European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Baroness Finn Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Tuesday 21st February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Finn (Con)]

My Lords, the debate both before and after the referendum has been passionate and, at times, heated. However, I will briefly restate three points. First, the decision to call the referendum to ask the people whether they wished to leave or remain in the European Union was endorsed by both Houses in this Parliament and was based on a manifesto commitment of this Government. Secondly, the referendum decision, on a turnout of more than 72%, was clearly to leave. Thirdly, the overwhelming will of the elected other place—both Her Majesty’s Government and the loyal Opposition—is to accept and respect the outcome of that referendum and to carry out the instructions of the people. It would be undemocratic for this Chamber of appointed Members to do anything other than vote for this Bill. To do otherwise would demonstrate a lofty disdain for the democratic mandate and could cause enormous harm to the status of your Lordships’ House.

There will be many important debates in the months ahead about our future relationship with the European Union. The Prime Minister’s speech in Lancaster House, and the Government’s subsequent White Paper, set out a common-sense plan for the wider relationship between Britain and the European Union. I trust that Brexit will not mean Britain turning in on itself. That is not in our history, not in our culture and not in our nature; nor is it in our short-term or long-term economic interest. Speaking as the daughter of a refugee from communist Czechoslovakia who defected to the liberal West, I believe it is vital that that applies to immigration, where the aim should be control, not arbitrary reduction, and it should certainly apply to global free trade. Post-Brexit Britain must be open, free market and liberal.

The Prime Minister has also, correctly, promised to resolve the status of EU nationals in the UK, calling this “right and fair”. The sooner we can give a guarantee to EU citizens that they are welcome to stay here, the better. The Prime Minister’s noble attempt to fast-track a deal whereby EU workers currently living in the EU are allowed to remain, in exchange for an agreement that would give British expatriates in the European Union similar rights, was rebuffed by the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the President of the European Council, Donald Tusk. It is deeply regrettable that European politicians are playing politics with people’s lives to force the Government’s hand. I very much hope that other member states give the Government the guarantees they need to resolve this issue at the earliest moment.

This will not be a winner-takes-it-all process. It is, after all, a negotiation and negotiations require compromise. We need to seek the best deal possible. It is vital not to bind the Government in any way, administratively or legally, because they must have the ability to negotiate flexibly and in the national interest.

The EU institutions and member states have obdurately held to the position that negotiations cannot begin without notification, although the demand from the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, for €60 billion in advance of trade negotiations appears to be at odds with his own declaration that he should be holding his peace.

The Prime Minister must therefore trigger Article 50 before the discussions commence. My appeal to remainers who also support free trade and liberal values is to move on from attempts to frustrate Brexit through clever procedural amendments and to join the debate about what sort of country we want to be and what policies we want to have after Brexit. We must allow the Government to get on with their negotiations. I therefore support the Bill and urge other noble Lords to vote in favour of it.

European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Baroness Finn Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 27th February 2017 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Sandwich (CB)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Finn (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)]

My Lords, it is not my job to do this but the House needs to move on. We should hear from the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, and then go the Front Benches.

[Noble Lords]

No!

[Baroness Finn]

My Lords, I do not see the need for any requirement for impact assessments in the Bill, because the need does not arise. As my noble friend Lord Forsyth has said, the Bill is not taking us out of the EU but simply enabling the Government to trigger Article 50. There is no impact to assess from that enabling. This is not the place to get into detail over the negotiations or the structures around them, and it is vital that we do not bind the Government, either administratively or legally, in their negotiations, because that will only undermine their ability to get the best possible deal for the country.

I appreciate that the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, said that my noble friend Lord Blencathra was being cynical about impact assessments, but I dealt with a number of impact assessments when I worked in government and was frequently frustrated by their lack of accuracy. This was in part due to the lack of management information in government departments. Non-executive directors of government departments appointed from outside the Civil Service were often shocked by the poor quality of the information on which decisions were based. My noble friend Lord Maude, who I see in his place, made valiant attempts to improve the quality but I fear there is still a long way to go. Just last week, my right honourable friend Sir Oliver Letwin criticised the quality of advice from civil servants, in particular expressing the concern that not enough of their advice was factually based. My concern is therefore a general one about the utility of such impact assessments.

The other point I was going to make, which I think has already been made, is that impact assessments are inherently driven by a number of assumptions and predictions. I do not want to labour the issue, but various predictions made about the immediate consequences of Brexit—not only by Her Majesty’s Treasury but also by the IMF, the IFS, the OECD and the Governor of the Bank of England—failed to materialise. My concern is that impact assessments could well be of dubious quality and accuracy. On that basis, I urge noble Lords not to press their amendments.

[The Earl of Sandwich]

My Lords, I do not know what the Conservatives are worrying about. I have listened to the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, saying the same thing again and again. We need to have open government, as my noble friend Lord Kerslake has just pointed out. We are helping the Government by moving probing amendments. The noble Baroness, Lady Quin, has given a direct reply and that should surely be satisfactory. I am not going to waste too much time but will speak about developing countries, because I believe we should have an impact assessment relating to the effects on those countries. I have spoken to the Minister and know that he is kindly going to reply to this. I will be as quick as I can and will not repeat what I said at Second Reading.

Amendment 28 reflects my concern about the effects of withdrawal on the least developed countries and countries recovering from conflict. I have consulted the Overseas Development Institute and Traidcraft, the experts in this field. I know one of the answers the Minister will give is that we really cannot tell what the effects will be in numerical terms at this point. It might be of interest to him that the ODI estimates that the least developed countries could lose approximately £323 million annually if current preferential access in the UK is discontinued.

I accept that there will be pluses and minuses. On the one hand we may be sacrificing the interests of the ACP countries that currently benefit from their association with the EU, especially the smaller states and islands that are vulnerable to climate change. On the other hand, some countries—sugar cane producers, for example—will have suffered from the EU’s protection of its own markets and may well want us to abandon fortress Europe in favour of bilateral agreements through the WTO, or a new version of the generalised system of preferences, and I accept that.

But not yet knowing the maths does not mean that we can take no action. The interests of LDCs have not been mentioned in any of the documents relating to withdrawal. The Government must surely undertake a review of some kind and assess whether these countries will be damaged; how we respond to that must be part of the negotiations. We may well have to introduce or reintroduce aid policies to make up for any losses in trade and investment. Aid agencies generally see fair trade agreements as more beneficial than aid, but they fear that Brexit will mean new free trade agreements or EPAs that could disadvantage poorer countries. They would like to see trade policies which are linked to the sustainable development goals, so crafted that they are lined up with those countries’ own objectives. I quote Sir Simon Fraser’s Tacitus lecture. He said,

“these EU trade agreements are vital for their development goals. The UK will no longer be able to champion their access to the EU market as we have in the past. We have a moral responsibility to address the concerns of these countries, which illustrate how Brexit may have unforeseen repercussions well beyond Europe”.

Finally, I mentioned security and enlargement in eastern Europe, another area in which we may need to use our aid programme to make up for shortfalls left behind. NATO membership will not be enough. If we withdraw from the EU the economies in those countries will suffer. We need to know the effect of our withdrawal on aid programmes as well.

These are my concerns and it is not asking a lot of the Government to say that they need to make some assessment. We have a considerable reputation as a trading and aiding nation and we must take care not to damage our relations with countries that respect our values and traditions, both in the Commonwealth and in the rest of the world.