European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 1st March 2017 Lords Chamber

I want to suggest that we leave the Bill as it is. Pass it as quickly as possible and, after all the speeches about guaranteeing European citizens their right to remain, let us do it as quickly as possible—but do not attach it to this Bill. As far as I am concerned, that is not revising or scrutinising the Bill. It is simply adding material which I do not think is very helpful.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

Does the most reverend Primate not understand the moral obligation on this Government? These people are not bargaining chips. If we say quite freely that they are free to stay, that gives the moral high ground to the Government in their negotiations. I would argue that all noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Howard, should vote with their conscience and not with their party.

[The Archbishop of York]

I never want to see any human person used as a bargaining chip. They are made in God’s likeness and as far as I am concerned, they are people and must be treated according to the rule of law in this country. The Prime Minister tried to give a guarantee. Angela Merkel did not want it before Article 50 was triggered. My suggestion is to trigger it and go back to what you promised.

I may be a Primate, but thank God I am not in captivity. The other Primate is definitely in captivity, because he is unwell and his legs have just had an operation—but I am not. I suggest that the sooner this becomes law, the greater the challenge we can give the Prime Minister on what she attempted to do but was prevented from doing because Article 50 had not been triggered. As soon as it is triggered and the power is given, we shall shout as loudly as we can and campaign as much as we can for her to go back to what she originally suggested.

People such as me were shocked, after being here and having to travel round on a travel document and pay huge sums for visas to visit the rest of Europe, to suddenly discover that when naturalised—that is the word that is used—as a British citizen we could suddenly visit the whole of Europe without a visa. That was great stuff, and I applaud it—but, please, this is a very limited Bill and we should pass it as it is.

I have one more suggestion for our Minister: to set up a truth and listening commission in every one of our four nations, so that the divisions which we are seeing at the moment can be healed and to listen to the truth and to what the people of Britain and Northern Ireland are looking for, rather than simply locking it in the Government. For those reasons I will vote against any of the amendments, as I do not think they are revising or improving the legislation. They are simply adding on and adding on.

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Moved by

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb]

12: Clause 1, page 1, line 5, at end insert—
“( ) A notification may only be given under subsection (1) once—(a) Her Majesty’s Government has laid before each House of Parliament a White Paper setting out its approach to any transitional arrangements with the European Union following the expiry of the two-year period specified in Article 50(3) of the Treaty on European Union; and(b) the approach set out in the White Paper has been approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament.”

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb]

My Lords, Amendment 12 is about transitional arrangements. It would require the Government to set out, prior to triggering Article 50, a detailed plan for transitional arrangements with the EU covering from the end of the two-year Article 50 notification period to the coming into force of a final treaty on the UK’s new relationship with the EU. It would further require that that plan be approved by Parliament.

I very much welcome the White Paper’s recognition that if a final deal with the EU can be successfully secured within the two-year Article 50 negotiation period there will need to be a gradual transition from what we have now to the trading relationship set out in the final agreement. In other words, we will not leave the single market overnight and there will be a phased implementation to give businesses the chance to adapt as necessary. However, that is not the same thing at all as needing a period of transition should, as most experienced observers expect, the two-year Article 50 negotiation period proves insufficient to reach a final agreement.

This simple amendment seeks to guarantee a meaningful transition arrangement to govern UK-EU trade relations during the period, which could of course be as long as a decade, between the UK leaving the EU at the end of the two-year Article 50 notification period and whatever longer-term agreement on the future UK-EU relationship is concluded. Currently, when we hit the two-year mark, which in reality could be as soon as 18 months given the requirement to bring the deal before this House, the other place and the European Parliament, the only option if a deal has not been secured is to send Britain over a cliff edge. We face having to leave the EU effectively overnight, crashing out of the EU on WTO-only terms. The Government stated clearly in their White Paper that they want to avoid cliff edges but it seems at the moment that they have done nothing to stay away from this one. In short, my amendment is a safety net.

Amendment 16 is about employment and equality protections and was drafted in collaboration with the Women’s Equality Party. It would ensure that once the UK had withdrawn from the EU any changes to workers’ rights or equality legislation derived from EU law would be subject to full parliamentary scrutiny. In recent weeks we have heard repeated very welcome statements by Ministers, most notably the Secretary of State for Exiting the EU, that EU-derived workers’ rights are not at risk from Brexit. The White Paper states that the,

“Government will protect and enhance the rights people have at work”.

