European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Committee: 11th sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Wednesday 28th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Keen of Elie]

There is no betrayal and no perfidy, but I feel misrepresented by the noble Lord because he said “knowing that there will be an agreement”. We do not know for certain that there will be an agreement. Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed. Of course, we have an aspiration; we seek to secure the implementation period, and when we do we will then legislate for that in the withdrawal agreement and implementation Bill. Meanwhile, this Bill is designed and intended to accommodate the situation in which there may not be such an agreement.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

I hate to add to the surreal nature of this, but the formula “Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed” seems incompatible with negotiating a transitional agreement during which we recognise we will agree only a small number of things and carry on negotiating. It seems to me that the Government should now drop the mantra that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed, because we are actively pursuing, if I understand the Government’s case, a transitional partial agreement, during which a number of commitments will be made but a number of the fundamental issues of our future relationship with the European Union will remain entirely unclear and will be negotiated in the two or perhaps three or more years afterwards.

[Lord Keen of Elie]

My Lords, we are engaged in a bilateral negotiation; it has not yet concluded. This Bill is designed to accommodate the situation in which there may not be a conclusion to that negotiation, as well as a situation in which there may be. In the event of the latter case, the withdrawal agreement and implementation Bill will bring the legislation into line with the statute book.

--- Later in debate ---

I know that there is concern about the use of Henry VIII powers—but, again, those have to be available for allowing the modification of regulations and directives that come into retained EU law. Perhaps in this context they are more aptly termed Charles V powers, as he was the equivalent Renaissance continental monarch at the time.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, since we have returned to the subject of Henry VIII powers, I would like to inform the Minister that, after this morning’s discussion on the Statute of Proclamations, I looked up the Wikipedia entry—my historical memory of this being relatively limited—and discovered that Thomas Cromwell’s original proposals for the Statute of Proclamations passed through the House of Commons unamended, but they were amended in the House of Lords. Does the Minister think that is a relevant precedent?

[Lord Keen of Elie]

Of course, our constitutional position has altered over the last few years—say, the last 500—and, at the end of the day, we see ourselves as, essentially, an amending House. I understand the noble Lord’s point but, in that context, we also understand the precedence of the other place with regard to the final passage of legislation. Therefore, our primary tasks in this context are scrutiny and comment.

The Government have always said that this Bill is not the place for radical policy change. Essentially, what we want to do at this stage is preserve the existing domestic powers to amend legislation pursuant to paragraph 3 of Schedule 8, in order that we can address issues with regard to retained EU law. But the manner in which those powers will ultimately be deployed will depend on the outcome of our consideration of the question of what status we confer on retained EU law. Given that that is an ongoing issue, I invite the noble Lord at this stage to withdraw his amendment. He may, of course, choose to return to it once he has seen our proposals with regard to retained EU law, but it appears to me that the two issues are inextricably linked.