European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Adonis Excerpts

Ping Pong (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 20th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, on behalf of the serried ranks behind me I enter a note of dissent and say how surprised I am that the Bill is returned to us this evening before your Lordships have even had a chance to read the Hansard account of what was said in the House of Commons just three hours ago, still less to consider it. Our Printed Paper Office in mid-afternoon did not even have a copy of David Davis’s critical Written Ministerial Statement published at 1pm. I had to tell the Printed Paper Office that I thought it existed and the Printed Paper Office had to tell me to go to the Vote Office in the House of Commons to get a copy because none was available in your Lordships’ House.

Throughout the passage of the Bill I have made an issue of these important procedural points, at the cost of making myself less than wildly popular with the Whips, because, as is becoming increasingly clear, what is happening on the Bill is a dry run for the decisions that Parliament will take on the EU withdrawal treaty—or the lack of a withdrawal treaty—in the months to come. Those decisions are probably the most important that we will take in our time as Members of this House and this Parliament and I therefore wish to put on record what I think many Back-Bench Members of your Lordships’ House believe, which is, first, that it should ultimately be for the House and not for the Whips, still less for the Government, to decide when and for how long we debate these vital matters of state, and secondly, that we should not bow to the instructions of the Government Chief Whip when the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, is behaving unreasonably.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Adonis]

It is not reasonable for us to consider the Commons Reasons before we have even had a chance properly to read and consider what the House of Commons said.

Motion agreed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, I second what the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, has said. I do not think the mood of the House has been at its best this evening.

After the courageous speech of the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, on Monday, many of us were extremely disappointed that the other House did not assert the democratic power of Parliament and support the amendment of the noble Viscount and Mr Dominic Grieve. I watched the proceedings of the House of Commons from the Gallery, sitting next to the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, and the only comment I will make on that is if I go into battle in future, I would rather do that behind the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, than the Duke of York.

The position as it now stands is both highly confused and highly unsatisfactory. The text of the Bill says that in the extreme crisis of a proposed no-deal Brexit, all that the House of Commons will be allowed to do is to debate a take-note Motion. I was watching the House of Commons debate from the Gallery—we still do not have the Hansard account of it—and the most telling contribution was from Mr Hilary Benn, who put it like this: if future generations ask us what we did, all we can say is, “I took note”. As he also said, in this extremity, the job of Parliament,

“is not to take note; it is to take charge”.

When people say that Parliament should not give instructions and cannot negotiate, which has been the mantra of the Prime Minister in recent days, that misses the point that Parliament rightly gives instructions to the Executive all the time. That is why they are called the Executive: their job is to execute the will of Parliament.

The Commons even issues instructions on matters of peace and war—and rightly so, because we are a parliamentary democracy. When in 2013 the House of Commons declined to support David Cameron’s recommendation for the bombing of Syria, after the vote the then Prime Minister said:

“I believe in respecting the will of the House of Commons. It is very clear that the House does not want to see British military action. I get that and the Government will act accordingly”.


In the case of a no-deal Brexit, it is absolutely within the power and duty of the House of Commons, as the sovereign power in this democracy, similarly to tell the Government that this is not acceptable and that an alternative course should be followed. The Government then have a democratic responsibility to act accordingly.

This brings us to the curious Written Ministerial Statement from the Secretary of State for Exiting the EU, which was tabled at 1 pm today. It says:

“It will be for the Speaker to determine whether a Motion when it is introduced by the Government under the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill is or is not in fact cast in neutral terms”.


As that is precisely what the Standing Orders of the House of Commons say in any event, that is saying nothing at all—and, crucially, those Standing Orders specifically say that Motions in neutral terms are unamendable, which is the precise point at issue.

There is then this sentence:

“The Government recognises that it is open for Ministers and members of the House of Commons to table motions on and debate matters of concern and that, as is the convention, parliamentary time will be provided for this”.

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord Adonis]

I am not giving way. The noble Lord spoke at huge length on Monday and I am taking my opportunity to speak.

To my great surprise, this satisfied Mr Grieve. All I can say, having, like other noble Lords, spent more than 100 hours in this House on the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill, is that I simply do not trust the Government to uphold these constitutional conventions. The noble Lord, Lord Callanan, David Davis and Jacob Rees-Mogg are not interested in parliamentary conventions; they are ruthlessly determined on a hard Brexit. It is not only them; the Prime Minister now routinely ignores resolutions of the House of Commons —because she so often loses them—and has propounded a remarkable new constitutional doctrine that the Government regard themselves as bound only by statutes, not by other resolutions of the House of Commons.

It was precisely because of this dangerous new doctrine of government sovereignty trumping parliamentary sovereignty—

[Lord True]

My Lords—

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, I have made it very clear that I am not giving way to the noble Lord.

It is precisely because of this dangerous new doctrine of government sovereignty trumping parliamentary sovereignty that those of us standing up for parliamentary democracy sought to enshrine these key procedural issues in the Bill. It is a sad day for Parliament that we did not succeed and that we may now be dependent on the Government to observe conventions that they have so far been unwilling to preserve.

I will make one final point on the position of this House. We have been remarkably assiduous on this Bill. I think it is true to say that we have spent longer debating it than any other Bill in our entire 800-year history—and, tellingly, we spent about 50% longer debating it than did the House of Commons. As a long-serving Member of your Lordships’ House, perhaps I may be allowed to say that our besetting weakness in this House is self-congratulation. It is not helped by the fact—I learned this trick as a Minister—that making a great show of congratulating the House on the brilliance of its revision is a seduction technique to minimise the extent of that revision.

In defence of the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, he has not gone in for much seduction, but there has been far too much self-congratulation on the other Benches of this House in the face of the reality of the situation that we face. The reality, as I see it, is this. We are presently on course for a hard Brexit and there is still no provision in statute to prevent such an outcome. On the contrary, the Government, with wafer-thin majorities—but none the less sufficient majorities—in the House of Commons have fought off all attempts at setting new national policy on a sensible and credible course. The truth is that for those of us in both Houses of Parliament who favour a sensible Brexit, and a people’s vote to allow the people to stop Brexit—

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

Will my noble friend give way?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, I am drawing my remarks to a close. My noble friend can speak in a minute.

The truth is that those of us who favour a sensible Brexit or a people’s vote to allow the people to stop Brexit have suffered an unmitigated defeat on this Bill. Victories are not made up of accumulated defeats. We need to start winning soon or the country will lose very badly when the British people are forced into a hard Brexit that will make everyone poorer in only nine months’ time.

[Lord True]

My Lords, when the noble Lord declined to give way either to me or to his noble friend Lord Grocott, one of his explanations was that on Monday I spoke for too long when I troubled your Lordships with a brief intervention. I invite the historians of our debate to examine how long and how often the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, has spoken in comparison with some of the rest of us.

I have listened to the comminations of the noble Lord, Lord Newby, my noble friend Lord Cormack and at length of the noble Lord, Lord Adonis. I note the empty Benches of the Labour Party opposite. The party which fills those Benches tried to stop this Bill and then sends its people home when it thinks it has no chance of bringing the Government down—