European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Tugendhat

Committee: 10th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 26th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I have indeed said that none of us gained a mandate from the election. That is precisely the position in which we all find ourselves. We should therefore be modest and moderate in the way in which we attempt to interpret the confused and disengaged opinion of the British public, with which we now struggle.

In the Statement the Prime Minister has just given in the Commons, which is about to be repeated in this House, I was very struck by the warmth it attaches to our co-operation with our European partners, the solidarity we gain from other members of the European Union with whom we have “shared values and interests”, and the assumption that we need to continue to co-operate with them on major issues from resisting President Trump’s tariffs and Russian threats to a range of other areas from which we will absent ourselves in March 2019 under the current arrangement. Therefore, as these negotiations move on, we need to continue this process of discovering where our interests lie, how we will continue to co-operate with our neighbours and partners if and when we leave, and not to leave until we are sure that we have a worthwhile alternative arrangement agreed.

We know why this measure is in the Bill: the hardliners in the Conservative Party and the Government have reached a point where they are prepared to accept all sorts of concessions that the Prime Minister may make to the European Union so long as we leave. The most important thing for them is that we leave what they consider to be the hated domination of the European Union. They have no thought of shared values and interests because they want to be out of the European Union. They want to be out even if we have a transition period of a further 21 months in which we continue to accept and follow all the rules and regulations of the European Union without being present around the table.

It is absolutely against the national interest for us to leave the table until the end of the transition period or to do so until we know—and Parliament has agreed—what our future relationship with the European Union will be in a range of economic, foreign policy, defence and internal security areas. We must not be stuck, as other Members said, because we have a fudge in October and a general political agreement without much content, and, following the Foreign Secretary saying to us, “You’re all too pessimistic about this. Let’s just be optimistic”, we then jump in, splash, and hope that the water is deep enough.

[Lord Tugendhat (Con)]

My Lords, this is the only intervention I will make in Committee, and I shall do it rather less contentiously than my old friend, the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire. However, I agree with the underlying thrust of what he said, just as I agreed with the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, and the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington.

At the heart of these amendments is a matter of trust. Initially, the change was put into the Bill, as a number of noble Lords said, because there were people in this party and in the Government who doubted the Prime Minister’s and the Government’s resolve to take us out of the European Union. I do not think that anybody can doubt her resolve on that point now, or doubt the resolve of the Government. The negotiations are moving ahead, and, whether or not one is quite as optimistic as Mr Davis was on television yesterday, clearly they are moving ahead better than many people at one time expected, and a deal looks a likely outcome. Therefore we do not need to worry about giving credibility to the Government’s ambition; we need to worry about making sure that we are in a position to secure the best deal we possibly can.

Anybody who has been involved in a negotiation, whether international or commercial, or to buy a house, knows that if one puts a gun to one’s head, one puts oneself at a great disadvantage. It seems extraordinary that we should be confronted with the proposition in a Bill of this sort that puts our negotiators at a disadvantage. Then there is the other point, which my noble friend Lord Hailsham and others have raised, on parliamentary sovereignty. The Bill takes the decision out of the hands of Parliament, because the curtain comes down at a particular point. Again, that makes it harder than it need be for us to secure the best possible deal.

There has been a large element of unanimity in this debate. Although I recognise that my noble friend on the Front Bench is no doubt operating within tight guidelines, I hope that she will be able to indicate that, having heard the contributions to this debate and having registered the unanimity, she will be able to undertake to go away and think about it and try to find some means to ensure that we do not put a gun to our negotiators’ heads.

EU and Russia (EUC Report)

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Tugendhat

Tuesday 24th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tugendhat]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord—or I think I can say my noble friend—Lord Foulkes, after that accolade. It certainly gets my speech off to a good start. I thank him very much.

As the title of our report indicates, our focus is on the events leading up to the current Ukraine crisis and looking beyond it to the future. I should make it clear, as does the report, where we stand on the present situation. Russia has to understand that taking over other people’s territory, whether in eastern Ukraine or Crimea, is unacceptable. Such actions cannot be allowed to stand. For as long as the present conflict lasts, the European Union should maintain sanctions and be ready, if required, to step them up. Therefore, I welcome last week’s European Council decision, which is in line with our approach. Sanctions cannot be an end in themselves; they must be a means to an end. Do Her Majesty’s Government believe that there should be a process whereby progress in resolving the underlying dispute and its causes is linked to a ratcheting down of sanctions? In short, should there be a carrot as well as a stick?

I have another question. In our report, we argued that, while the dispute lasts, other avenues of communication should be kept open, such as cultural links in commemoration of our shared history in World War II. Do the Government agree, and have they and other EU Governments yet taken a decision about wreath-laying in Moscow on 9 May, which is of course a particularly difficult day for British Ministers?

I turn to how the EU should proceed in future in relation to Ukraine and other ex-Soviet republics. The committee believes that, while Russia has no right to dictate to sovereign states on its borders, those states and the European Union need to take account of Russian interests and sensitivities. The historic, geographical and current economic links between those states and Russia are such that, if the EU is to play a constructive role in helping them to develop their economies and societies, that cannot be done in the teeth of Russian opposition, as the present crisis shows. This will require big changes of attitude on the part of Russia, and I will say a word about that in a few moments. However, as a committee of the British Parliament, our policy recommendations are directed to the British Government and the European Union.

The first step, I believe, must be to set goals for the EU’s relationship with those countries that take account of how far short of meeting the criteria for EU membership they currently fall and how long it will take them to catch up. We should be prepared to help them close the gap but this will require tough love. In Ukraine and elsewhere, financial, technical, social and expert aid must all be subject to strict political and financial conditionality and accountability. Inevitably, this will create resentment against the donors, but these countries have indicated that they want to draw closer to us and our values, with a view to perhaps one day joining the European Union. We must therefore make it clear that the aid is to help them to do that, not to evade or defer difficult reforms, and certainly not to garner support against Russia.

