Leaving the European Union

Baroness Crawley Excerpts

Monday 21st January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I am surprised that the noble Baroness is not welcoming the guarantee that we will not only not erode protection for workers’ rights and the environment but ensure that the country leads the way. We have been saying that and it is absolutely true. In fact, noble Lords have raised that in numerous ways and we will work with Members, Peers, businesses and trade unions to develop proposals to do this, including looking at legislation where necessary. I would have thought the noble Baroness would strongly welcome that.

[Baroness Crawley (Lab)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lady Smith of Basildon is right to say that this Statement really takes us no further forward. In fact, it could be summed up as the dog that did not bark at the elephant in the room. I welcome the fact that the Prime Minister has made it clear that she has no intention of reopening the Belfast agreement, especially in the light of the very serious news from Londonderry over the weekend. However, I doubt that the Government have any idea what a no-deal Brexit would mean, not only for our country but for our nearest and most important trading neighbour: Ireland. Will the Leader think again about the situation of not taking no deal off the table?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I can certainly reassure the noble Baroness that the issue of the border has been absolutely paramount in our minds, which is why the Prime Minister has worked so hard to make sure that we and the EU can come up with a solution that works to ensure that we keep our commitments to the people of Northern Ireland. That is what we are absolutely determined to do.

Brexit: Withdrawal Agreement and Political Declaration

Baroness Crawley Excerpts

Wednesday 5th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Crawley (Lab)]

My Lords, I refer noble Lords to my entry in the register as a former MEP. What can I say? What can any of us say now that we are in the end game of this miserable national predicament called Brexit? We have seen the Prime Minister’s deal, which I am afraid gives us even less than Chequers did, especially when it comes to the ambition for frictionless borders. The Government’s latest economic analysis, after all the modelling, assumptions and hedging, adds up to only one thing: leaving the EU on March 29 means that we will be poorer than we are now, or staying in the EU, as noble Lords have said.

Of course if we leave without a deal, the impact on trade means that we could lose up to 9% of GDP and could experience an 11.8% drop in real wages. That is to say nothing of the emergency measures needed when it comes to food and medicine shortages, drinking water and disruption in travel, transportation and energy supplies. The Bank of England, which has become something of a pantomime villain for the Brexiteers, has also warned that under the worst-case scenario, house prices could fall by 30%, employment could rise by more than 7% and GDP could fall by 8%. The list goes on, is frightening and must not be allowed to happen, as our Motion tabled by my noble friend Lady Smith of Basildon outlines. A Canada-style free trade agreement means a shocking drop in GDP and real wages, according to the Government. Even an EEA Norway-style Brexit sees GDP drop by 2.3% and real wages drop by 2.8%. The Prime Minister’s deal means that we lose up to 2.2% of GDP and could experience a drop of 2.7% in real wages. Of course, as noble Lords have said, these losses will be felt by the poorest people, the marginalised and the left behind. Is this not where we came in? There are no happy stories here; no reasons to celebrate this December.

Everyone in the country is worried and people are looking for certainty for themselves, their families and their workplaces. To many, the Prime Minister’s deal looks like a kind of solution, as in, “Please make the pain stop”. We have to acknowledge that fear and anxiety in the country and offer a feasible and positive alternative. The clamour is growing, especially among our young people, for a people’s vote on the terms of our leaving. At the time of the referendum, none of us could have imagined those terms, and that vote would be an opportunity to change our minds, should we wish to. Like many on my side of the argument, I am often asked whether I want the referendum to be a neverendum, as they say in Scotland. In other words, do I want as many people’s votes as it takes to deliver the result called remain? Here is my answer. The wording of the question put to the British people in 2016 ran as follows:

“Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union, or leave the European Union”?


They were not asked: do you favour Boris Johnson’s version of Brexit? Are you happy with Labour’s six conditions? Does the thought of Norway-plus appeal to you? Or Canada-plus? Or Papua New Guinea-plus? How about Mrs May’s Chequers plan, as opposed to her most recent plan? Is full access to the EU’s Galileo satellite navigation system something of a red line for you and your family? What about freedom to immigrate low-skilled workers into the UK, or special provisions for our friends in the DUP when it comes to the very serious issue of the Irish border?

It occurred to me the other day that most people, who do not spend their lives looking at economic analysis and reading policy papers as we do, probably imagine that the Irish backstop is a new rugby move for the forthcoming Six Nations.

