Brexit

Lord Ricketts Excerpts

Monday 25th March 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ricketts (CB)]

My Lords, I am delighted to follow what the noble Lord said about Article 50. He and many others have used the word “humiliation”, and I think there is a lot of truth in that. I think we are seen around the continent as a country that has lost its way in a bizarre fashion: a once great nation now caught up in an endless psychodrama. I have sensed that the mood in Europe has hardened against Britain over the past few weeks and months. For much of the negotiation that the Prime Minister conducted, they were prepared to give us the benefit of the doubt. It would be like any other European negotiation: it would be tough, there would be moments of drama but in the end there would be a deal. The Prime Minister would go back and get agreement for it in her Parliament and it would be done.

As the meaningful votes have come one by one and she failed to get agreement, I think the mood has darkened. I think it changed first to incomprehension and now to exasperation—and even to humour. Noble Lords may have seen that the French Europe Minister, Mme Nathalie Loiseau, said that she had renamed her cat Brexit because every time she got up in the morning, the cat mewed furiously to leave the house, but when she opened the front door, it did not want to go out. It then transpired that she may not have a cat at all, but the point is right.

Of course, this is not a laughing matter. The noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, is not here, but I shall trample on his place to say that an argument can be made that last week was perhaps the greatest international humiliation for a British Prime Minister since the Suez crisis. Then, noble Lords know well, the Americans put their foot down and declared that we would stop our invasion of Egypt, running a UN Security Council resolution against us and threatening to pull the plug on sterling.

That was a brutal end to British pretensions to great power status but a salutary lesson, which put British foreign policy on to a different basis for the future. Perhaps there will be something salutary about last week, but you have to look quite carefully to find it. We saw the Prime Minister open proceedings with a petulant letter as if, somehow, the Europeans were to blame for the decision she had had to take to delay the date of 29 March. She then went to Brussels, failing entirely to convince her colleagues that she could win a third vote or that she had any kind of plan for what to do if she lost it.

I think that at that point, her colleagues thought: we have to take this over and find a way that the British are unable to find themselves. When can a British Prime Minister have cut such a lamentable figure at an international meeting?

If I may say so to the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, there was more to their deal than he suggests. It was a very clever way to do two things: first, to open up some space in British politics for new thinking to begin to take hold; secondly, to avoid the blame for their having pushed Britain out on 29 March or not allowing it to come up with other options. They avoided the sense that they were dictating to Britain by encouraging us to come up with our own options and have created space.

The contrast between a divided British Government, unable to get beyond the next vote in the House of Commons and a group of very busy and distracted European leaders finding the time to roll up their shirtsleeves and come up with an astute political move to change the dynamics in British politics was remarkable. That is what may be salutary from this. Let us hope that it may be a source of inspiration. We must be under no illusion that this is our last chance to avoid an acrimonious breakdown in our relations with our nearest neighbours, who also happen to be the largest economic bloc in the world and vital partners in our security.

Many noble Lords have drawn attention to the Prime Minister’s words in the other House this afternoon:

“Unless this House agrees to it, no deal will not happen”.


That is very encouraging. Is it really true that there is now zero risk of a crash-out under any circumstances? What if the House of Commons spends the next two weeks in more factional manoeuvring, votes down the Prime Minister’s Bill again and fails to find a majority for anything else? Are we then not still confronted with the cliff edge on 12 April rather than 29 March? If so, there will certainly be no extra time available from the EU. There will be no managed no-deal: the EU will look after its interests and have scant sympathy for the catastrophe that will overtake Britain—not just Britain as a country but the hundreds of thousands of British citizens who have made their life choices to live in the European Union and are still desperately anxious about what the future holds.

I really hope that that will be avoided, for the reasons that most noble Lords have referred to in this debate, and I think that there are signs that the alchemy that the EU began to work at the European summit is having its effect. It is obviously very welcome that MPs will now be holding indicative votes in the other place.

As the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, said, it is pretty extraordinary that within a few days of the point where, up to now, we had been due to leave the European Union, finally, MPs turn their attention for the first time to trying to work out where there may be a majority beyond the Prime Minister’s deal. These are votes that should have happened before Article 50 was ever triggered. I hope that they will come up with a new way forward that will meet what is a very modest test set for us by the European Union,

“to indicate a way forward … for consideration by the European Council”.

