EU Withdrawal

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Wednesday 13th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, I agree with a great deal of what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, said in his excellent speech. If this goes on much longer I fear that the noble Lord, Lord Newby, will run out of jokes and perhaps the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, out of apposite analogies.

As the Commons struggles it its paralysing three-way trap and the search goes on for the holy grail of alternative arrangements, the question again is how your Lordships can best help with advice on escape hatches, if any exist. The position has now been clarified and reclarified to the point of almost total unintelligibility. Either there is an Article 50 delay—short, medium or long—although for what purpose no one openly has an answer, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, emphasised; or there is the so-called crash-out, managed or otherwise; or, the best hope, the withdrawal agreement treaty scrapes through at the end of February or the end of March, still unopened but somehow reinterpreted by a codicil or instrument to make it temporary and conform to the consent required under the Good Friday agreement, a point that often tends to be overlooked. The device being examined for that is called a joint interpretive instrument which can be attached to the treaty. So that is what is behind the withdrawal agreement.

Behind the delay lobby is the obvious wish for another referendum, which we have heard about, although the questions remain of who knows where that would lead, what it would settle and whether the legislation to launch it could ever pass through the other place.

Behind the no deal, walk away or crash-out option on WTO terms, we have the assurance of my noble friend Lord Lilley that there are 30 reasons not to worry. Unfortunately there are many others who have at least 30 more reasons to worry a great deal—not least farmers, most of industry and business, the police and many other major concerns of this nation.

As for the withdrawal agreement scraping through before the end of March, behind that is the hope that both the EU negotiators and, here at home, the famous ERG diehards in the other place will all yield a bit and make concessions, along with 50 or 60 Labour MPs who are said to be now seeing sense, or so I read.

On top of this, we now have the letter of the leader of the Opposition, Mr Corbyn, to the Prime Minister asking for agreement on “a permanent customs union”. It is a pity that he did not ask instead for an evolving customs partnership because that in the end is what we are going to get. Not only do customs authorities in and out of the EU co-operate closely all the time anyway but most goods travel under simplified procedures.

However, more than that, behind the Corbyn letter there is an alarming and pitiful ignorance—admittedly widely shared by many Members of Parliament and the media—about the radically changed nature of all trade today and of the real meaning of a customs union in modern conditions. This is where your Lordships can help—if we can get heard above the cacophony of disagreements in the other place. The McKinsey Global Institute reminds us that today—and even more tomorrow—most international trade is not going to involve customs machinery at all. Already the bulk of both service trade and just-in-time import trade is conducted without any reference whatever to customs unions or customs delays.

Services do not do customs or customs unions. Services which are not traded through frontiers at all already constitute more value in global trade than goods. This dominance of services, which have grown 60% faster than goods trade in the past 10 years, is completely obscured by traditional trade statistics. The conventional statistics—last year’s Bradshaw, as the late Harold Macmillan would have described them—fail to track soaring cross-border flows of digital services and intangible assets between affiliates which are becoming a huge part of the trade picture. I do not know who does the research for Labour or advises the excellent but obviously frustrated Sir Keir Starmer, but they should get on top of this.

In short, the whole idea of a permanent customs union with the EU, which Mr Corbyn is calling for, is becoming marginal to boosting our trade and, therefore, our jobs in the digital age. As the Governor of the Bank of England was saying this morning, there is indeed a new order in cross-border commerce lying ahead. By the end of the two-year transitional period, if the withdrawal agreement allows, it will be even more so. I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, whose speeches on this matter are always a treat that I enjoy, will be able to tell us exactly where Labour has got to on this new situation. We have heard nothing about it so far.

The other area where Commons experts plainly need help is in their mistaken conviction that the EU today is a fixed system on a fixed path. In fact, the old EU model is being rapidly overtaken by all the obvious pressures of digitalisation, notably populism, massive centrifugal forces and decentralisation—all causing what the New Statesman, which I do not often quote, calls a new European schism. Eastern and central Europe are breaking with Brussels, southern “Club Med” Europe is rejecting the north, I now read that the French are withdrawing their ambassador from Italy, and Greece has been putting on trial its chief statistician for the crime of telling the truth. As for the core of EU countries, France—our long-standing ally and friend—magnificent Germany, also now our good friend, are both in deep stress and political instability. We should be working out how to assist them instead of arguing with them over outdated trade practices.

Ireland, too, should be our closest friend these days, not our opponent. I strongly agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hain, who made that point the other day. This is a close neighbour that is now richer than us in terms of per capita income, is increasingly ready to forget old bitterness, faces undoubted dilemmas with which we should strongly sympathise, and actually wants to engage more closely with the Commonwealth and stick closely to the Good Friday agreement, as well as the common travel area and a dozen other relationships that both sides should treasure.

All in all, the Brexit situation ought to be perfectly able to be handled by a properly informed and functioning Parliament ready to support a step-by-step approach into the utterly changed conditions lying ahead—the first step being precisely what the withdrawal agreement, maybe with some codicils, offers, as my noble friend Lord Lansley pointed out a few minutes ago.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I am doing my best to follow the noble Lord’s argument. I do not entirely understand what a widening customs partnership is. It is an unclear concept. We all agree that in a digital age and where standards and regulations are at least as important as tariffs, we are in a different world. When Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister 30 years ago, she accepted that having a single market was more important than being in a customs union. Can the noble Lord explain how a widening customs partnership would deal with the harmonisation of standards and regulations, which—I think he is arguing—are more important than customs these days?

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

The explanation would take longer than the time I have available. I shall share it with the noble Lord afterwards but the basic point is that services are the expanding side of international trade. Standards have to be negotiated with America, the European Union and so on, and within the EU of course, but also with all the great new markets of Asia, Africa and Latin America, where the big expansion of services will be. There never was a clear single market in services. We hoped for it but it never worked. We face the same problem there as we are facing throughout the world. It is perfectly straightforward that in this area old-fashioned customs arrangements affect only solid physical goods; they are a declining part of the system. Therefore, concern with old-fashioned arrangements is becoming less relevant.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Meyer]

I will cover that particular point in my next paragraph. I will continue because I am not yet confident enough to speak without notes, but beware: it will happen one day, and noble Lords might regret it.

I was living in Germany. We were there in September 1989, the first time that the East Germans were allowed to leave East Germany. We ran to the border and saw people coming out on bicycle, on foot and in their little Trabants. The West Germans lined the street and welcomed the East Germans. It was an unforgettable moment—the celebration of freedom from a state of oppression. This moment remains in my mind and will do so for a long time. My children are half-German.

The EU had nothing to do with it. It happened because of the fall of communism, mainly because of its inadequacies. If any international organisation contributed to the fall of communism, especially of the Soviet Union, it was NATO, not the European Community, as it was called then. If any international statesman helped the Berlin Wall come down, it was President Reagan, who called to Mr Gorbachev in 1989, “Tear down that wall”.

