European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Adonis Excerpts

Monday 18th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lamont of Lerwick]

Noble Lords opposite are living in a slight fantasy land if they think we could reach no deal without there being a very long debate and a whole set of arguments in the House of Commons.

At no stage have I been an advocate of no deal in the negotiations, but not advocating no deal does not mean that we should rule it out in all circumstances, and it does not mean that you should rule it out as being on the table as a negotiating tactic. If, as Dominic Grieve has suggested, we make no deal completely unthinkable, we in effect undermine the position of our negotiators. If our negotiators cannot walk away from the table or if the other side—Monsieur Barnier and so on—know that they cannot do so, all the other side has to do is to sit there rejecting things until we eventually agree with everything it wants. Ruling out no deal completely as an option, even as a theoretical negotiating objective, would place the Government in an impossible position.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, the amendment we are discussing does not rule out no deal; it lays down what will happen if there is no deal. There is a fundamental difference between the two.

[Lord Lamont of Lerwick]

But we are also talking about Motions and amendments, and the distinction was the very point I was making. Although my noble friend Lord Hailsham has removed the word “direction”, we have to consider what is meant by having amendments and the purpose of insisting that a Motion that the Government bring forward should be unamendable.

The second reason put forward, in addition to making no deal an impossibility, is parliamentary sovereignty. I do not wish to be too aggressive about this but to many of us this seems a very ironic reason when, for year after year in European matters, parliamentary sovereignty has just been ignored. A fundamental point, however, that we cannot forget is that on this issue we have ceded sovereignty to the people of this country. That is what we did when we held the referendum. Noble Lords talk about a meaningful vote but it seems that they want to make the vote on the referendum meaningless; the vote on Article 50, meaningless; and the election itself in which—