European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Spicer Excerpts

Report: 5th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 2nd May 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Spicer (Con)]

I rise having just torn up the speech that I was going to make, as a result of the very eloquent speech that we have just heard, made by the former Hong Kong governor and present chancellor of Oxford University, and a person with whom I entered the Conservative Party on the same day. We entered the research department together on exactly the same day in the 1960s.

It was a very eloquent speech, but it had one flaw. What I agreed with, and why I have torn up my other speech, is that my noble friend is quite right in saying that we cannot mess about with this question of whether we leave or not, or whether there is a border or not. He is absolutely right in saying that we cannot have a sort of fantasy border. If you leave, what it means is that you depart one set of rules and one market to go to another market. He is quite right in saying that at that point, you acquire a border. I absolutely agree with that.

The question is whether the whole future of this country is to be dependent, as his speech seemed to imply, on one issue—our relationship with the Republic of Ireland. Is our whole future to be dependent on that? I have to say that I do not think that it should be. There are ways around it, and they do not include having a fantasy border. For instance, if we have a border between two different markets and we do not go down the path, which was one of my noble friend’s alternatives, of the Republic joining us, what we must have, in the normal way in which these things are done, is a bilateral agreement between Britain and the Republic of Ireland. We should probably do that—make the final agreement—after we have come out, because we will then be totally in charge of our destiny and be able to make whatever agreements we want and the European Union, with which the Republic of Ireland will have to make its peace, will be less inclined to obstruct such a bilateral agreement.

There is no reason why we should not have a bilateral agreement—and there is no reason why we should be particularly nice to the Irish Republic, as it has not been particularly nice to us in recent months. It is absolutely right, however, that we should try to maintain the good will and the pleasant relationship that we have had in recent times, but we can do it in the normal way in which these things are conducted. We do not have to have the whole of our policy towards the European Union obstructed by this one element. My noble friend suggested that to do this, we should turn our backs on what the British people have asked us to do and voted for us to do, which would be an enormous decision for us to have to make and quite wrong, in my view. A lot of what my noble friend said is good sense in terms of the actualities of the border and us leaving a market, but I think that his conclusion is the opposite of the right one.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, in Committee, I and others spoke about the importance of paying attention to the voices and rights of the children and young people of Northern Ireland in our considerations, not least because they had no say in the referendum but will live with the consequences long after the rest of us. Indeed, just on Monday, my noble friend Lady Massey reminded us how important it is to consider children in all aspects of our discussions on Brexit. From a meeting that I and others had with some children and young people from Northern Ireland in March, and reading reports of conferences that they themselves had organised, it is clear that they are really anxious about their future rights as citizens of the island of Ireland and about how their lives will be affected on a daily basis if the border issue is not resolved. As one briefing put it:

“Children in NI, and not just those living close to the border, live their lives ‘across’ what has become an increasingly seamless border”.


We owe it to these children of Northern Ireland to provide the certainty of writing the rights and protections into the legislation.

More generally, I and others have also emphasised on a number of occasions the centrality of human rights protection to the Good Friday agreement and, therefore, the importance of ensuring non-diminution of human rights in Northern Ireland as a result of Brexit and the maintenance of the equivalence of rights between Northern Ireland and the Republic. On a couple of occasions, I have also raised the fact that civil society organisations in Northern Ireland have asked for movement on a Bill of rights, promised in the Good Friday agreement and subsequent agreements, as they believe that Brexit makes it even more important now than before. The Minister, who has always been extremely charming and helpful in his responses, has not responded on this point. If he is not able to respond today, I would be grateful for the promise of a letter from him on that. The Minister has otherwise been consistently positive and reassuring on the questions of the Good Friday agreement and the border, which is of course very welcome.

As the noble Lord, Lord Patten of Barnes, said in his marvellous opening speech, I do not think there is anything in this amendment that the Government could not agree with. But warm words in this context are not enough. The children, young people and civil society organisations of Northern Ireland are looking for something stronger. That must mean writing such commitments into the Bill itself. That has both practical and symbolic significance. That is why I believe it is crucial that we pass this amendment on behalf of our fellow citizens—children and adults—in Northern Ireland, who are looking to us for firm, legally binding assurances about their future rights.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Spicer Excerpts

Wednesday 28th June 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Spicer (Con)]

My Lords, it is a measure of the diversity of the membership of the European Union that the several countries that make up the Union work out their net benefits in their own way. For instance, the Germans, on the whole, have major economic disbenefits from losing their Deutschmark and the Bundesbank and other institutions, which they compensate for in their own minds by having the political benefits of integration—while the British, on the whole, have said that there are economic benefits of having a wider market, for which they are prepared to pay a political price in terms of loss of sovereignty.

In the beginning it all worked out quite well for the British. The Common Market had few disbenefits for them and a number of benefits in terms of a wider market. But as time has gone by, new forces have emerged in the world which have affected this position. The rise of competitive areas of the world—the South American countries, China and India—and, indeed, the strengthening of American protectionism have all forced the European Union to do what I personally think has always been endemic in it, which is to turn itself into a controlled trade bloc: a protectionist trade bloc, basically, protecting its own members. The controls that it has introduced have gone a long way, including setting up a monetary union with many controls.

For Britain, this has proved a difficulty because a monetary union is a serious matter. It involves two things for Britain. The first is the fact that if you do not control your own currency, you do not control your own economy. Henry VIII was quite right when he said the realm of England was an empire—by that he meant money. Sacrificing control over your own currency is a major step away from just trading within an area. It is a particularly serious point for Britain because we have a constitution which involves no one Parliament sacrificing powers to another; every Parliament is sovereign in its own time, and you cannot have a monetary union, which is forever, if the principle of no Parliament giving way to another is to be maintained.

When it came to the Maastricht treaty, some of us rebelled and stopped it coming about that we would enter the single currency—so we did not. I can say now that we failed in one respect: we tried to get the Prime Minister of the day to agree that we would not enter the single currency in his time as Prime Minister. He would not make that commitment, but the single currency was stopped so far as our country was concerned.

Then along came something even more serious, which was the rise and rise of the European Court. I have heard a lot of speeches tonight saying that that did not matter at all, but it matters in two senses. First, it matters that we have alien law in this country. If we subscribe to the European Court, we do not have all the things that we are used to such as juries, habeas corpus and the presumption of innocence: those things go. But much more serious, and much more germane to this argument, is the fact that the European Court has a political agenda. It is to nurture, protect and develop the acquis communautaire, which has as its sole objective the development of a federal state of Europe that is irretrievable—it cannot go backwards. So when it came to a referendum, the British people decided that they did not want a foreign system of law. They did not want judges laying down what the rules should be or what the law should be— because the European Court has the capacity to turn its judgment into law. They did not want that and took the view that we must get out—and they were right.

Scotland Bill: Fiscal Framework

Lord Spicer Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd February 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dunlop]

Our priority is to get a deal done so that we have a fiscal framework that this House can scrutinise. That is our first priority.

[Lord Spicer (Con)]

Is my noble friend aware that, in the end, the one person who did not agree with the Barnett formula was Joel Barnett himself?

[Lord Dunlop]

I understand that that is a matter of public record, so I will certainly not disagree.