If we cannot agree on the future of this country, the least we can do is not reinvent the past to gain advantage in Brexit debates. Let us not forget that Paris and London were strongly opposed to the reunification of Germany in 1990 for fear that it would become too powerful. Let us not forget that Chancellor Kohl told the German people in 1997 that EU integration and the adoption of the euro were the price that Germany had to pay to dominate Europe without alarming its neighbours. Let us also not forget that Kohl pledged to his people that the euro—which led directly to economic crises in Greece, Spain, Portugal and Ireland, and to the impoverishment of Italy today—would be no less strong and stable than the deutschmark.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we all have our historical memories and interpretations of history. In 1990-91, I spent a lot of time in the transforming societies of eastern Europe—Poland, Hungary, Romania, et cetera. The first thing that their new Governments wanted to know was how soon they could join the European Community. It was partly the attraction of the European Community which had led those Governments, including that of Hungary—who were a good, progressive Government in those days—to believe that reform was possible. My participation in this was different from that of the noble Baroness, and I saw something rather different too.

[Baroness Meyer]

I completely understand what the noble Lord is saying and completely agree with him. In the east, they all wanted to join the European Community. It was seen as a symbol of freedom. This is not my point. My point is that it was implied in the previous debate that the European Union—when it was called the European Community—played a role in liberating the communists, and that this is entirely wrong. It had no role whatever.

--- Later in debate ---

[Viscount Ridley]

No, because I do not know the details, but I have not heard that it broke any rules. I have not actually finished the quote, which goes on:

“It is highly regrettable that the Juncker Commission chose not to implement this recommendation. The Ombudsman looks forward to its implementation by the next Commission”.


Good luck with that, because we all know who is going to be pulling the strings in the next Commission —Mr Selmayr. We are asked to put our faith in a good faith pledge from an organisation that will not even obey its own rules. We should remember that Mr Selmayr was the prime suspect behind the—

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

Allow me to correct an error. Mr Juncker regularly appears before the European Parliament where in the past he has been heckled by Nigel Farage, who I am sure the noble Viscount feels is doing his best to hold him to account. That is part of what the Commission has to do and the European Parliament is part of that accountability mechanism. Of course, the European Union is a 28-member country, therefore accountability is complex, but it is not entirely absent.

[Viscount Ridley]

If the noble Lord reads Hansard he will find that I did say that he appears before it—I said “once in a blue moon”. There is no question that he appears before it an awful lot less than my noble friend Lord Callanan appears before us, which was my point.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

He does not smirk as much.

[Viscount Ridley]

Did the noble Lord say from a sedentary position that my noble friend does not smirk as much?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I did. Those of us on this side notice, I suppose I should say, the ironic expression which often flits across the noble Lord, Lord Callanan’s, eyes. I hope that that is a little more polite.

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

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Monday 28th January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

I am saying that they have overplayed their hand. I believe, and I think the noble Lord will agree with me, that the EU is about compromise and consensus-building. I know from my own experience in the Council of Ministers that unfair outcomes, often promoted in silken terms by the French and their supporters, sometimes have to be moderated. Other member states to which I have spoken recently are concerned about the damage from no deal and are increasingly seeing the problem. So the climate is gradually improving, and if we returned to Brussels with unity and resolve, we could prevail.

There is also a question as to whether the backstop is really needed. I believe that the Good Friday agreement, which has widespread support everywhere, is a natural backstop, and that it will be taken into account in the future relationship, deal or no deal. An open border is no bar to the enforcement of different arrangements, as I know from operating right across Ireland in my time in retail. We had enforcement of different rates on alcohol and of VAT and other taxes and regulations. My noble friend Lord Howell of Guildford has already made this important point.

A major change to the deal is necessary, in my view, to secure support in the Commons.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I recall that the noble Baroness was a civil servant, I think in Defra. Non-tariff issues are not unimportant in this respect. Animal health regulations across the border will clearly mean inspections. If, for example, there were an outbreak of foot and mouth or BSE in one part of Ireland, the idea that the border would remain open for more than five minutes seems a little fanciful. Borders are not simply about tariffs. Regulations, including phytosanitary regulations, are extremely important.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

I agree about the importance of the phytosanitary arrangements, but I would point out that my recollection is that when there was foot and mouth the Irish border closed, in spite of the fact that we were in the single market. These are things that you have to tackle together, and with good will—which is of course what I am seeking—we could do that. I am trying to explain the argument as I see it. Perhaps I can make some progress.

My feeling is that the backstop needs to be taken out of the withdrawal agreement, and a substitute, requiring best endeavours and so on, put into the political agreement or a side letter instead. This is the kind of flexibility that is shown in business negotiations—for example, in a major merger—where both sides want to agree, as I believe they do here. I was in Salisbury Cathedral on Friday for a service for the conversion of St Paul. Saul, as he was then called, was a brilliant, educated man pursuing the goal of destroying the Christians. After his conversion on the road to Damascus, he saw the light. That is what we need to happen in Brussels to move things forward.

Lastly, I have a warning about the work on no deal. The detail of what the Government do is critical and there are two things that we have to worry about: short-term chaos and longer-term interest and damage to this country. I am worried that too much attention is being given to the former and not enough to the latter. The focus is domestic, and not enough attention is being given to the implications for our negotiating position on the backstop and on future trade negotiations with both the EU and third countries. I have a particular concern about an assumption in some quarters that the UK will not impose tariffs in the event of no deal. This would be a disaster because exporting member states would not feel the pain that they need to feel. Our own domestic industries would be decimated—agriculture, for example—as third-country imports poured in at zero tariffs under the most favoured nation rules while we paid charges on our exports. We would have no negotiating leverage with anyone now or in future, as we would have given away our revenue source from our ability to levy or tax at the border or to offer preferential markets in future, as well as our current powerful position in the EU institutions.

All the work on no deal is being conducted in secret, and business leaders have told me they have to sign NDAs for involvement in no-deal planning. I can understand this, but ask my noble friend the Minister to confirm that he accepts some of my concerns and is looking at variable tariffs, such as for imports from both the EU and elsewhere. Obviously they need to be lower on things such as bananas and oranges, which we do not produce, but higher for dairy products, meat and other things that we do produce. We do not want to be in a no-deal situation—I completely agree with that—but there must be contingency planning, which must embrace the wider interest.

I was glad to hear from my noble friend the Leader about the timetable for Brexit measures and the role she saw for our committees. The Government’s approach to organising their scrutiny and challenge in this House is right. We have a duty to progress these measures in an orderly way. It is a vital part of our function in this House, and I will not be supporting the Opposition’s Motion this evening.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, a number of noble Lords, including in particular the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, have remarked that much of Britain’s broader public are longing for an end to these endless debates about Brexit. Some within your Lordships’ House probably share that view. However, leaving at the end of March will not bring an end to domestic debate. The Government have hardly begun to negotiate on the future relationship and there are still deep divisions within the Government and in the Conservative Party about what that future relationship should be. The seven speeches from the Conservative Party that we have already heard in this debate show that it has many different opinions. So we are facing a further two years or more in which domestic issues take second place to European ones while Ministers struggle to decide what their party will accept.

If Theresa May had taken a different position when she became Prime Minister, we might now be in a different place. She could have noted the thinness of the majority and the divisions in public opinion and could have stood up to the hardliners in her party and gone directly for a Norwegian option, membership of the European Economic Area and the closest association possible. If she had, we might well now be leaving with the negotiations almost completed—but she did not. She set out red lines to satisfy her right wing, appointed ideological hardliners to key positions in the Brexit negotiations and divided the country and the party more deeply. Here we are, up against the lines she set, and unprepared either to leave or to stay.

Last week the Prime Minister declared that to question the outcome of the referendum and ask the public to think again,

“could damage social cohesion by undermining faith in our democracy”.—[Official Report, Commons, 21/1/19; col. 26.]

