Business of the House

Baroness Altmann Excerpts

Thursday 4th April 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord True]

Noble Lords may know but they need to be reminded and the world outside needs to understand. The last proposition was that in relation to this Bill, shoved through the House of Commons late at night, which a former Leader of the House has just risen to tell us has flaws which need to be examined and addressed in Committee, we should be prepared not to set aside the Standing Orders but to look at its different stages on different days. Perhaps we could take the Second Reading today and take the remaining stages on another day. Is that such an unexceptionable proposition? Is that not what your Lordships are here for? I repeat the question I put earlier: why do your Lordships come here, if not to scrutinise? What is the purpose of the House if not to scrutinise properly?

[Baroness Altmann (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for giving way. I just make the point that this House has been asked by the other place to consider a Bill that it would like to pass. We are debating issues here that could have been debated on so many other occasions. We have been passing statutory instruments for no deal without impact assessments and without proper consultation. We have overridden, when it has been convenient for those who perhaps want to leave with no deal, but this is about stopping us crashing out with no deal and giving the Prime Minister the support she may need to stand firm and go back to the European Union to ask for a longer extension so that we do not crash out with no deal.

[Lord True]

My noble friend is entirely wrong. That is not the point before the House in this Motion. Indeed, the procedure I have suggested would still allow the Bill to be passed. However, since when has it been the function of this House to say “Yes, sir” to any piece of legislation suddenly rushed down the Corridor? That is the proposition being put to us by my noble friend Lady Altmann: “The House of Commons has asked us to pass this, so we must be pass it. Get on with it”. Every time someone comes to this House bearing papers with a green ribbon on them, they are asking us to agree. Of course they want us to agree and they would probably prefer us to do so quickly, but we do not have to. That is called freedom and it is called scrutiny. It is also called consideration, but none of that is allowed for in the procedures that have been put before us today. The Bill comes with no Explanatory Notes and not even a name on it, as the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, admitted, yet we are being asked to pass it in a hurry or we are behaving badly. The day when the House of Lords is behaving badly because it is giving proper due consideration to a proposed Act of Parliament in the time that is sufficient and necessary for it to do so, as the noble Baroness asks in her amendment, is the beginning of the end for the House of Lords. That will be when the House of Lords says, “Yes, sir, we all want to go home”. I am sorry, but we need to be mindful of the importance of proper procedures.

I do not care for tweeting but I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, is a great tweeter. I was sleepless last night, thinking about what I might say today, so I had a look at what she had been tweeting. Your Lordships will be interested to know that on 24 February—you can look it up—she sent out a tweet complaining that the Government might want to get the withdrawal Act through in 10 days. She tweeted that the House of Lords does not have programme Motions; the House of Lords needs time to consider things. That was on 24 February.

It ought to be 1 April today—it is 4 April—because the noble Baroness has come forward with a programme Motion in which she says that the House of Lords cannot have more than one day to consider this matter. I do not eat Devonshire clotted cream, but I find the noble Baroness’s position as rich as that.

While I am talking about the noble Baroness, I feel I must say how discourteous it was to the House to table this Motion so late. We heard from the putative Prime Minister, Sir Oliver Letwin, yesterday morning that he had been discussing matters with his friends down the Corridor—who are here in person—so why could she not have tabled this Motion before that? She tabled it before the Bill had arrived from the House of Commons and knew what was there. She could have given better notice to the House but failed to do so. She tried to bounce the House at the very last minute and then came up with this trumpery that something has to be passed quickly when the Prime Minister has already said that she will do what the Bill asks her to do.

What nonsense is this? Why are noble Lords going along with this nonsense and being prepared to set aside their Standing Orders?