I think it means by that not just a process but, as the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, said, some sense of direction as to where we want to go, where we might be coming down on the fundamental choice referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Bridges, of what future relationship we want with the EU.

I think it may have also expected that that would trigger off a rather wider cross-party consultation than the event at Chequers yesterday. Perhaps that wider cross-party view will begin to emerge if the Letwin amendment passes in the other place this evening.

In any case, I agree with others who have said that we are in such a mess that, rather than trying to ram through the Prime Minister’s unloved deal by just a few votes in a country that is deeply divided, we should have a pause and a rethink. I cannot prove it, but I think something shifted last week. The 1 million people march and the five and a half million people who signed the petition in just the law few days calling for a revocation of Article 50 suggests that something is shifting. Therefore, it is essential to test public opinion again.

The noble Lord, Lord Kerr, is right when he says that we will not resolve this in the next two weeks. These are fundamental issues about our future relationship with the EU, which we have not got near to settling in the last two years; but, it is right that we should embark on that journey and that, when there is a way forward, it should be put to the people in another referendum. I hope the way forward will involve revoking Article 50 to give us time to think this through again. I am persuaded that the very best course for the UK is to stay in the EU, and that there is no other relationship that will bring us anything like the same benefits. The noble Lord, Lord Balfe, said that he does not think the country is in any mood to revoke Article 50. I think the petition gives a different impression of where the country may be moving. In any case, it is an entirely legitimate, democratic way of proceeding now that everyone in Britain has discovered something of the true costs of separating ourselves from the EU. If the House of Commons prefers a different sort of Brexit based on maintaining the customs union, or the single market, or both, then that too is sufficiently different to require putting it back to the country in a referendum.

I do not believe the EU would be willing to give us an indefinite extension of Article 50, because that just continues the uncertainty for much longer. All other EU countries have issues of their own. If you open a French newspaper, “Crise” is the headline, but it is not referring to Brexit; it is the affront to French sovereignty from the violence around the gilets jaunes demonstrations. Every other European country has its issue.

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake: the EU is more than an economic group: it is a community of values, and it is the group of countries with which we share our deepest and most important relationships. I favour revoking Article 50.

Brexit: Parliamentary Approval of the Outcome of Negotiations with the European Union

Lord Ricketts Excerpts

Monday 28th January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ricketts (CB)]

My Lords, we are at the stage of the debate where everything has been said but not yet by everyone, and therefore I think it is best to be short.

To vary just a little what has been said this evening, I thought that I would do an exercise in imagination. I am not a very imaginative person but I have tried to imagine what the conversation would be like between the Prime Minister and Mr Juncker if Sir Graham Brady’s amendment passed in another place tomorrow.

I suppose that it would start with the Prime Minister going back to Brussels and saying, “Jean-Claude, I’ve got great news. I’ve got a parliamentary majority—for something”, to which the reply is, “Yes? Well, what’s the plan?” The Prime Minister says, “The plan is that we delete the backstop in its entirety and put in its place alternative arrangements”. I suppose that the EU reply would be, “So now you’re proposing to strip out the central and most hard-fought part of the negotiation that took 21 of the 24 months of the Article 50 period and which you agreed in outline in December 2017 and in detail in November of this year? What alternative arrangements are you proposing to put in its place?”, to which the Prime Minister might say, “Well, I don’t have any instructions from the House of Commons on that. What do you suggest, Jean-Claude?” He might say, “What about a customs union for the whole of the UK? That would resolve the problem of the Northern Ireland backstop and give the certainty to business that you say is so necessary”. The Prime Minister’s reply would be, “Ah, no. That crosses my red line”.

This is no way for a major country of the United Kingdom’s standing or any country negotiating with the EU to proceed. It would mean the Prime Minister once again ricocheting between the Commons and the Commission like a pinball with no proposals of her own and constantly waiting for the EU to supply the answers. In practice, a majority for Sir Graham Brady’s amendment would be a vote for no deal, because there would be no time to work out any alternative to the central feature of the backstop. It might be an attempt to shift the blame to the EU, but that is a manoeuvre that will convince no one.

The more the implications of no deal are studied, the clearer it becomes that it would be disastrous across whole sectors of our national life. The letter from the major supermarket chains today about the devastating impact on the availability of fresh fruit and vegetables in British supermarkets is one vivid illustration. I saw precisely that when I was ambassador in Paris and we had the short-term delay in 2015 caused by both migrants and a French seamen’s strike. Within days, the supermarket shelves were beginning to empty. In the case of no deal, that would become a permanent position.