That is a pretty strong statement. However, the country is already divided. The last referendum damaged social cohesion. The campaign itself brought out underlying divisions—not just about the European Union. A right-wing extremist murdered an MP before the vote. Hate crime shot up immediately after the referendum and has stayed up since then—against eastern Europeans, against people of Asian and Afro-Caribbean descent although born in Britain, and against outsiders of all sorts.

When Theresa May was appointed Prime Minister, she made an idealistic speech about healing the nation’s divisions, but she then pandered to the nativist elements in her own party, labelling those who opposed leaving the European Union “citizens of nowhere”—this from the leader of a party which receives large donations from financiers with offshore businesses and which has accepted contributions from Russians resident in Britain, but who nevertheless stoops to labelling those British citizens who believe in European and international co-operation as having divided loyalties. That is how English Protestants labelled Catholics 350 years ago and nationalists labelled Jews.

Of course, the right-wing media went further with headlines about “traitors” and “enemies of the people”, attacking judges, the liberal elite and the establishment. I love to hear Jacob Rees-Mogg attacking the establishment because it is the ultimate absurdity. Neither the Prime Minister nor other responsible senior Ministers have deplored such attacks or warned that they are feeding social division. A recent survey shows, not surprisingly, that Britain has become a much angrier society over the past two years. That is partly because of the deteriorating quality of our political debate and partly because of the Government’s failure to address the many other causes of social division, in their preoccupation with internal party rivalries and disputes.

For more than a century Britain has been a liberal democracy built upon reasoned debate, respect for evidence in policy-making and continued dialogue among politicians of opposing views. We now face, within Britain as well as elsewhere, a surge of “illiberal democracy”, as Prime Minister Orbán of Hungary has labelled it, founded on the exploitation of popular fears, antagonism to foreigners and international institutions, the denigration of domestic opponents and a sweeping disregard for consistency or evidence. President Trump is one of the most skilled exponents of illiberal democracy. After all, one of his campaign promises was that Mexico would pay to build a wall along the United States’ southern border. Two years later, without any sense of shame, he shut down the federal Government to try to force Congress to pay for the wall instead.

We have had similarly illiberal and irrational promises here. We were told repeatedly by Liam Fox and others that the German car industry would force the EU to give Britain whatever we demanded if we left, and that the exit negotiations would be the easiest negotiations ever. We were also assured that leaving the European Union would resolve the problem of immigration, even though in no year did the majority of immigrants arriving come from inside the EU. The leave campaign promised groups within the Asian community that closing off European immigration would leave more space for others to arrive.

Now we are warned that the will of the people—a phrase that authoritarian and anti-democratic Governments have long been fond of—requires a much harder, nastier and domestically damaging Brexit, because there can be no reconsideration or turning back. We should not be surprised that the most committed Brexiters overlap with those who deny the reality of climate change and those who promise that the best way to increase government revenue is to cut tax, nor that the same people who warn of the threat of violence on the streets of English cities if Brexit is not delivered in full dismiss the prospect of any return to violence in Northern Ireland as exaggerated. They choose what they want to believe.

Boris Johnson has shown the same happy disregard for consistency and evidence in denying that he played a major role in the Brexit campaign or even raised the spectre of millions of Turks swarming across our frontiers; so has Jacob Rees-Mogg, in switching from a passionate commitment to establishing parliamentary sovereignty again to now calling on the Prime Minister to prorogue Parliament to prevent a democratically elected Parliament delaying an unprepared and un-negotiated Brexit. I am sure that, as a good historian and a Roman Catholic, he knows that King James II prorogued Parliament repeatedly to prevent MPs blocking his pro-Catholic legislation, and ended up in exile as a result. Perhaps the same fate may reach the Conservative Party. I do not know whether he and others would go to Switzerland or Singapore.

Meanwhile, the regional divide between Britain’s richest and poorest regions remains the widest in Europe, and the overall divide between rich and poor is shameful for an open democracy. London has a structural surplus of housing for non-resident rich—built precisely for citizens of nowhere under London’s Conservative mayor, Mr Johnson—and a structural shortage of affordable housing for British citizens. We are a divided country—economically and socially, as well as politically—and going through with Brexit is likely only to make those divisions worse.

This country desperately needs constructive political leadership to bring us back together. It is now clear, sadly, that we will not get constructive leadership from this Prime Minister, more concerned with her doomed effort to hold together her own party than with the rest of the country. The task for all of us, in both Houses, is to find a way out of the present political, social, economic and constitutional crisis that can begin to re-establish our damaged social cohesion. That will require cross-party co-operation and a quality of political leadership that has been lacking since 2016. It may also need to include another referendum.

Brexit: Withdrawal Agreement and Political Declaration

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 10th January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I hope that when he replies, the Minister will have noted the strong speech from the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill of Gatley, echoed by the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, just now, that the Conservative Party’s internal confusion over Brexit distracts the Government from Britain’s underlying problems of inequality, poor productivity, poor housing and the north/south divide. Resentment over those neglected problems drove a large part of the vote to leave. Failure to address them will leave the country bitterly divided, whether we leave the EU or stay.

I want to challenge the deliberately misleading claims being made about the financial implications of the EU withdrawal agreement and the impact of withdrawal from the EU in the long term. On Monday the Prime Minister, announcing the new 10-year plan for the NHS, said that the extra financing would be available because,

“we will no longer be sending vast annual sums to Brussels ... with no increase to people’s taxes”.

David Davis, on the BBC “Today” programme on Tuesday, declared that leaving without a deal would free us from any future financial obligations, thus giving the Government a full £15 billion a year to redistribute to other spending programmes.

Yes, the UK has been a net contributor to the EU budget. We are the second-largest contributor, after Germany, as a wealthy country with a large population—though in terms of contributions per head we are the fifth largest, after the Netherlands, Sweden, Germany and Denmark. We should also remember that Norway contributes more per head to this explicitly redistributive budget, as a rich non-member which benefits from access to the single market. We have developed common institutions and agencies which have saved us money through sharing resources, and which will cost us more to set up again on our own. We have benefited from common programmes, which, when we leave, we will have to fund ourselves. And we have contributed to Europe’s global role in an uncertain world: a global Britain within a global Europe, rather than against a global Europe.

When we joined the European Economic Community in 1973, George Thomson, the British Commissioner, set up the Regional Development Fund to assist poorer regions across the member states, through which funds flowed back to peripheral regions, including within Scotland and the rest of the UK. Margaret Thatcher—of whom I know the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, is a particular proponent—declared in her Bruges speech in 1988 that Prague, Warsaw and Budapest were also part of Europe. Successive British Governments championed eastern enlargement, from 1990 on; and funds thereupon began to flow, including from our contribution, to the poorer states of eastern Europe and to others outside the EU in the European neighbourhood—more than to France, Italy or Spain. That has been a shared investment in European security, since the end of the Cold War.

We have not yet negotiated the terms of our future relationship, but Ministers have repeatedly stated that they want the UK to remain closely associated with many of the EU’s existing programmes—from Horizon 2020 and its successor fund for research and innovation to the Erasmus student exchange programme, to Europol and the intelligence networks which contribute to our shared security, and to the European Defence Agency, which supports co-operation in defence procurement. It would damage our economy to cut ourselves off from commonly funded trans-European networks in energy and telecommunications. Ministers have promised that we will continue to pay our share of these programmes in return for continuing participation. The political declaration on the future relationship refers to a,

“fair and appropriate financial contribution”,

in return for UK participation in these.

