Brexit: Withdrawal Agreement and Political Declaration

Baroness Smith of Newnham Excerpts

Wednesday 5th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, I remember the late Lord Williamson of Horton coming to speak when I was a student at Oxford. He said that one morning Margaret Thatcher came down the stairs in No. 10 waving a piece of paper, saying, “I’ve read it. I agree”. The piece of paper—indeed, it would have been a few pieces of paper—was the Single European Act. We then had a Prime Minister who did her homework, who was a lawyer and who could have been expected to understand the implications of what she had agreed to. Yet, with hindsight, she and many others on the Conservative Benches felt that the Single European Act may have been a mistake.

With the withdrawal agreement that Theresa May—or perhaps one of her Secretaries of State, it is not wholly clear—has negotiated, one wonders whether anybody has read it. The most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury noted that he has read it, as have I and, I suspect, others across the Chamber, but when the Prime Minister claimed to have agreement in her Cabinet on the withdrawal agreement, that was quickly disproved. At 585 pages, it is difficult to see how members of her Cabinet or Conservative Back-Benchers could possibly have read the agreement within an hour, when they were supposed to be discussing it. There is a question about how much detail has been examined and how much time has been spent scrutinising the withdrawal agreement, which does not do what the Prime Minister claimed. It does not return control from the European Union, as advertised by the leave campaign, as Theresa May has said she wants to do, and as the noble Baroness the Leader of the House suggested earlier.

There are some good points in the withdrawal agreement, and it is important to distinguish between the withdrawal agreement and the political declaration. There are some aspects of Part 2 of the withdrawal agreement dealing with the rights of EU citizens and UK nationals which should have been dealt with in June 2016. One might say: what has taken you so long? Despite its good bits there are all sorts of hostages to fortune. The role of the Court of Justice of the European Union might be something that those of us who are passionate pro-Europeans think is a good thing, but should the United Kingdom be tied to the jurisdiction of the Court of Justice in the way it will be under the withdrawal agreement? I suspect that no leavers would want that—I see the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, shaking his head—but I am not sure many remainers want that either.

Of course, the withdrawal agreement is supposed to take us only to the end of December 2020. Thereafter, the political declaration is supposed to lead us towards those great sunlit uplands. The most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury reminded us of Psalm 121, which talks about mine eyes looking up to the hills. The political declaration is something of a mirage. As the noble Lord, Lord Mendelsohn, suggested, it is vague and does not deliver on the expectations generated by leavers or the Prime Minister.

By now, we should be clear what the future relationship will look like. Arguably, it should have been clear on 23 June 2016. It was not. It should certainly have been clear at the time that the Prime Minister triggered Article 50. It was not. It was almost clear in July this year, when the Prime Minister claimed to have agreement on her Chequers proposal, but it was not clear then and the political declaration that the Prime Minister has negotiated does not have the support of her Cabinet—as we saw with the resignation of a second Brexit Secretary, which seemed to be more than a little careless—and it does not have support in the other place.

The noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, states in her Motion that the political declaration,

“would do grave damage to the future economic prosperity, internal security and global influence of the United Kingdom”.

There is nothing to suggest that this is a better arrangement than we have as members of the European Union, and we should not be lured into the false logic that the Prime Minister has put forward, the noble Baroness the Leader of the House reiterated and, I regret to say, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, also suggested: we need a deal, this is the deal, therefore we should accept it. Nobody voted to be poorer, for the country to be diminished and for us also to lose control of our sovereignty. Nobody wanted that. Some leavers might have said that they would rather be worse off if we could reclaim sovereignty, but who in their right mind would want to be poorer, for the country to be diminished and for us to lose control?

I am afraid that, again, I am reminded of the words of Baroness Thatcher. She said consensus is a,

“process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies in search of something in which no-one believes, but to which no-one objects—the process of avoiding the very issues that have to be solved, merely because you cannot get agreement on the way ahead. What great cause would have been fought and won under the banner ‘I stand for consensus’?”

I would say that the withdrawal agreement and the political declaration represent consensus, except the only person who wants this agreement is the Prime Minister. If the House of Commons cannot support this deal, and if almost everyone agrees that no deal would be a disaster for the country, we have another option. We can ask the Prime Minister and the House of Commons to look again, and perhaps it is time to ask the people to think again.

When we voted to trigger Article 50, I was one of the very few Liberal Democrats who did not vote for the amendment on a referendum. I wanted to accept the result of the referendum because I thought that that was the right thing to do. However, if we cannot find a deal and can only put forward ideas that will make the country much worse off, surely it is now time to offer the people the chance to think again.