine it.

I am entirely in favour of everything in my noble friend’s amendment and I hope that it will be warmly welcomed from the Front Bench, but what really matters, I say to my noble friends, is the policy of the Labour Party when the Prime Minister presents her treaty. If we are against the treaty and we are successful, there has to be either an election or a referendum. I am afraid that there are no alternative options on offer.

[Lord Reid of Cardowan]

With the leave of the House—and the noble Countess, Lady Mar, if she is in—I want to say something. I used to say to a friend of mine—he was an acquaintance, really—in the Militant Group that I wished I was as sure of one thing as he was of everything. There is an unusual hint of that in what my noble friend just said. It is not true that you can ordain in the future in politics the inevitability of one or two courses. In the wise words of Harold Macmillan, when asked what he was most frightened of, “Events, dear boy, events”. I would therefore be very cautious about taking that view—although my noble friend is perfectly entitled to ask the Labour Front Bench what the party’s position is—on the inevitability of history. Great philosophers have made that mistake before. If I am correct and he is wrong, it would be wise to have some form of plan or safeguard for each contingency. All we are trying to do, in a non-ideological and non-partisan fashion, is say, “Let us have a common-sense plan for the contingency that Parliament votes this down”. There is a huge complexity about what might happen afterwards and none of it is unavoidable or predictable in advance.

[Lord Adonis]

My noble friend makes a very good point, but all of those further eventualities would be so much clearer if my party’s policy were clear in the first place.