The Government have not yet told us how much it will cost to replace EU spending within the UK on programmes from which we will withdraw—agricultural and environmental support, financial transfers for our poorest regions, and funding for scientific research and universities, if we do not remain within those EU programmes. Even the hardiest Brexit supporters seem to think that these funds will somehow continue to flow. Sir John Redwood declared last week that Brexit would allow us to cut tariffs and grow more of our own food. How we will manage to grow more of our own food without financial support for agriculture I simply do not understand. No one in the referendum campaign explained that Britain benefited from the many common institutions and agencies that we share with other EU states.

Now that we are leaving, we are spending heavily on duplicating those institutions. We need an upgraded national medicines agency, for instance; we are already recruiting additional diplomats to manage our bilateral relations with our European partners and others; we now have a new Department for International Trade. The Institute for Government recently reported that Defra has increased its staff by two-thirds since the referendum to handle repatriated agricultural and environmental regulation. HMRC estimates that it needs 5,000 more staff and a complex new computer system. Border Force is woefully short of staff and is actively recruiting. We cannot take back control of our coasts and waters without a substantial increase in HM Coastguard and more maritime patrol vessels. On top of what has already been spent, the Chancellor announced in December a further £2 billion for Brexit preparations distributed across 25 government departments, bringing spending on Brexit so far close to £5 billion. No doubt there will be more to come.

David Davis’s dream of leaving Europe without any further commitments assumes that our continental partners will continue to co-operate with us whatever we do and however we behave. Less reckless politicians understand that borders cannot be managed, nor trade maintained, without active co-operation with neighbours, so talk of some sort of “managed no deal” floats around. After all, we have 1,000 Border Force staff in France, Belgium and the Netherlands at present to speed travellers and goods across the Channel. I expect that the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, expects that they will stay there so that there will continue to be frictionless trade. If we want them to stay in post and still benefit from other shared networks, we cannot simply walk away from the legacy costs of EU membership, as David Davis and the noble Lords, Lord Forsyth and Lord Framlingham, and the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, in this debate all want to deny.

There is, therefore, no Brexit dividend. It is a sign of desperation that the Prime Minister is now claiming what Boris Johnson put on the side of the bus, which the Chancellor must have told her is nonsense. Brexit is already imposing substantial extra costs on the British Government. It will impose longer-term costs, both on the budget and on the wider economy.

Brexit: Negotiations

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Tuesday 9th October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement but I wonder whether the Government actually own a calendar. After 18 months, and just 171 days before we are due to leave, we have more pages on no deal than on the deal, or indeed on the framework for our future relationship. Do the Government really want us to crash out despite the warm words we just heard in the Statement, or dare they not set out their plans given their fear of the Eurosceptics on their own party Benches?

The Government promised that the deal to be put to Parliament will include a “clear blueprint” for our future relationship with the EU. When will we see this blueprint? I had thought we would see a draft tomorrow but I gather it has now been delayed—perhaps because it is so vague that it is more a leap into the unknown than a blueprint for future policy. Or does the Minister think there is a third way—neither Chequers nor no deal—as David Davis set out today in his letter to MPs, albeit one he was not able to negotiate himself during two years as Secretary of State? Or perhaps the Minister thinks, along with Jacob Rees-Mogg, that we should have a “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Canada”—hardly a game for serious negotiators.

Given that the Government have effectively and finally retreated from their claim that a deal would be done by October, could the Minister be a little more specific than “autumn” as to when he anticipates it will be done and when the deal will be brought to this House, as required in legislation? What assurances can he give the House that the Government’s solemn commitment to a legally binding backstop in Northern Ireland “in all circumstances” will be honoured? Have the Government accepted the view of this House that the UK should be in a customs union with the EU to ensure frictionless trade? This is not only important in itself, but the only viable solution to the Irish border.

The Statement includes,

“the commitment that no new regulatory barriers should be created between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK unless the Northern Ireland Executive and Assembly agree”,

which leaves the door open. This possibility is, of course, what would lead to a border in the sea despite the assurances just given in the Commons and repeated. Different rules in two areas mean checks between the two. That possibility—mentioning only the Northern Ireland Executive and the Assembly—also raises questions about the role this Parliament would have in any such change, and it challenges earlier government undertakings of no diminution of standards or rights, since any regulatory boundaries between Belfast and London sounds like different standards between the two.

The Statement says:

“The UK’s White Paper proposals are the best way of ensuring there is continued frictionless trade in goods after Britain leaves the EU”.


It still sounds like “Chequers or no deal” despite, as we know, Chequers being acceptable to neither this Parliament nor our EU allies. The no-deal option is not acceptable to business, the public, our allies or, indeed, to Parliament, let alone to the people of Ireland and Northern Ireland, where there would have to be an immediate border.

The last time I asked the Minister whether he had been to the port of Dover, he said he had not. Has he now been, and has he discussed a no-deal option at the port? I was in Rotterdam yesterday, where thought, planning and preparation is in hand at its massive port to deal with a no-deal outcome—preparation to safeguard its economy and trade. Has the Minister any shame about how less prepared the UK—the country that filed for divorce—is for such an eventuality? Has he digested, as I have had to, these 77 technical notices, which alert us to green cards being reissued? Many in this House are old enough to remember those—down the other end, less so.

There is also the possibility of new driving licences being needed; the end of free movement of trade, with customs and tariff checks; the adoption of new classifications of goods, with a wonderful example given of how a grand piano would be classified if exported to the EU; the end of “goods on the market” rules; data exchange challenges; drastic changes to civil law enforcement; the end of mutual recognition of testing for safety of consumer goods; and uncertainty over travel to the EU. Are these all issues that the Minister feels it is reasonable to threaten at the end of March? As the CBI states, serious disruption will be caused to business and families. Is the Minister really serious that that is a realistic option for our country, and is it useful for the Government to threaten to refuse to pay the £39 billion divorce settlement if the EU fails to give Britain a precise future trade deal within weeks, when it is the UK that cannot get unity on its own Benches within its own Parliament on a future trade deal?

This House needs to know where the Government stand on the deal they want, and particularly on our future relationship. It needs to know whether they are with Steve Baker, who seems to prioritise a trade deal that leaves us independent over and above a trade deal that is good for the economy, or with Boris Johnson, who says that we should “chuck Chequers” and have a super-Canada FTA, spending money on,

“all the customs procedures … needed to ensure … frictionless trade, and to prepare … for a WTO deal”.

It seems he does not understand that frictionless trade comes from having the same regulations and rules rather than having a barrier of border agents checking for all the disparities in rules and regulations.

Regrettably, we are no clearer from this Statement than from what we have been reading in the press over the summer. Because I am a great optimist, I just hope that beneath everything that is going on there is serious negotiation taking place below the water level so that we can find a deal that is neither Chequers, as that is not acceptable, nor no deal, but a deal that is good for the whole economy across the whole country.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I start by remarking that I went to the Printed Paper Office to ask for a copy of the Written Ministerial Statement and technical notices that have been published today, but they were not available. I find that very regrettable, as we need to be informed about these things, and I hope that the Minister will ensure that on the next occasion the Written Statement is available.

