European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Goldsmith

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.

European Union Referendum Bill

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Goldsmith

Wednesday 18th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goldsmith]

The noble Lord is right about that. Mind you, if the recommendation had been taken up in 2008 when I wrote the report, who knows where we would be today?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, since the noble Lord, Lord Green of Deddington, mentioned our conversation, perhaps I may say one or two things. We all recognise that our current franchise and our concept of citizenship are a mess and need attention. We are about to debate under some of the following amendments how much attention we should give to tidying up our franchise now, or whether it should be addressed more broadly later. On citizenship, I am very struck by the extent to which dual citizenship extends across Britain and elsewhere. I asked several times when in government how many dual citizens there were scattered around the world, and the answer was always that we do not know. I recall a visit to northern Cyprus in which my driver told me that he was a British citizen, a Turkish citizen, a Greek-Cypriot citizen and a Turkish-Cypriot citizen, and he enjoyed choosing between them as he travelled as to which passport he might take. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, said, the question of citizenship is extremely fuzzy.

The question of when we would have the referendum is addressed in the amendment. I hope we have it before 1 January 2017. I have some doubts as to how far we should address this broader issue now, in this specific case, although we will address it again under further amendments.

Finally, I congratulate the noble Lord on his argument that we should use this as an example of where we might harmonise with other member states. I assume that that comes from his commitment to ever-closer union.

CIA: Torture

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Goldsmith

Tuesday 16th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the Government are clear that the question of the presence or participation of British officials in some of the acts that are alleged is one of the things that must be investigated.

[Lord Goldsmith (Lab)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that at the moment we have the worst of both worlds? The interim report of the Gibson committee was published, which listed a number of questions that were taken by the media as being findings and therefore we do not know what the truth is. I do not say this because I want to see anything hidden—quite the opposite, as I was one of those who called for that inquiry. However, at the moment we have the problem that things are believed to be true about the British security services, maybe about British people involved in political life, but because we have not got to the bottom of them and have not got a report, they are being condemned without it being properly investigated and heard. I am hopeful that the noble Lord will do what he has said, which is to make sure that the ISC, or whoever it is going to be, reports as soon as possible and we actually know what the truth is in the interests of everybody.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we are all entirely clear that we need to get to the bottom of this and to spell out the involvement of British officials, in so far as it took place, as publicly as possible. I stress that will be a matter for the next Government. It is not therefore a partisan issue. We are all concerned about the reputation of Her Majesty’s Government.

Syria and the Use of Chemical Weapons

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Goldsmith

Thursday 29th August 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goldsmith]

My Lords, perhaps I may press the noble Baroness a little further. I understand that today the State Department said that it was not concerned or would not be deterred in any way in deciding what it was going to do by what this Parliament decided. The consequence of that may well be, therefore, that the United States may take action quite soon. Indeed, there were suggestions that that might happen this weekend. For that reason, and because the House has been recalled—it is more of an emergency for this House because it was not due to sit next week—it would be enormously helpful to know what might happen next and what involvement this House might have in it. That is why I would certainly support the suggestion of my noble friend for at least a short adjournment to see whether there is a plan B and whether the government Front Bench can advise the House on what that plan B is.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

Asking us to provide a full sketch of a plan B at 23.00 on a Thursday night is not possible. I am of course not privy to what the Americans may or may not be planning. We all take what is being said on the opposition Benches under consideration, but at the moment we cannot predict what will happen over the next few days.