European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Baroness Kennedy of Shaws Excerpts

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

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a great privilege to be in this House; we all know it. Many have expressed misgivings about the unelected nature of this part of the legislature, but the rationale is one I want to remind us about. The rational for our being here—appointed—is that we bring expertise from so many different walks of life. Expertise is an idea that is now derided. The strength of this House is that we have people from many walks of life and with great diversity. We have seen holes being plugged in recent times, with people coming from our different communities. That abundance of experience is to be brought to bear on the legislation that comes before us. I ask this question quite pointedly: are we supposed to abandon that experience when it really matters and when we are dealing with the most important issue of our lifetime?

We in this House have a higher duty. We are more than fine-tuners of legislation. The idea is that this House takes the long view, and that we have to consider the well-being of our kingdom—of our nations within this kingdom. We are the guardians, too, of hard-won rights and liberties. In the modern world that has included the ones that have come from our collaboration with our European neighbours. They are important ones—the rights to live, work, study and love across Europe, our rights around employment, our maternity rights, and our rights on the environment and on many other areas that enhance our lives.

We do not have to look over our shoulder in the way that our elected House does. We are also stewards of the constitution. We also do not have to worry about the threats that are made by the hectoring media, and we can ignore trolls on the internet because most of us are at an age when those things do not count. We in this House should be able to exercise independent judgment, and I believe that we have a duty to do so in this historic decision. The consequences may be dire for these islands. They may be dire for future generations. I say as a Scot that I am worried for Scotland. I say as someone of Irish heritage that I am worried about peace in Ireland. I am worried for our economy. As a person from a working-class background, I think that the ordinary folk of this country are going to suffer greatly. I am worried for a vast array of good law that has come from this alliance. I say that as a lawyer and as the chair of the EU Justice Sub-Committee.

While there is a myth that we are the victims of a wash of law that comes from Europe, in fact we have contributed greatly to the creation of that law: harmonising standards, ensuring that the judgments in our courts are enforced easily and speedily throughout the European Union and protecting small businesses doing business with other countries. We have created consumer rights, and the quality of goods that are being sold has to meet our standards. It means that we can easily sue through our courts and have the judgments made effective.

We have to think very seriously about our role. Membership of this trading bloc has protected us against the downsides of globalisation. I ask us to ask ourselves: “Do you think that this conjunction of Brexit with Trump is not perilous for the United Kingdom? Is it not dangerous to become more reliant on a nation led by a man who is temperamentally unsuited to high office and so unstable and irrational? Should we not be thinking about how that affects foreign affairs and why we are not better placed by being part of this Union?”

I want us to think about this business of, “The people have spoken”. I am tired of hearing this distortion. It is a degrading of our public discourse. It is a poisoning of honest debate, as 48% of our nation who voted, voted against leaving. It would be incredibly divisive if we ignored them. I want us to think very seriously about the implications of this process. Like others, I reject the triggering of Article 50 in the way that the Government have laid it out, telling us that the single market is already off the table. We heard the noble Lord, Lord Willoughby, telling us that the Prime Minister made a UKIP speech. What a shame.

The Government have now agreed that the final deal will come before both Houses, but I will ask a question. A statement like that has political force but does not have legal force. What does the promise mean if it is not in the Bill? I am concerned about what happens if our negotiators do not reach an agreement, or part of Parliament votes against the agreement. We have been told by Ministers such as David Jones that, if a deal is agreed and Parliament rejects it, we simply go off to the World Trade Organization’s trading rules. That should be a matter of serious concern, so I want to see that in the Bill so that we might have a proper opportunity to vote on those matters.

I am also concerned, as many are, about the position of people who have lived in this country for a number of years and whose rights are going to be trampled on. I hope that an amendment to protect them will be forthcoming and will be voted on by this House. This House has gained increasing public respect in recent years. The reason is that we protect the common good. We are expected by the public to bring the weight of our experience to bear and to say that, basically, that experience is worth something. If our consciences are telling us that Brexit is a folly, with potentially disastrous consequences for the country, we have to listen to that voice of conscience and instinct. History will record what each of us does and our children and grandchildren, and theirs in turn, will ask, “What did you do when this was decided? What did you do at this crucial juncture? Were you shackled by convention, fearful that the House was going to be abolished? Did you dance to the tune of the Daily Mail, or did you stand up for principle and posterity, for the values of tolerance and inclusion, for the interests of our young and for the neglected communities in our midst?”. I will support vital amendments and, if they are not accepted, I am going to vote against the Bill. This House should be urging a rethink on this whole project. This House should be saying, “Not in our name”.

Outcome of the European Union Referendum

Baroness Kennedy of Shaws Excerpts

Tuesday 5th July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)]

My Lords, the British electorate have given the political, financial and business establishment a massive kick in the teeth by voting to leave the European Union. The vote will plunge Britain into uncertainty for years to come. It also reverses the solidarity on which the European continent’s stability was based—that great vision for peace and justice which excited so many of us when we were young, and which undoubtedly still excites so many of the young who have taken to the streets in recent days.