I find this a profoundly worrying and in some ways surreal Statement. It talks about preparing the UK for Brexit, irrespective of the outcome of the negotiations—in other words, if necessary at the end of March to break all our relations with the European Union. Can the Minister assure us that the British Government are really prepared for that? As the noble Baroness has just said, Rotterdam is well in advance of the port of Dover in its preparations. We are beginning to train the extra customs officials that we would like and to reverse the cut in the number of Border Force officers that the Government have pushed through in the last three years, but there is no way that we can do that between now and March.

I find the confusion within the Government deeply worrying. For example, the Home Secretary has said that we will have the same visa regime for European exchanges as we have now for the rest of the world. In the last two weeks, I have been collecting a certain amount of evidence on how far universities are suffering from the refusal of the visa authorities to allow academic and scientific researchers from outside the EEA to attend conferences in Britain. If we start doing that to the EEA next April, we shall blow up half the networks for scientific research that we have in this country. I speak with particular passion because my son is involved in many of them.

There are elements here which one can really only be humorous about. I congratulate the Government on the element of irony in the Statement with the reference to their pragmatism and the suggestion that it is the European Union that is being rigid while the Conservative Party, which is so well represented on those Benches, is being entirely pragmatic.

On the Northern Ireland issue, I recognise that this is the Conservative and Unionist Party, which by its rigidity in dealing with the Irish problem over 100 years ago contributed to the division of Ireland. It seems to me that now its rigidity may well risk losing not only Northern Ireland but also potentially Scotland. I wonder whether the Government have considered taking more seriously Boris Johnson’s proposal to build a bridge across the Irish Sea. It would have a number of advantages. We could maintain the temporary customs arrangement until the bridge was completed and opened, which would certainly take us 20 or 30 years, and if one were to construct the bridge in such a way that there was room for customs arrangements to be conducted on the bridge, it could become a garden bridge in the event that those arrangements were not needed.

To move on, my wife has just been to a conference in Geneva to discuss as a model EU-Swiss relations, on which she has been an expert for some years, and the question of whether the Liechtenstein model should be taken more seriously. As some people will know, it has a customs union with both Switzerland and the European Union. That seems almost as attractive as the Jersey model, which has been talked about by various sources. The Government refer to their “ambition”, but ambition that would perhaps take us as far as being like Liechtenstein or Jersey is really beyond a joke.

On the question of how we get from here to April, I ask the Minister how far the Government will take the other parties into their confidence over the management of the business that is required. We do not know what has happened to the Trade Bill. When are we going to continue with its Committee stage? What other major pieces of legislation do we need to take through between now and March? The Institute for Government has just produced a report on the very large number of statutory instruments that we will need to consider between now and March. Can the Minister assure us that both Houses will be given time to consider these legislative instruments properly and that they will not be bulldozed through in a panic at the last minute?

I should like to move on to the subject of the future relationship. There was no reference to it in this Statement or to any sort of declaration about our future foreign policy and defence relationships. Again, the Government seem to be in great confusion on this. We have a new Foreign Secretary, who compares the European Union to the Soviet Union. Clearly, we would not wish to maintain foreign policy and defence relationships with an area that was naturally so hostile, yet for the last 40 years much of Britain’s foreign policy and security relationships externally have been conducted multilaterally in partnership with the European Union. When will the Government tell us a little more about what they consider to be important and what sort of pattern they intend the future relationship to have?

Perhaps most worrying is the reference in the Statement to a potential gap, in the case of a delay, between the end of the implementation period and the entry into force of the treaty on our future relationship. Do the Government consider that there may well be a hole whereby we have come to the end of the implementation period but have not yet negotiated a treaty on the future relationship and there is somehow a void, with no firm treaty foundation for the relationship between, say, 2021 and 2024 or 2025? If so, that is deeply worrying. I presume that that is the point at which we would go back to WTO terms, or perhaps that is another piece of loose wording in the Statement.

[Lord Callanan]

I thank the noble Baroness and the noble Lord for their comments. I shall deal first with the questions from the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter. I reiterate that our blueprint is the White Paper and we continue to negotiate on that basis. We are convinced that it offers frictionless trade, which is what we want to achieve. We are taking forward discussions on that basis and are waiting for a formal response to those proposals from the EU.

On the timescale, as soon as we have an agreement we will bring forward a debate in this House and a vote in the other place on the so-called meaningful vote, and we will then introduce legislation as quickly as possible to implement the withdrawal agreement. We are mindful of the short timescale between then and our leaving date of 29 March to get that legislation through, but considerable planning is being carried out on that basis. Of course, we produced the White Paper before the summer to illustrate that.

With regard to the backstop, the Commission proposal was unacceptable. We will shortly produce our counterproposal, which will meet the requirements as set out in the joint statement in December.

I have not visited the port of Dover. I and ministerial colleagues have visited European capitals and considerable discussions are going on between officials to make sure that there is minimal disruption at Dover.

With regard to no-deal notices, to reiterate the point, we do not want or expect a no deal, but we think a responsible Government should plan for the possibility, and we will continue to publish the no-deal notices to take account of that unlikely possibility.

Lastly, I agree with the noble Baroness’s final point: that we are seriously negotiating at pace. Negotiations in Brussels are ongoing as we speak, and detailed discussions on all the outstanding issues are proceeding.

I can only apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, if he was not given an advance copy of the Statement—he should have been. I have already raised it with officials and I will ensure it does not happen again, but please accept my apologies for that. He referred to the no-deal notices. I do not know if there is some confusion; we are not publishing any additional no-deal notices today, but there was a Written Ministerial Statement accounting for the no-deal notices that were published a couple of weeks ago.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

They could not find the Written Ministerial Statement.

[Lord Callanan]

I apologise; you should have been given a copy of that.

Regarding the immigration system, the Home Secretary will be setting out our proposals for a future immigration system shortly.

There are no plans of which I am aware to build a bridge between Scotland and Northern Ireland; maybe other parts of the Government are working on it, but if they are, nobody has told me.

I am not quite sure of the noble Lord’s point on Liechtenstein. I have never heard anybody else talking about a Liechtenstein model, apart from himself. He will of course be aware that Liechtenstein is a member of the EEA, which was rejected a number of times as an option in House of Commons votes. The population of Liechtenstein is about 39,000—about 1/10th of the population of Bradford. I hope he is not seriously suggesting this could be a model we would wish to follow.

Regarding the Trade Bill, our position is that Parliament is likely to be asked to take decisions on amendments relating to the UK’s future relationship. We think it is in Parliament’s best interest to know the terms of the UK’s future relationship with the EU when being asked to take decisions on the Trade Bill, so there will be a pause before we resume progress on this Bill, to ensure we can operate our independent trade policy in all scenarios.

Brexit: Parliamentary Processes

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Tuesday 24th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan]

Scrutiny committees are not a matter for the Government; they are a matter for Parliament. I think the noble Lord will find that the European Parliament gets similar arrangements. The Commission negotiates trade deals that the European Parliament votes to accept or reject, and the position will be the same for this Parliament.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, it was quite clear from the Minister’s wind-up remarks last night that the Government are still at a very early stage in negotiating the future relationship. How will it be possible to have a meaningful vote before March 2019 if all that we have is an agreement about the principles of withdrawal and the sketchiest of ideas about the nature of the future relationship in the many different and complex areas discussed in the debate yesterday?