That is obviously good news. However, the White Paper also says that the forthcoming great repeal Bill —or whatever we will call it—will enable changes to be made to such vital EU-derived law by secondary legislation. Perhaps that would not be by this Government but by a future one.

My amendment simply seeks to write those welcome ministerial assurances into the Bill, with particular regard to equality and women’s rights. Even half a century after the passing of the Equal Pay Act, women working full time still earn 14% less on average than their male counterparts. That is a cause for concern given the segregation of our labour market, the systemic undervaluing of work traditionally done by women and the unfairly shared burden of childcare. According to the disgracefully underfunded Equality and Human Rights Commission, pregnant women and new mothers are now twice as likely to face workplace discrimination as 10 years ago, yet the number of employment tribunal claims for sex or pregnancy discrimination has fallen sharply because of the introduction of hefty fees. We definitely need to retain and indeed work to enhance the legal protections against pregnancy, maternity or sex discrimination currently provided by EU-derived law, as well as similar protections against race, disability, age, religion or sexual-orientation discrimination.

I also support Amendment 29 from the noble Lord, Lord Wigley. It is clear that on 23 June last year the British people did not vote to cut the number of EU students in the UK. Why on earth would they? Those EU students bring benefits to our universities, economy and culture. The point of these amendments is to make the Government think again on all sorts of issues and I hope that they will. I beg to move.

[Lord Wigley]

My Lords, I have my name down in support of Amendment 16, which the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, just spoke to. It addresses the key question of ensuring that after Brexit and the repatriation of EU law—whether to Westminster or the devolved Administrations, as the case may be—there is not any erosion of the safeguards in law protecting the rights of workers and the interests of those protected by equality legislation.

My concerns are threefold. The first is the interests of disabled people, for which I worked for four decades and was involved directly in many of the key legislative steps, particularly the Disability Discrimination Act, which, incidentally, Sir John Major did much to facilitate as Prime Minister. Secondly, I am concerned about the safeguards for working people. Much progress has been achieved over the past 40 years and we must not let it be washed away by the Brexit tide. Thirdly, if we are to have unfettered access to the single market for our manufacturing products, as the Government hope, despite their unwillingness to include this in legislation, we must maintain equivalent standards to those on mainland Europe. We cannot allow these groups to suffer in a race to the bottom of that sort.

Amendment 29, in my name and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, focuses on the paramount need to safeguard the whole higher education sector before committing to Brexit. In particular, the amendment refers to tuition fees, Horizon 2020 and other EU research programmes, Erasmus+ and,

“continued participation in the Bologna process”.

I hope the Minister will give the Committee some categorical assurances on these important matters, which are all fundamental to our higher education sector. If the Government are not forthcoming, these issues are not going to go away. They may well be addressed by a further amendment on Report for the Higher Education and Research Bill. An amendment has already been tabled in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hannay of Chiswick, and others. In other words, one way or another, I am certain that this House will not allow our higher education sector to be undermined by Brexit. I would be very glad to have some assurances along those lines from the Minister.

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[Lord Bridges of Headley]

I totally understand the noble Baroness’s concern and interest in this issue. I will pick my words carefully. The Government’s position is that, through the great repeal Bill, EU law and regulations will be ported into UK law. I will come on to equalities in a moment. If the noble Baroness feels that that does not address the point, I will be happy to discuss this with her more directly. As I said, the great repeal Bill will make provision for this legislation to continue to stand once the European Communities Act is repealed, so the same protections for workers as are currently in place will remain after we exit the EU.

On equalities, as I said on Monday, the Equality Act already provides a strong framework to ensure that the UK is well placed to continue driving equality forward. I assure your Lordships that all the protections covered in the Equality Act 2006 and the Equality Act 2010 will continue to apply once the UK has left the European Union.

On the issue of violence against women, the Government are committed to tackling domestic violence, modern slavery and human trafficking. The UK already has some of the most robust protections in the world to tackle violence against women. To address one of the points that noble Lords made, after we leave the EU the UK will maintain its place as a prominent international actor. We will continue to work with our European partners and globally to promote women’s rights and work towards ensuring the safety of women everywhere.

I turn now to fishing, which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, just spoke about. I entirely agree about the importance of the fishing sector and the fishing industry. It is also referred to in the White Paper. It is a matter that my department and other ministerial colleagues across Whitehall are very focused on. I totally heed the points he made about the issues raised. I hope he will forgive me if I do not go into great depth and detail, but there is one point I will focus on, which is the approval mechanism for the negotiations—again, a very valid point.

