European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Lord Wigley and Lord Adonis

Report: 5th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 2nd May 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Adonis]

I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, on trying to rewrite the entire British constitution at 10 pm in one amendment to the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill. In his defence, the Government are rewriting the rest of the British constitution in the rest of the Bill, and we have frequently been debating that after midnight, so I do not think that the Government can complain in principle about what he is seeking to achieve.

I shall make two observations on the noble Lord’s amendment and then I will have a question for the Minister. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Bourne, will be replying. That is part of the reason that I got to my feet, as I particularly want to ask him about consultation with local authorities in England.

My first point is that the noble Lord, Lord Wigley—he was quite open about it—is seeking effectively to introduce a formal federal constitution. Let us be clear: if this became law, effectively the devolved Administrations would have a veto over the United Kingdom Government in certain circumstances, depending on how the weighted voting worked. If that happened, this body would become a new second Chamber. We would then have two second Chambers: this body, which would act as one court of debate and veto over the United Kingdom Government; and the House of Lords as well. If we go down that route, which we may well have to go down eventually as we debate House of Lords reform and all the consequentials of Brexit, then we probably will at some stage end up with a proper federal second Chamber and a substantial rewriting of the United Kingdom constitution. I simply note that that is what the noble Lord is seeking to do, taking a significant step forward from the existing JMC.

The second point I am bound to make is that the word “England” does not appear in about 40 lines of proposed legislative change. Even though I am repeating this point at 10.23 pm, it is quite an important one. Some 53 million of the 63 million people who live in this state live in England. The one debate we have had in the entire proceedings on the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill regarding how the government of England will be improved as a result of this Bill was on an amendment moved, I seem to recollect, by the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, on what the consultation and institutional procedures are going to be after we withdraw from the Committee of the Regions. I seem to remember the Minister saying that he was going to meet local authority representatives in England soon and that he did not rule out—I pressed him on it and got a slightly vague answer, but he was trying to engage—establishing some institutional mechanisms for the formal consultation of local authorities in England to replace the arrangements in respect of the Committee of the Regions, which is of particular importance to the regions of England because of regional development policies hereafter, when the Regional Development Fund ceases to apply.

I see the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, has her folder open. Is the noble Lord replying? He is. I wonder whether he could update us on how his consultations are going with local authorities in England. In particular, is it the Government’s intention to introduce some formal machinery for developing consultation with local authorities in England?

[Lord Wigley]

To clarify, the amendment, as the noble Lord will no doubt have noticed, refers to,

“one member appointed by the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom”.

I imagine that would be someone representing England, the point being that there is no Prime Minister of England equivalent to the First Minister of Scotland, the First Minister of Wales and the First Minister and Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland, as specified in the amendment.

[Lord Adonis]

The noble Lord—I would like to call him my noble friend—gives the game away. He says that he imagines that this person might represent an English constituency. In fact, he might or might not. If the noble Lord, Lord Bourne, were Prime Minister, he comes, I understand, from Aberystwyth. He would then be the representative of the UK Government. In our lifetime, I served under one Scottish Prime Minister. I have never served under a Welsh Prime Minister, but there have been one or two Welsh candidates for that post in the past.

In England we are not very good at this rigorous constitutional thinking. Let us be clear, even if it were an English Member of Parliament or Minister, their role would be to represent the Government of the United Kingdom; it would not be their role to represent England, separate from the Government of the United Kingdom.

Finally, when the noble Lord produces his full draft of a new written constitution for the United Kingdom with his proposal for a federal senate, which I assume will be his next amendment on Third Reading, could he please suggest some arrangements for how England will play a part in his federal arrangements?

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Lord Wigley and Lord Adonis

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

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, I completely understand the motivation of the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, and I am of course entirely with him in wanting to stay in the European Union, but I am at a complete loss to understand how it is possible for British citizens to continue having European citizenship after we have left the European Union. I simply do not understand how it is possible to have citizenship of an organisation of which we are not a member. The specific issue of what happens to European Union residents in Britain, given that the Government have already committed that their rights will be guaranteed for a further seven years, is a completely different point. Assuming that the noble and learned Lord will be replying to the debate, will he tell us what the precise relationship will be between the European Court of Justice, European law and the seven-year guarantee of the rights of EU citizens currently resident in the UK?

[Lord Wigley]

The noble Lord understandably challenges the point, and he is right to do so, and I too would much prefer we were not leaving the European Union. But there are precedents—I quoted the example of Greenland—and there is also the parallel question of associate citizenship, which has been raised as a possibility by people with a background in international law as a perfectly viable option.

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, my understanding is that Greenland became independent of Denmark, so the situation was very different from the one we are talking about here.

It is very important that we do not offer people false hope. It is important over the next year that people understand the full gravity and consequences of the decision the Government are proposing to impose on the country. There are no halfway houses. What does this thing called associate citizenship amount to? It amounts to a row of beans. There is no point offering people the prospect that we can somehow have the benefits —it is a classic case of having our cake and eating it. It is important that those who are in favour of staying in the European Union do not somehow think there are all kinds of halfway houses, which might give us all the benefits without staying in the European Union. It seems to me a very simple proposition: if people want to enjoy the benefits and rights of citizenship of the European Union, there is only one way to do it and that is to remain a member of the European Union.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Lord Wigley and Lord Adonis

Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Wednesday 28th February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Adonis]

I am very grateful for that response; I think that might help us in our further discussions.