[Lord Callanan]

We are hoping that the framework that we agree will be a detailed exposition, and the noble Lord will be able to scrutinise it alongside the withdrawal agreement.

Brexit: Legislating for the Withdrawal Agreement

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Tuesday 24th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan]

I go back to what I said earlier: this is an agreed part of the withdrawal Act. Article 50 states that there needs to be agreement on the withdrawal Act and on the future economic partnership. Both parts go together. If both are agreed, both are satisfactory and both are approved by this House, of course there will be no problem, but if there is no deal, nothing is agreed until everything is agreed. That applies as much to the financial settlement as it does to the future economic partnership.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, the White Paper makes it crystal clear that the one thing that will change in April 2019 is that we will no longer be present in any of the discussions on security, foreign policy, economics, rules and regulations or whatever, but apart from that, all EU rules and regulations will continue to apply to Britain. That seems to me to fit exactly Jacob Rees-Mogg’s definition of vassal status. Surely, the shorter the transition period the better and if, as now seems unavoidable, we are incapable of making much more progress in defining the future relationship after we leave before March 2019 because the Government are still divided on what they want, surely it would be preferable to delay leaving until we have a clearer sense of what our future relationship might be.

I ask a second question, about paragraph 10, which states:

“After the UK has left the EU, power will sit closer to the people of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland than ever before. The devolved institutions will see a significant increase in their decision making powers as a result of the UK’s exit”.


I tried extremely hard, but I could find no reference to the English regions in the document. As the Minister will know, Yorkshire, the north-west and the north-east stand to lose disproportionately more than the rest of England from Brexit, yet there appears to be no awareness that they will also need devolution and, perhaps, a new consultative mechanism. Are the Government considering that?

Lastly, I see that EU citizens will be treated under the Immigration Act 1971 as they move towards settled status. We are well aware that the Home Office charges considerably for moving towards settled status and UK citizenship. Can we be assured that the Home Office will not impose substantial charges as EU citizens in this country go through that process?

[Lord Callanan]

There are a number of questions there and I will try to answer them as quickly as possible. I agree that the shorter the transition period, the better. We will not take up the noble Lord’s option of delaying leaving. As I am tired of repeating, we are leaving on 29 March 2019. To delay leaving presents the fundamental problem that the EU is legally prohibited from agreeing a future trade deal as long as we are still a member state, so that would just delay the period when we could formally have negotiations and legally agree a trade deal. I certainly agree that the shorter the period, the better.

With regard to the regions and finance, the noble Lord will be aware that the Treasury is currently considering a shared prosperity fund to replace some elements of EU regional finance. With regard to future regional devolution, I fear that those are not matters for me. He will have to ask colleagues in government about that. With regard to EU citizens, the settled status fee is fixed at £65. I am not aware of what charges the Home Office is likely to impose for any other form of citizenship, but I am sure we can find out and write to him.

Brexit: Preparations and Negotiations

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Monday 23rd July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, who has made a passionate speech against what was determined by more than 400 votes in the other place—that is, withdrawal from the European Union on 29 March.

In my youth I was a keen rock climber and one summer evening I nearly ended both when I wandered off route on a cliff face high above the valley of Glencoe. As I climbed upwards, the holds became smaller and less frequent, and the rock ahead smoother, greasier and unstable. Hanging on by my fingernails with a big drop below my heels, my legs began to tremble and fear suffused me. I had a choice: continue further in the hope that good jugs lay ahead but risk not being able to reverse my moves and a spectacular fall, or, with great difficulty and considerable risk, climb back to the point where I had gone astray and return to the known route I had set out to follow. The response to the White Paper by MPs on both sides of the Brexit debate, the public, Conservative voters, the Opposition and an arrogant and bullying EU suggests that the Prime Minister finds herself in an equally uncomfortable and precarious position.

My noble friend Lord Heseltine says that the Government have no plan and blames this on the Brexiteers. The White Paper is Olly Robbins’s plan; it is not the Brexiteers’ plan. Indeed, the constitutional outrage is that the Secretary of State’s plan was being ignored. This paper was produced in parallel and he was presented with it some 48 hours before a meeting at which members of the Cabinet were invited to agree it or take a taxi home.

My response on that cliff face was to climb down to the point where I had gone astray. For the Prime Minister, contrary to what the noble Lord suggests, that means taking the rejected Chequers deal off the table now and returning—the noble Lord, Lord Mandelson, does not seem to have noticed it—to Mr Barnier’s previous offer of a Canada-plus free trade deal and, if that cannot be agreed, putting in place arrangements to trade with the EU on the same terms as most countries in the world under the WTO, of which we are a member and to which we have been paying a substantial subscription every year. We do most of our trade now with non-EU countries under WTO rules, which incidentally require members to facilitate frictionless trade—that is a rule of the WTO—and that includes the EU.

If we end up trading under WTO rules, with no EU trade deal—although, contrary to what the noble Lord suggests, there has never been any suggestion that any government Minister has not wanted to do better than that—we will, of course, save every penny of the £39 billion that the EU is demanding. I defy anyone—although this does not, of course, apply to anyone in this House—to stand for election in this country and explain that they want to spend £39 billion to receive no conceivable advantage.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

I do not know whether the noble Lord has noticed this week’s Economist, whose headline is that the WTO is in danger of collapsing. That seems rather to undermine his suggestion that we should rely entirely on the WTO. He will, of course, recall that it is the US Administration who are doing the collapsing.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

The Economist has a particular view of these matters—but if the noble Lord is correct and the WTO is collapsing, the least of our problems will be leaving the EU.

The Prime Minister should reject the bogus posturing of the Taoiseach, the latest recruit to Project Fear, who claims that if the UK left the EU it would mean that our planes could not fly over Ireland. As flyover rules are a matter for an international treaty and have nothing to do with our EU membership, the most charitable interpretation I can put on that is that he did not know what he was talking about. The least-charitable interpretation is that he has the same advisers as George Osborne, who promised a punishment Budget, higher taxes, soaring interest rates, rising unemployment, inflation and a recession within weeks of any decision to vote to leave the EU.

Even Mr Osborne did not suggest civil unrest, which the UK chief executive of Amazon is predicting on the front page of today’s Times. He would do well to address the unrest among his own workforce arising from Amazon’s poor employment practices. If we leave the EU we will be able to introduce a tax on internet sales and level the playing field for our retailers, who pay rates and taxes and face unfair competition from online retailers. As members of the EU we cannot do that. Amazon in 2016 routed its revenues for the whole of the EU through Mr Juncker’s tax haven in Luxembourg, and paid a total of £15 million in tax on revenues of £19.5 billion.

The Irish Prime Minister has a short memory. When the EU left Ireland swinging in the wind after the financial crisis it was the United Kingdom that lent it tens of billions to lessen the catastrophic consequences of its membership of the euro. The Taoiseach’s position on the border is, to say the least, confusing. The Irish Times of 19 July reports him as saying that the European Union had assured him that no physical checks would be needed on the border even if the UK crashed out without a deal. Ireland’s exports to Britain across the Irish Sea are essential to the Irish economy. For example, 70% of their beef comes to the UK. There is already a land border for tax, duty and currency differences between the Republic and Northern Ireland. Customs officials on both sides have said that our leaving the EU does not create a need for a so-called hard border. The actual trade across the land border is a tiny fraction of that with the UK. If both Governments say they will not countenance a hard border, who exactly is going to put one there? The EU? I think not. This border issue is a Trojan horse pushed into the negotiations by people determined to reverse the UK’s decision to leave the EU—and we have heard a lot from them this afternoon.