The Government have made it perfectly clear that we want to come to an agreement that works for the whole of the United Kingdom. We have a created a process to work with the representatives of the devolved Administrations to ensure that their views are taken into account. I certainly commit to write to the noble and learned Lord to set out in more detail what that means, but I need to make clear to him and to the Committee, and to repeat, that no part of the UK has a veto on fishing or anything else.

I turn to another topic of the amendments that is covered in the White Paper—the potential transitional period following negotiations. As noble Lords will know, the White Paper states that we want to reach an agreement with the EU within the two-year Article 50 period. Article 50 states that the process for withdrawal will take account of the framework of the leaving member state’s future relationship with the EU, and there is a clear connection between the terms of our withdrawal and the future relationship we wish to establish.

We do not want to get ahead of the negotiations or set out unilateral positions. How we take the process forward will be a matter for discussion with the European institutions and our European partners. But, given the language in Article 50 and the connection between our withdrawal and our future relationship, it is our intention to seek to deal with both sets of issues together wherever possible—something we believe would clearly be in the interests of the European Union as well as the UK. We believe that both sides would benefit from a phased process of implementation that would allow the United Kingdom and the European Union to adapt to and prepare for any new arrangements. It is in nobody’s interests for there to be any disruption. The implementation arrangements we may rely upon will be a subject for negotiation and their nature will vary considerably depending on the agreement we reach with the EU.

I turn to the common foreign and security policy, picked up in Amendment 44. As I have said before, after we leave the European Union we will remain committed to European security and aim to add value to European Union foreign and security policy. Our objective is to ensure that the European Union’s role in defence and security is complementary to and respects the central role of NATO.

More broadly, although we are leaving the European Union, the UK will continue to be one of the most important global actors in international affairs. Indeed, along with France we are the only EU member state with an independent nuclear deterrent and a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. Again, as with other amendments in this group, our participation in the common foreign and security policy cannot be resolved through unilateral action. Instead, it must be addressed through discussion with the other 27 members.

This topic and all the other issues that have been raised are worthy of debate—I do not dispute that for one moment. Where I differ from noble Lords who have tabled the amendments is on whether they should be in the Bill, the core purpose of which—indeed, the only purpose—is to enable the Government to deliver on the referendum and trigger Article 50. Therefore, with great respect, I ask that the amendments not be pressed.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his reply. It has been an interesting debate, ranging widely from women’s rights and the protection of minorities to education, medicine, foreign policy and fishing. We understand about the movement of all such protections straight into UK law. At the same time, we also understand that there could be a steady erosion afterwards by various means. That is why we are asking for corroboration that this simply will not happen. We want to be better than we were in the EU, not worse. A noble Lord on the opposite Benches said that this is very complex. When you do something for the first time, it is always much harder than doing it subsequently, so we are bound to make mistakes. One role of this House is to make sure that we raise issues that we feel will cause problems—and it is for the Government to respond appropriately. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 12 withdrawn.

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[Lord Trevethin and Oaksey (CB)]

My Lords, I hope that this is not too legalistic an intervention but I wish to seek some clarification. There have been a number of references to the Miller case. In paragraph 36 of its judgment, the Supreme Court said:

“The applicants’ case … is that when Notice is given, the United Kingdom will have embarked on an irreversible course that will lead to much of EU law ceasing to have effect in the United Kingdom, whether or not Parliament repeals the 1972 Act. As Lord Pannick QC put it for Mrs Miller, when ministers give Notice they will be ‘pulling … the trigger which causes the bullet to be fired, with the consequence that the bullet will hit the target and the Treaties will cease to apply’”.


I may be being obtuse, and of course there is an important difference between the role of the applicant and the role of the legislator, but I am curious to know whether the amendment would, if enacted, provide a bullet-proof jacket to the bullet which my noble friend Lord Pannick so effectively deployed in argument in the Supreme Court.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb]

My Lords, I support Amendment 31. I realise that I am feeling a bit fractious, which is probably because I have not had my dinner. I cannot answer for other noble Lords’ fractiousness this evening but I imagine that it is for similar reasons.

I have no legal training but I think that the situation is perfectly logical. We had to have an Act of Parliament to go into the EU, and therefore surely it is completely logical to have an Act of Parliament to enable our withdrawal. To those people who keep on about taking back control, I say that if we do not have that Act of Parliament and that scrutiny, we will be giving the European Parliament or the EU more control over the terms than we have ourselves. So I commend Amendment 31.