I have been convinced for a long time that a no-deal Brexit would do serious damage to our security—the area that I know best. Noble Lords do not need to take just my advice on that; my noble friend Lady Manningham-Buller made that clear in the House recently and again in authoritative terms on the BBC’s “World at One” programme today. The police force consulted the Schengen Information System 539 million times in 2017, but access to that would be shut down from one day to the next if we left with no deal.

The EU might put in place temporary emergency contingency arrangements to keep the traffic flowing for a short time but we will be entirely dependent on the good will of the EU to make that work, even for a short time, and that good will will be in very short supply. Try selling that to potential future investors in this country as a worthwhile proposition. When we hear that the Cabinet Office Civil Contingencies Secretariat, which used to report to me as National Security Adviser, has been dusting down martial law arrangements for dealing with disorder in the event of a no-deal Brexit, what are we to think of the pass that this country has come to? Incidentally, it might be interesting if the Minister could update the House on how that work in the Cabinet Office is progressing.

I, for my part, hope that Members in the other place will not be seduced by siren songs that stripping the heart out of the Prime Minister’s plan can in some way advance towards a deal with Brussels. I believe that that is a direct route to no deal. The thrust of Yvette Cooper’s amendment makes much more sense: ruling out no deal and looking forward to more time should there be no solution after four more weeks. That is the thrust of the Motion tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, this evening, and I will be supporting it.

We need to bear in mind the damage already done to the standing of this country internationally by the spectacle that we have presented over the last two years of so-called negotiation. We have suffered a serious loss of reputation. We are still miles away from any consensus on how to take things forward. Yes, I detect a growing momentum towards accepting that no deal should be taken off the table. Like the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, my studies of deterrence suggest that it is not very credible when exercising the deterrent would involve a massive act of self-harm.

The emerging conclusion that more time will be needed is interesting and makes sense, but more time for what? We are a long way from any clarity on that. This Government’s negotiating approach in the last year, frankly, does not give me much confidence that they will be open to genuine fresh thinking. That is why I believe that, while more time is needed, it must be coupled with further democratic consultation of the people, in the light of facts that have come out in the last two years and for the sake of our children and grandchildren.

Brexit: People’s Vote

Lord Ricketts Excerpts

Thursday 25th October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ricketts (CB)]

My Lords, it is already abundantly clear that Brexit will harm Britain’s economy and diminish our standing in the world. That is true even if the Prime Minister secures something like her Chequers plan. For all the professionalism of the Civil Service—I pay tribute to Sir Jeremy Heywood, who sadly had to announce his resignation as Cabinet Secretary yesterday, and to Olly Robbins, who has been disgracefully attacked in parts of the press—all it has been able to achieve in this chaotic period of negotiations, given all the splits in the Cabinet and the difficulty of coming to any kind of consensus, is a withdrawal agreement and the sketchiest possible outline of what might follow later. That is so far from what people were promised in the referendum that it is entirely reasonable that they should be asked whether that is indeed what they are now prepared to accept.

Given the state of our politics, it is entirely possible that even that outcome will not be achieved: either the Prime Minister will come back to the House of Commons without a deal, or she will come back with a deal that will then be rejected by that House. No deal would be catastrophic for this country. We are completely unprepared. No one voted for a situation where the Government have to charter ferries to bring in essential supplies, as if the UK were subject to some sort of UN sanctions. It will be a humiliating breakdown of our parliamentary system if the Commons votes down a deal brought back by the Prime Minister but does not then accept a general election to follow it.

In those circumstances, there is only one democratic option: to put the issue back to the people. It would be more democratic than the 2016 referendum because people have a real choice between an outcome—whatever it is—and retaining our membership of the European Union. It would be in the interests of leavers as well as remainers to secure a popular mandate for a decision of that gravity for the future of the country, for all the reasons that the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, and others have given. If it was legitimate for the Prime Minister to call an election less than two years after the previous one, surely it is entirely justifiable to have a referendum on the outcome of a negotiation more than two years after a referendum, on the prospectus described by the noble Lord, Lord Sugar. I agree that the EU would grant an extension in those circumstances. It is not in the interests of any EU country to see a chaotic Brexit, given the many other issues the EU is having to cope with in this dangerous and turbulent world.