My noble friend Lord Heseltine asked what the people voted for. The reasons why people voted to leave the EU were not just economic, although I believe that in time our leaving offers a bright future for our country once we are unshackled from the sclerotic bureaucracy that is the European Union. It was about being free again to make and unmake our own laws, to hold Governments to account for the rules and regulations that dominate our daily lives, to decide for ourselves our immigration policy and how our money is spent, to be free of the jurisdiction of a foreign court, to control our own natural resources, and to offer markets to developing countries around the world.

As a boy I was brought up in Arbroath. I watched a great fishing fleet, along with its associated industries, being destroyed by the CFP, with successive Governments of this country powerless to help. It is not for this or any other Parliament to give away the powers which come from the people and with which it is entrusted without their consent, far less wilfully to ignore the results of a referendum.

The year 2020 will be the 700th anniversary of the Declaration of Arbroath. It was a letter, in Latin, to the Pope, signed by eight earls and 45 barons, some of whose descendants are actually in the House today. The words come tumbling down the centuries: “We fight, not for glory, nor riches, nor honours, but for freedom alone, which no honest man surrenders but with his life”.

Those words were delivered to Rome; today we should dispatch them to Brussels.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I was fascinated to hear the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, quoting the Declaration of Arbroath, and I look forward to discussing Scottish history a little with him. The declaration, after all, was aimed at the papacy, but Scottish independence was defended primarily against the English and was maintained through trade with the Hanseatic League in the Low Countries and through the alliance with the French. But let us leave that matter.

I would like to start by talking about borders. When the Cold War ended, the Metropolitan Police approached Chatham House, for which I then worked, to ask us to convene a seminar on border control and cross-border co-operation in this transformed circumstance. Before I chaired the conference, I was briefed by various border staff who had managed the east-west border. I particularly remember what the Finns told me about the way they managed their border with the Soviet Union. They stated bluntly: “You can’t manage a border on your own. You have to co-operate with those on the other side, however difficult or hostile they may be. And the more open the border becomes, the closer the co-operation you need”.

This White Paper fails to grapple with the contradiction between unilateral insistence on sovereignty and the necessity of close and institutionalised co-operation with neighbouring states with which we share intensive economic independence, mass travel and security. We still hear hard Brexiteers say—as we have just heard from the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth—that we could unilaterally declare the Irish border open if we leave the EU without a deal and challenge the Irish to accept or reject it.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

I was quoting the Irish Taoiseach saying that he had that assurance from the EU. Is he wrong?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the point I am making is that either side cannot deal with it unilaterally; we have to work together. We are condemned to work together.

We cannot manage our Channel border on our own either. We have several hundred UK Border Force personnel stationed in France with the agreement of the French Government. We also depend on active co-operation with customs and border staff in Belgium and the Netherlands.

There is a similar contradiction at the heart of the White Paper’s approach to foreign policy and security. The executive summary proclaims that we will reclaim the UK’s sovereignty and assert,

“a fully independent foreign policy”.

Chapter 2, in contrast, goes into great detail about the Government’s,

“ambitious vision for the UK’s future relationship with the EU … that goes beyond existing precedents”.

It then lists a long succession of EU agencies in which we wish to remain either as a full or associated member. These include Europol and Eurojust, the Schengen Information System, the European Criminal Records Information System, passenger name records and the passenger information unit, the Prüm data exchange arrangements on DNA and fingerprints, the European arrest warrant, joint investigation teams, the European Union Satellite Centre, the EU military staff, the EU intelligence and situation centre, the European Defence Agency, the European defence fund, Galileo and the European defence technological and industrial base—15 different legal and institutional frameworks. We wish, that is, to move from being a full member with a number of significant opt-outs to being a non-member with a lot of significant opt-ins.

The UK also proposes close co-operation across all foreign policy areas, with invitations to informal sessions of the EU’s Political and Security Committee, regular dialogue between officials, reciprocal exchange of personnel and expertise and provision for discussion between EU 27 leaders and the British Prime Minister on as regular a basis as possible. There is no mention here of the Government’s earlier proposal for a new security treaty with the EU—perhaps the Minister will tell us whether that goal has been explicitly abandoned—but Chapter 4 sets out an extensive institutional framework, with layers of committees, which will clearly require legal backing and ratification.

That is all very ambitious—and unavoidably constraining of British sovereignty. The White Paper notes, as others have said, that,

“where the UK participates in an EU agency, the UK will respect the remit of the Court of Justice of the EU”.

That will be hard to sell to the members of the European Research Group and the columnists of the Telegraph and the Mail. It suggests that,

“much of this can be done within existing third country precedents … There are opportunities to build on existing precedents”.

This contradicts what the Prime Minister has said repeatedly and in the foreword about the unprecedented character of the deep and special relationship that the UK wishes to build. I ask the Minister specifically to tell us which precedents the White Paper is referring to as a model for our future foreign policy and security relationship. Is it EU-Turkey, EU-Ukraine, EU-Georgia or EU-Azerbaijan? I assume that it is not EU-Norway, because that is a closer association than the Government think is compatible with UK sovereignty.

Chapter 2 of the White Paper tries desperately to bridge the gap between sovereign independence and intensive co-operation—and fails. Perhaps that is not surprising when for the past two years our Foreign Secretary has entirely failed to engage with the question of the future institutional framework for Britain’s place in the world. He said in his resignation speech last week that:

“We do not seek to hold on to bits of membership as we leave … but as great independent actors on the world stage”.


In effect, that dismisses almost everything presented in Chapter 2. His only formulation of Britain’s future place in the world was,

“to take one decision now before all others, and that is to believe in this country and in what it can do”.—[Official Report, Commons, 18/7/18; cols. 449-450.]

If we just believe, everything will be all right. That is rather like Peter Pan or like the song in Disney’s “Pinocchio”—

“When you wish upon a star, your dreams come true”.


However, one difference between Pinocchio and Boris Johnson is that when Pinocchio told a lie, his nose grew longer; our former Foreign Secretary’s nose remains unchanged.

In 1962, some 56 years ago, the US Secretary of State, Dean Acheson, famously said:

“Britain’s attempt to play a separate power role … a role apart from Europe … is about played out”.


All these years later, the Eurosceptics are still dreaming of some sort of global Britain apart from Europe. The White Paper tries to offer them independence while struggling to maintain essential links with Europe and fails to resolve the contradiction. This leaves Britain without any coherent foreign policy drifting offshore in the eastern Atlantic while Russia becomes more threatening, the Middle East more dangerous and the United States more erratic. What a position for a Conservative Government.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Monday 18th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goldsmith]

My Lords, in following what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Lisvane, I will make one observation. In this House, noble Lords have supported the noble Lord’s amendment, and rightly so, because the focus has been on whether there is an appropriate balance of power between the Executive and Parliament. In voting in the way that they did, noble Lords expressed their view, which has been noted quite plainly by the other place, that it is for Parliament to make such important decisions.