With Russia, the challenge is of a different order: it is about how two large powers with different political and social systems can work constructively together as equals on common problems in a shared space. This will require sensitivity, mutual respect and an understanding on both sides of different historical perspectives. We on the EU side must try to understand why Russia feels as it does about EU enlargement and NATO. On the evidence that we took, I think we all agreed that President Putin’s views are to a large extent shared by most of the Russian population, and that any foreseeable successor to President Putin would most likely hold the same views. On their side, the Russians must try to grasp the impact that the USSR’s post-World War II expansionism has had on Europe’s collective psyche, and why so many countries on its borders feel as they do about drawing closer to the European Union. It is in this context that the committee believes that co-operation between the European Union and the Eurasian Economic Union might provide a way forward. Let us together explore how far and in what manner the rules and requirements of these two organisations might be aligned. This could provide a useful framework within which to develop closer EU-Russia economic relations and to develop the countries that border on both the European Union and Russia.

Much as we should like to see better EU-Russia relations, there is nothing starry eyed about the committee’s approach. We attach importance to holding Russia to the obligations it has freely entered into in respect of the World Trade Organization and the European Convention on Human Rights. We also believe that even if Russia is willing to tolerate corruption and lax business practices, to put it kindly, within its own borders, these must not be allowed to contaminate its dealings with this country or the rest of the EU.

I end with an exhortation. The committee believes that since the end of the Cold War there has been a decline in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s analytical and language skills in relation to Russia. Indeed, only last week we were surprised to learn at a seminar that we held that, in recent years, the head of the Russian desk has sometimes turned over on an almost annual basis, and that at least one recent holder of that office did not speak Russian. I do not know whether the Minister will be able to cast light on that. Whether or not she can do that, I hope that she will assure the House that if there is a Conservative Government after the election, they will devote sufficient diplomatic resources to the vital Russian relationship.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, there is a large number of speakers in this debate. I remind noble Lords that the advisory speaking time is eight minutes. If noble Lords keep to that or less, we will finish this debate by 7.30 pm—four and a half hours from its outset—which will allow us to finish by 10 pm.

Intelligence and Security Committee

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Tugendhat

Tuesday 4th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we have only just commenced and set into effect the Justice and Security Act. The first public meeting of the Intelligence and Security Committee under the Act took place some three months ago, so we are still discussing the next stage. That is not particularly dilatory, given that we are moving in the right direction. We are looking at the current revelations about the sheer scale of internet surveillance, which perhaps raise further issues for discussion.

[Lord Tugendhat (Con)]

My Lords, does the noble Lord agree that however the chairman is chosen, and from whichever party he might come, it would be very difficult to find a chairman better qualified and with more credibility and authority than Sir Malcolm Rifkind?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I of course have to agree with that.

Iran

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Tugendhat

Monday 25th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the timing of sanctions release is very carefully calibrated. The sanctions that will be lifted are extremely limited—the majority of them will remain in place. Incidentally, I asked the briefing team how far humanitarian sanctions would include some relief of the controls on medicines and medical supplies for Iran. I know that that is one of the things that has hit Iran particularly hard. I, personally, welcome the provision of repairs and spare parts for Iranian airlines, because it has become increasingly unsafe to fly within Iran, as the noble Lord will know. On the gap between now and January, we cannot put that immediately into operation. However, the sanctions relief does not go into immediate operation either. We need to work through the details. On 5% and 20%, the latter is the point at which it becomes dangerous and relatively easy to carry through the further enrichment to weapons-grade uranium. Therefore the Iranians have agreed to dilute half of their current, rather large stockpile of 20% uranium back down to 5%, which is the point at which it is useful for civil nuclear power but not for very much else, and to convert the other half into uranium oxide, which also makes it useful for civil nuclear power but not for weapons.

[Lord Tugendhat (Con)]

My Lords, I associate myself very strongly with the words of my noble friend Lord Deben about the contribution made by the European Union and by the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton. I also associate myself with the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, who praised the Iranian negotiators. It is often forgotten, when one looks at the position of Iran on these matters, that it is one of the countries that have been on the receiving end of weapons of mass destruction, namely from Iraq. When a country has been on the receiving end of such weapons, that makes it very sensitive to its own ability to protect itself against all eventualities. When one looks at the Iranian nuclear programme, it is important to bear that in mind. Therefore, the concessions that the Iranians have made and the apparent good will with which they have entered into these negotiations must have required a very considerable effort on their part. We should certainly pay tribute to them and we hope very much that they, with the West, will be able to bring this to a conclusion.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for his comments. We have negotiated this agreement with the Government of Iran. As all noble Lords will know, Iran is an extremely complex country with an extremely complex political system. We hope that the Government of Iran will make this stick. Nevertheless, we know that there are elements within the political system of Iran who may not be quite as happy with it as the Government are. That is part of what we will test out in the coming months.

Middle East and North Africa

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Tugendhat

Monday 14th February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I think it is the turn of the Conservatives. We will then return to the Labour Benches. Perhaps I might encourage the several Labour Peers who wish to intervene to consider in the mean time which of them they would like to yield to first.

[Lord Tugendhat]

My Lords, is the noble Lord aware of how welcome will be the Foreign Secretary’s statement that we will be following a distinctive policy in the Middle East? Will he also take it from me that his initial remarks about the moment of opportunity in relation to the Israel-Palestine talks are a very welcome start? I very much hope that he will be able to press that case in the days and weeks ahead.