It is true that hundreds of thousands of young people will have come on to the voting register since 2016. Is that a problem? No, it is profoundly just to give them a vote. Their lives, and those of our grandchildren, will be affected far more deeply by what we decide in the coming months than the lives of any of us sitting in this Chamber today.

Brexit: Preparations and Negotiations

Lord Ricketts Excerpts

Monday 23rd July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ricketts (CB)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Campbell, and to agree with every word he said. I spend a lot of time outside your Lordships’ House and I want to bring noble Lords news from abroad. Our friends around the world are looking on with dismay at the political system breaking down under the weight of Brexit. They see political parties consumed by infighting and efforts to have a mature debate drowned out by lies and personal abuse. They do not recognise the United Kingdom in this as the pragmatic, common-sense country that they know.

However, two years on from the referendum, we now have a position. I pay tribute to my former colleagues in the Civil Service who have twisted themselves in knots to reconcile, as best they can, the Prime Minister’s red lines with the imperatives of close co-operation with our nearest neighbours and business partners. In particular, the name of Olly Robbins has come up in the course of this debate. He is a civil servant of the highest competence and personal integrity and I think he has done his very best in this White Paper. However, like many others, my own judgment is that it will not work. The first reason for that is that it is unnegotiable in Brussels and other noble Lords with greater experience than me have explained why. The EU negotiators will continue to insist that we come off the fence and make a choice between either staying in the single market with all the disciplines—the Norway model—or leaving it completely based on the Canada model, with all the implications that has for borders.

The second reason that the White Paper will not work is that it is not a basis for this country’s future relations with Europe. I do not see this Parliament continuing, decade after decade, to align with every change of regulation in trade policy in Brussels. It is bound to unravel and it will deliver the next crisis on Europe in a few years’ time.

The third reason is that there is no time now to negotiate a document of this complexity. The White Paper goes into completely uncharted territory as far as the EU is concerned, and it is also full of phrases that, to an old civil servant like me, ring an alarm bell—“appropriate mechanisms” will be needed, and we will “explore options”. That shows that the civil servants have outlined where they want to get to but have no idea how they will get there. We have 12 weeks of negotiating time left, so I think we are very likely to find ourselves in the position that the noble Lord, Lord Bridges, described earlier on, with the EU demanding that we sign the withdrawal agreement, including paying our debts, but offering us no more than a very vague political declaration about the future framework. Will that pass muster in the other place?

I conclude that we are in a mess and I am not the first in this debate to say that. As time ticks away, the risk of no deal rises. I find it deeply irresponsible to talk as if that might be a solution to the mess we are in. It would be an absolute catastrophe for this country, as becomes clearer day after day and as businesses and individuals start to face up to it. One service that the White Paper has done for all of us is to show how fully Britain’s economy and way of life is enmeshed with that of our European neighbours, as the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, has just said. All those interconnections would be disrupted by a no-deal Brexit.

There is also the risk, not much discussed in this debate this evening, to our national security. If we had a sudden halt to law-enforcement co-operation so that our police services could not access the European databases which are regulated by European law, they could not work through Europol or extradite people through the European arrest warrant. As the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, asked, what has happened to the UK-EU security treaty? I did not find it in the White Paper—it seems to have done a disappearing act.

No deal would leave hundreds of thousands of British and EU citizens in doubt about their rights to residence in the other EU countries. As many noble Lords have said, this disaster of a no deal cannot be allowed to happen. The international order out there is troubled enough without the UK disrupting it further with a disorderly Brexit. On this, I find that the Foreign Secretary agrees with me. For those who have not been checking their Twitter account as assiduously as they should have been this afternoon, I will read his tweet. Having met the German Foreign Minister today, he said:

“Excellent discussion with … @HeikoMaas about the unintended geopolitical consequences of no deal. Only person rejoicing would be Putin”.


I agree. Faced with the choice between the unnegotiable and the unthinkable, there has to be another way. Ideally, that would be the Government recognising that the national interest requires us to stay in the single market and customs union, at least while longer-term issues are worked out. But since the political process seems to be broken, and there does not seem to be a majority for any option in the other place, perhaps the only option is to put the issue back to the people before we take any irrevocable step to leave the EU.

The EU has its faults, but at this time in the evening it may be worth reflecting that it is not a “mafia-like” state. It is a group of prosperous, tolerant, law-abiding countries, sharing our values and our world view. In my view, it is where we belong.