In response to the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, I will make two points. First, in the debate about regional assistance, one of the arguments is that we are simply getting our money back. The crucial point about the European Regional Development Fund and the other cohesion funds of the European Union, however, is that they are long-term development funds. The reason that they are so valued in the regions is not just because of the investment, but because they enable long-term planning to take place in the regions, which does not happen in response to Treasury funds because our own funding for these projects is so short-term. One of the big struggles that we have had in government—and this spans all three parties that have been in government in the last 20 years —is that we have had a huge difficulty in fixing and delivering long-term investment priorities because of the short-term attitude of the Treasury, which is not prepared to make those commitments.

When I became Secretary of State for Transport in 2009, the forward investment strategy for the railways in the United Kingdom was for five years, until 2014; so—surprise, surprise—there were no plans for high- speed rail at all and no electrification programme. It is not just that it did not go to Swansea: it did not go anywhere. Wales is the only country in the entire continent of Europe besides Albania that does not have one mile of electrified railway. This is because of a consistent absence of long-term infrastructure planning over the last generation. Thanks to decisions that we took in 2009, electrification is at long last going to reach Wales, but the plans that were in place for it to go to Swansea have been cut back to Cardiff; it was supposed to go to Bristol but it is now going only to Bristol Parkway, not to Bristol Temple Meads.

I do not wish to bore the Committee with the details, but the fundamental underlying point here is the absence of long-term infrastructure planning. We look to the Government for a commitment not just to have significant funds for regional assistance—because clearly funds are going to be required unless we are going to see the divides between different parts of the country becoming even wider over the coming years—but we need a long-term approach. The current European Regional Development Fund has a six-year planning horizon and we need to see at least that length of planning in respect of new funds and policies that the Government put in place. Otherwise, we will see a short-term scramble for short-term projects that do not begin to be able to deliver huge benefits such as new railway lines—HS2 and HS3 that we need linking the northern cities—and significant investment in Wales. The noble Lord, Lord Wigley, referred to tidal lagoons and the investment that could be made there. That, again, is an investment that would deliver economic and energy benefits over the next 80 years, and it needs to be long-term.

My second point, which is linked to the points made by my noble friend Lord Foulkes, is about the European Investment Bank. One of the most worrying things in relation to the funding of infrastructure projects, particularly in less developed regions of the country, over the period since the Brexit decision has been the collapse in lending to the United Kingdom for projects supported by the European Investment Bank. An article in the Financial Times last month gave quite scary statistics: new contracts in the UK financed by the EIB are down from £5.5 billion in 2016 to just £1.9 billion last year in 2017. Of that £1.9 billion, only £377 million was spent in the nine months after Article 50 was triggered. The president of the European Investment Bank, Werner Hoyer, was very clear that a key factor in this was,

“extra legal work the bank now had to do to ensure its assets in Britain would be protected after the UK left the EU”,

and uncertainty on the part of investors. This is leading to a significant problem in investment in infrastructure projects, in particular. Speaking as a former chairman of the National Infrastructure Commission, I can tell the Government that they will not get a commitment to long-term infrastructure projects unless they can put together the funding packages that are required. They need to span the public and private sectors, and for many of these projects which span a 10, 15 or 20-year horizon, the public sector is looking for guarantees, and if those guarantees have to come exclusively from the Treasury in future, we will see significantly less infrastructure investment than we have in the past.

Although the European Union is not the be all and end all—

[Lord Wigley]

Before the noble Lord leaves the issue of the European Investment Bank, I raised a question in the debate on Monday evening about the ongoing eligibility of higher education institutions, such as Swansea University, which has had £60 million out of the EIB. Will the noble Lord confirm my understanding that the UK will have an ongoing entitlement to help from the EIB? As he says, it is a question of the level of help and the confidence that is there and not that we will not be eligible.

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, I am afraid we again get into the Alice in Wonderland world here, as we were in the debates on Erasmus and Euratom. My understanding from discussions with the European Investment Bank when I was chair of the National Infrastructure Commission is that if the Government were to wish to stay a member of the European Investment Bank, that might be possible. There are lots of legal issues which would need to be addressed, but it might be possible. However, it is the Government’s policy, as a matter of principle, that we will withdraw from the European Investment Bank because it is seen as a European institution and apparently the instruction from the British people two years ago was that we must withdraw from it for exactly the same reason that we must withdraw from Euratom: it is seen as a European institution and we are supposed be withdrawing from all of them or else Brexit does not mean Brexit.

We are engaging in self-inflicted harm purely for an ideological purpose by choosing not to be part of an institution which has “Europe” in the title. What has concerned the Committee so much in our debates is that sector by sector, area by area, we are committing to policies that are going to make the country worse off bit by bit. The cumulative effect of all this is going to be immensely serious. Where it is possible to not engage in that self-inflicted harm, it seems to me to be just a matter of common sense not to do so. I would be very grateful if the Minister could tell the Committee the Government’s policy in respect of lending currently made by the European Investment Bank and whether it might still be open.

I am constantly encouraging, and we have the more emollient face of the Government responding to the debate in the noble Baroness. I always have very high hopes of her because she sounds so reasonable when she replies. It may just be that she is so practised at doing these things, but I very much hope that she might give us a commitment that the Government will consider remaining a part of the European Investment Bank and not putting this essential investment in the future infrastructure of the country at risk, as appears to be happening at the moment.