Even if I were a fervent Brexiteer—which, thank the Lord, I am not, sir—I would have to conclude that since 2016, Brexit has grown as many heads as the Hydra of Lerna. No general election or referendum result binds the people’s hands forever. It is bogus constitutionalism to argue that anyone, in any one spasm of time, should be bound. The bald truth is that no version of Brexit currently available can possibly claim to be the settled will of the country. So, in the week when the Government have been found in contempt; when the Advocate-General of the ECJ has advised that Britain can unilaterally cancel Brexit; and when Parliament has voted to wrest control from the Executive in the event of no plan B beyond 11 December; I have to say that it is a case of back to the people.

Brexit: Negotiations

Baroness Crawley Excerpts

Thursday 15th November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

We will end free movement when we leave the EU, which means that we will develop our own independent immigration policy. We will bring forward a White Paper setting out those thoughts shortly.

[Baroness Crawley (Lab)]

My Lords, there is consensus across the House that this deal will not get a majority in the other place. What is the Government’s plan B? As we see it, a no-deal scenario happens automatically, unless the Government and Parliament decide to stay in the EU until a deal can be reached or decide to organise a second referendum. What do the Government make of the more hysterical claims of Brexiteers about Northern Ireland, which has been the pinch point all along? I am thinking especially of the claim that there are no trading, constitutional or legal differences between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK, when we all know that there are already significant differences on agriculture, animal checks, future corporation tax, abortion and same-sex marriage—I could go on.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I am not going to prejudge what the other place does in relation to its decision on this deal. As noble Lords have rightly said, it will have a vote on this deal. We believe it is the best deal and we will be encouraging the other place to support it, and I believe that it will.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Baroness Crawley Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 31st January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Crawley (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, who has always been a steadfast pro-European. I refer noble Lords to my entry in the register of interests as a former MEP.

So, Brexit—how do we think it is going? No unparliamentary language, please, from my noble friend Lord Foulkes of Cumnock in answering that question. According to the Government’s own economic impact report this week, we have to hold up our hands as the political establishment in this country and admit that we have probably scuppered people’s economic prospects for the next 15 to 20 years. This Bill, which our own Constitution Committee described as “constitutionally unacceptable”, comes to us at a time of unique instability in modern British politics. Half of Ministers and Conservative MPs want what my noble friend Lady Smith, the Leader of the Opposition, called a “buccaneering Brexit” that hauls us out into the mid-Atlantic, as far away from Europe as possible, and they want it to happen now, today, and with no transition. The other half, the Hammond half, want to shadow the economic and trade benefits of the European Union as closely as possible. My own party is not exactly free from criticism either. How can we answer Mr Barnier’s question—what does Britain want?—when we do not know ourselves?

The Trade Secretary, meanwhile, fresh from the Derek Trotter school of international trade negotiations —its strapline being, “This time next year we’ll all be millionaires”—is touring the globe to drum up trade with deals that “could”, “might”, “possibly”, “maybe”, “sometime in the future”, come to fruition. On top of that we hear the business chorus, the cacophony coming from Davos, demanding certainty—a certainty, of course, that an embattled Prime Minister just cannot give.

Meanwhile, the money men and women in the City of London are packing their bags and will probably head for Frankfurt, as the noble Lord, Lord Higgins, suggested yesterday in his quite powerful speech. They have promises to keep, and miles to go before we sleepwalk out of the European Union—with apologies to Robert Frost. British businesses and their workforces cannot wait for the Government to decide what they want: equivalence or passporting; customs union-lite or not at all; regulatory alignment or compatibility; transition or implementation or maybe both. Then, of course, we have what 19th-century Peers in your Lordships’ House used to call “the Irish question”. Here I declare my Irish nationality. The new Irish question is of course: “How can you have virtually no border with the Republic of Ireland, an EU member state, and not be in the customs union and the single market?”. Paragraph 49 of the 8 December agreement, which supposedly answers this question, is written so ambiguously that Malcolm Tucker from “The Thick of It” would have been proud.

The purpose of the Bill before us is, as we know, to provide a functioning statute book on the day after we leave the European Union. But this Bill is not just a procedural device: it is not a cut-and-paste, drag-and-drop, pull-across-and-slap-it-down technical exercise to convert EU law as it stands at the moment of exit into domestic law. It is, in the words of our own House of Lords Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, a Bill that,

“contains unacceptably wide Henry VIII powers”,

or, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, said in his excellent speech yesterday, “Oliver Cromwell” powers.