Warnings came from every quarter but, if anything, those warnings goaded a defiant mood in people. Europe's failings—undoubtedly there are many—were simply not sufficient to explain what Britain has done to itself. This was a revolt, as the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, and others have said, against global capitalism and neo-liberal economics. I say that as someone who firmly believes in pluralism and mixed economies, and that you cannot create the kind of chasm that we are creating between rich and poor in the world, but also here in Britain. We have left too many people behind. They know it, they feel it, and they are angry.

A majority of people showed their disdain for politicians who had embraced an economics that caused the 2008 financial meltdown, forced austerity upon them, gave them stagnant working-class wages, increased immigration, denied them decent housing, made them wait longer to see doctors, made them have difficulty in getting their children into schools, and allowed tax havens and tax-fiddling for the rich. They also knew that many of the people seeking to come here, wanting asylum because they are fleeing persecution or war, do so as a direct result of that disastrous war in Iraq, and what we have done to the Middle East. The fact that some of these issues had no direct link with the European Union did not matter. It was a convenient target in a febrile angry moment, much like the makings of Trump in the United States. We now may see Europe unravelling. Our vote got a hurrah from Geert Wilders in Holland and Marine Le Pen in France, who want to follow suit, and no doubt there also was applause from the right-wing party that is back in the running in Austria. We also know that Putin, Trump, Sarah Palin and a whole collection of people who do not bring down much admiration from me are also celebrating. We have leapt into the dark, and it is truly dark. Jettisoning the status quo for an unknown is full of risk of financial downturn, possible recession, higher unemployment and political turbulence.

I want to speak about law because it is my area. I have just come from a European Union Select Committee that met this afternoon in the later hours, and there heard from the Minister, David Lidington, and from Oliver Letwin, who is of course in charge of the Brexit unit. Mr Letwin described a review of law that began eight days ago—law in huge quantity. The whole of the Government Legal Service has been mobilised to map the statutes and the statutory instruments, the “by direct effect” instruments, the jurisprudence—all of it—and it will be kept to that work for a long time to come. Yet what we did not tell people was that many of those laws have greatly improved their lives, particularly in employment law, providing protections for part-time workers, agency workers’ rights and people who are in fixed-term work. Then there are the rights to holiday leave, collective redundancy, maternity and paternity leave, equal pay for women and anti-discrimination in employment. All those things, which would not have happened because of the Thatcher attacks on trade unions, were protected by our involvement in the European Union.

The European Union has given us environmental protections and climate change targets. I know that they are not attractive to the noble Lord, Lord Lawson, a denier as he is of climate change, but they are very important to many of us and to future generations. Then think of the collaborative work that has been done on crime and security, terrorism and trafficking. If, as the noble Lord, Lord Lawson, suggests, we leave all that behind, we will be cut out of the Euro warrant, Eurojust and Europol, and out of the mutual legal assistance that is so important. The intergovernmental work on harmonising, for measures such as the Sale of Goods Act and protection for consumers, copyright law and digital commerce, is all to go out the window, along with data protection law. Then there is all the stuff that we know about in relation to education—the ways in which long-term research will be put in jeopardy.

Then there is the issue of sanctions. I chair the Justice Sub-Committee of the EU Select Committee, and sanctions is one of the issues that comes before us all the time. Think of how effective those have been in bringing Mr Putin to heel. It is all much more effective when done at the European level. Think of the contracts that have been entered into in trade relations, which reach beyond any leave-by date, and how we are going to have to revisit that. And now there are constitutional arguments about who gets to trigger Article 50, and so on. We are grieving; we are all going through that passion of grief, when people are told that they have a terminal illness, they start off in shock and are numb and then get angry and reach for other alternative possibilities that might keep them alive. That is what we are all going through—a terrible process of grief, for those of us who want to remain in Europe.

The Minister said today that the Government agree that there is a role for Parliament. There has to be one, because we have to repeal the European Communities Act 1972. There has to be one because of all this legislation. I am afraid that we have opened a door on turbulent times for our Parliament but also for our society and, I suspect, for the whole of Europe. I want to invoke to all noble Lords the Latin mantra of festina lente—to hasten slowly—and to be very careful of what we are doing, because we do not know where we are going. I echo something that my noble friend Lord Howarth said—that this may provide an opportunity for us to rethink where we went wrong, across our political parties. It is a responsibility that could be put at the doors of previous Governments of any colour. We failed to look after a whole section of our communities and now is the time to think again about where we went wrong.

Syria: Refugees and Counterterrorism

Baroness Kennedy of Shaws Excerpts

Monday 7th September 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

The noble Lord makes a good point about Calais. Clearly, we have co-operated with the French over the summer to address the situation that worsened earlier in the summer. The Home Secretary was one of the Home Affairs and Justice Ministers who called for the meeting that will take place next week because we think it right that Europe should co-operate more. However, those within the Schengen agreement are not operating in a co-ordinated, coherent way. We want to support them but we are very clear that we do not believe it is in the best interests of this country or those who are most in need to join the action that has been taken by other member states. We are co-operating all the time with our partners in Europe by helping them strengthen their operations on the borders and trying to provide them with the expertise they need. However, in the end they have decided that they want to pursue the course they are following. We believe that by pursuing that course they are increasing the flow of refugees from Syria and that is putting people’s lives at risk unnecessarily. We think that a much better approach is the one we are pursuing, which is to provide refuge but to do so for people from the camps directly.

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Davies of Stamford (Lab)]

My Lords—