As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen of Elie, said, having got to the stage where the House of Commons has stated four times that it wants to stick with “appropriate”, which it thinks is appropriate, and does not think it necessary to go any further, we are not recommending that noble Lords should disagree the amendment. But the important point has been made, and two comments follow from that. First, we hope that Ministers will carefully realise the significance of the debate that has taken place; we imagine that they will. Secondly, we hope that people outside this House will realise that, in pushing and speaking to these amendments, this House has been doing its job of making sure that the Executive is held to account.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, there are two stages in the mass of subordinate legislation that we will have: what is required to be in place before March 2019 and what can be dealt with afterwards. Many of us in this House are now conscious that time is extremely short and the mass of legislation that needs to be got through before March 2019 is extremely large. If possible, we would like to hear from the Minister that, over the next six to nine months, Ministers will resist the temptation to cut corners on parliamentary approval of subordinate legislation and in the general adjustment of required legislation because there is such a shortage of time, and that he will make sure that Parliament and this House are allowed thorough scrutiny of all the measures that need to be put in place.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lisvane]

My Lords, it would be extremely churlish of me not to acknowledge the movement which the Government have undertaken on these issues, particularly including your Lordships’ House in the sifting process. During Commons consideration of the amendments, the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, deployed a rather familiar set of arguments, if I may put it in that way. Quoting the chair of the House of Commons Procedure Committee, he insisted that the Government proposals, under which Ministers will, despite the statements and other provisions, have the final word on whether the substantial amount of secondary legislation which may be brought forward under the Bill, should be subject to the affirmative or negative procedure. He insisted that that procedure had teeth. If it is really to have teeth, some significant dental work is still required. But these exchanges are not the place to consider matters of that sort. The point has been made and although, in an ideal world, it has not been completely adequately answered, I think we should leave the matter there. The test will be, of course, the first occasion on which the committee’s view differs from that of the Government.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I thank the Leader of the House for the generous remarks she made about the role of this House. It is particularly important that she sees it as an important part of her role to defend the role of this House and of Parliament as a whole. We have noticed in recent months, and even more in recent weeks, some pretty anti-parliamentary language in the press. I note that at the end of Quentin Letts’s one and a half page rubbishing of Dominic Grieve, he said:

“The sight of the elite grabbing power from the Queen’s government will rupture trust in the ballot box and could imperil centuries of British support for parliamentary democracy”.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

I am very interested in the noble Lord’s remarks. Were they not his remarks rubbishing the Foreign Secretary when he was standing at the Bar?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I am not sure that these are in any sense the same. I was merely criticising the Foreign Secretary for not being Foreign Secretary. He does a lot of other things, but certainly does not fulfil the role of Foreign Secretary.

I am now talking about some fundamental constitutional issues, which are the relationship between Parliament and Executive Government. They are at stake in this and very much matter when it comes to how much of a role we play in looking at the detail.

We have seen some rather violent language in the media in the past few weeks. I spoke to a Cross-Bench Peer this morning who said, “It is intimidating and, frankly, I feel intimidated”. I know that many MPs, particularly women MPs, feel actively intimidated by the violence which they get on social media. I think the Government ought now to be saying to the right-wing media that violent language encourages violence. We are in a dangerous situation in which parliamentary democracy—that is to say, reasoned debate within a clear structure of rules—is something which we have to defend.

I note that the Sun on Sunday editorial accused MPs of having contempt for democracy and said:

“Such is the contempt these MPs have for democracy when it delivers a vote they don’t like … they seem neither to know or to care what they will unleash”.


I am worried about what the current atmosphere might unleash. It therefore seems to me that the way in which both sides conduct this debate is very important.

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

The noble Lord’s eloquence is very diverting, but will he please speak to the Motion under consideration?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I started by welcoming what the Leader of the House said about the sifting committee and defending the role of this House and ensuring that this House plays its role. That is welcome language. We have not heard enough of it from the Government. We should all be worried about the potential deterioration of this debate. I wish merely to underline that the debate has got nasty on both sides. One MP was killed two years ago. Let us recognise that the current violent language may take us that far.

In the way in which we approach our task over the next six months, we will do our bit on the detail. I very much hope that the Leader will assure us that the Government will, all the way through, respect the appropriate constitutional role of this and the other House in dealing with a matter which is not simply decided by the referendum, because there is so much detail in it, and the detail always matters.

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords, the noble Lord was entirely right to touch on some of those things. I am very grateful to the Leader of the House for the manner in which she introduced the amendment. We have listened to the other place, which it is our duty to do. I am one of those who, although I share some of the misgivings of the noble Lord, Lisvane, like him, I do not believe that we should push this one any further tonight.

We have had a good day’s debate, but it is important that we try to lower the temperature a bit on both sides of the argument. It has got a little unpleasant from time to time, even in your Lordships’ House. We need to respect each other’s integrity and sincerity. There is no one in your Lordships’ House whose patriotism should be impugned as it was this afternoon. We need to work closely together. We are going to leave the European Union. Those of us who are unhappy about that have to recognise it but, equally, those who take a different line have to recognise that a minority of the whole electorate voted to leave and that, of those who voted, 48% voted the other way.

We are leaving, and this Bill is part of that process. However, in accepting what my noble friend the Leader of the House has said, and endorsing what the noble Lord, Lord Lisvane, has said, I urge everyone, present and absent, to try to ensure that future debates are conducted in slightly more of an atmosphere of mutual respect. This House has an honoured and honourable role to play. I believe that it has done its duty extremely effectively over the past few months. I hope that we shall continue to do that and that in doing it we shall not be sniped at by those whose sniping reveals only their own contempt for the parliamentary process.

Brexit Transition: European Parliament Membership

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 7th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan]

As the noble Lord is well aware, Article 50 states:

“The Treaties shall cease to apply to the State in question … two years after the notification”,


of Article 50. The UK notified its intention to leave the European Union on 29 March 2017 and will therefore leave on 29 March 2019. After that date, we will no longer have MEPs.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, the Government have heard a lot from the European Research Group about how appalling it would be for Britain to become a rule-taker rather than a rule-maker. As we are heading towards a rather extended implementation or transition period of at least two years, does it not sound sensible to make sure that Britain continues to have some influence over decisions taken in that period, rather than cutting ourselves off but then continuing to follow all the rules, including those that continue to be negotiated, for that implementation or transition period?

[Lord Callanan]

During the implementation period, we have agreed to establish a joint committee of representatives from both sides, which will be able to resolve concerns if and when they arise. Of course, we have also agreed a duty of good faith on both sides.

Brexit: Negotiations

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Wednesday 6th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, have the Government done enough to ensure that they carry domestic public opinion, including the right-wing press, with the deal that they eventually strike? I see announcements from the Government that we are going to continue to respect the decisions of the European Court of Justice in a number of areas, and clearly we are going to continue to contribute to a large number of European financial arrangements, according to the proposals that have been put out in the slide shows that were slipped out over the last two or three weekends. This is going to arouse a lot of anger on the Back Benches of the Conservative Party and in the Mail and the Telegraph. Should the Government not be preparing domestic public opinion for the necessary compromises that they are already beginning to propose to their European counterparts?

[Lord Callanan]

I am not sure that I would accept the scenario outlined by the noble Lord. We have always been clear that where there are areas in which we can co-operate with our European partners, in some small areas, we will make an appropriate contribution to the costs, but we have also been clear that the days of making vast contributions to the European budget are at an end.