Chris Bryant MP suggested at Second Reading in another place that in the history of the 20th century, and I understand that he looked into this, no Bill ever attempted to do this, even in times of war or civil emergency. The Fawcett Society said in its briefing to us that, notwithstanding the gains from the equality Bill in the other place, it fears Ministers’ excessive powers to be able to amend and repeal all manner of employment and equalities legislation through this Bill. It should never be forgotten that our EU membership has brought enormous protection to the women of this country—their working rights, family rights and equal rights—much of it to do with the legal underpinning from the European Union.

Our EU membership has brought great protections that now seem to be at risk, because those rights do not continue under the Bill with the enhanced status that the legal underpinning from the European Union has given them for the last 40-odd years. They survive in the Bill only in delegated form, as do the equally important environmental and consumer rights that the British people take for granted as part of a safe, civilised life. The Government can expect no let-up in our efforts to make this Bill somehow, against all odds, work in the interests of the British people as we leave Europe, but leaving Europe is an act of extraordinary political self-harm for which our grandchildren and their children will not forgive us.

House of Lords: Lord Speaker’s Committee Report

Baroness Crawley Excerpts

Tuesday 19th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Crawley (Lab)]

My Lords, as Ella Fitzgerald once sang:

“We can’t go on this way”.


A year ago this month, this House arrived at the same conclusion and agreed that reduction in our numbers into a sustained future was the way forward for our credibility and that methods be explored by which this could be achieved. The significant move did not come out of the blue. It came from the Campaign for an Effective Second Chamber, and thanks must go to its officers and members for their perseverance over many years. Thanks must also go to our Lord Speaker, who was determined there and then that a committee be set up urgently to explore the means by which we move forward. I was privileged to be a member of that committee, and I thank our chairman, the noble Lord, Lord Burns, for his leadership and his astonishing ability to resolve multiple complex issues before our very eyes. His membership of the Magic Circle must surely be imminent. Of course I thank my fellow committee members for their wisdom, patience and good humour. After lengthy and robust debate, the final report was approved unanimously.

Not everyone in this Chamber will agree with every paragraph—some may not agree with any—but I sincerely hope that a majority of your Lordships will agree that we have a fair and sensible plan of action in front of us, within our limited terms of reference. Our challenge was to ensure respect for existing Members while laying sound foundations for a sustainable future for new Members. I believe that this is our best shot at reform for a generation, and we need to grasp this opportunity, despite it not being everyone’s perfect vision. Until we do that, as the noble Lord, Lord Burns, said, the Prime Minister, No. 10, the Government and the leadership of the political parties in the country will not hear their prompt to step on to the stage with us and be part of our reformed future. We should be proud of the detailed scrutiny we do in this House, yet that is often not as the public and the media see us. To put it mildly, we are not loved, and our willingness to embrace this report today may go some way to healing that disconnect.

In a nutshell, after listening to evidence from noble Lords and others, we recommend a future House of 600 Peers, its numbers capped, with 15-year terms for new Members, with the possibility of a five-year pause. New Members would be subject to a code of conduct undertaking to leave the House after that period. No party would have an absolute majority and a minimum of 20% of seats would be reserved for the Cross-Benchers. Parties would share political appointments in line with the results of the previous general election, based on an average of the parties’ share of the national vote and of the seats won in the House of Commons. The combination of this formula and the 15-year term limit would ensure that the future make-up of this House reflected the political views of the country over the medium term. This would be an historic first for us. To reach this point it is suggested that there be an accelerated “two out, one in” programme of departures. On page 3 of our report there is a chart showing how this would look until 2042, with a very gentle start in the first five years for existing Members.

That is what our report proposes. It does not propose new legislation. Our terms of reference were to identify practical and politically viable options that might lead to progress on this issue. Waiting for successful legislation to come along, as we know, is neither practical nor politically viable. The report does not propose a specific retirement age as society is moving away from that and, anyway, so many of our older active Members make a significant contribution to the work of Parliament. It does not propose an allocation of Peers via the nations and regions, as some noble Lords wish. We believe that it is the responsibility of the political parties to ensure that membership is not London-centric. The report does not alter the situation regarding hereditary Peers’ by-elections, despite the negative effect that has in terms of gender and background in a capped House, because that would require legislation; similarly, with the Bishops’ Bench. However, many of us believe that government support for a Private Member’s Bill, such as that of my noble friend Lord Grocott, may follow hard on the heels of this reform package being accepted. We can live in hope.

Christmas is coming and our best Christmas present to ourselves this year would be—no, not BB-8 from “The Last Jedi”—overwhelming support for the document in front of us.