Exiting the European Union

Lord Stoddart of Swindon Excerpts

Monday 5th September 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Crawley (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Stoddart of Swindon (Ind Lab)]

My Lords—

[Noble Lords]

Cross Bench!

[Lord Stoddart of Swindon]

My Lords, I am very pleased that the Prime Minister has made it very clear that Brexit means Brexit and that there will not be another referendum. The people have spoken and, if I may quote somebody else, long live the people. Perhaps I may ask the noble Lord two questions. First, in the vote in 1971, did Parliament give all the treaty powers to the Government, and does any other treaty abrogate what was then done?

[Lord Elystan-Morgan (CB)]

1972.

[Lord Stoddart of Swindon]

No, it was 1971. There was another vote in 1972 on a different matter, but the 1971 decision was to hand over the power of Parliament to the Government of the day. I am asking whether that has been abrogated since. Secondly, once Article 50 is brought into operation, surely we do not have to take two years to negotiate a settlement. Can we not make the negotiation shorter than that? Perhaps the noble Lord can answer that.

[Lord Bridges of Headley]

I hope that the noble Lord will forgive me as I will need to come back to him on the position in 1971—I was not very old at the time—but I completely take his point that this matter is key. I repeat that we will stand by the conventions and the laws that currently exist as regards treaty ratification. As regards Article 50, I think the noble Lord is referring to paragraph 3. The point here is that it will take two years to get to the end of the process. There would obviously still need to be a deal following that and we would need to go through the process set out in Article 50 to get that ratified by the Council. The noble Lord may be right but perhaps I may write to him to clarify that point.