European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Blackwell Excerpts

Report: 4th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 30th April 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Roberts of Llandudno (LD)]

Are we learning the lessons of history? Sometimes it is very valuable to see what has happened in other countries when similar steps have been taken. We remember the reluctance of Mrs May to allow Parliament to be involved. She wanted the Government to be in charge. My mind went back to Berlin in March 1933 when the enabling Bill was passed in the Reichstag, which transferred the democratic right from the Parliament into the hands of one man—that was the Chancellor, and his name was Adolf Hitler. Perhaps I am seeing threats that do not exist, but they are possible. Who would have thought before the 1930s that Germany, such a cultured country, would involve itself in such a terrible war?

Let us take the warning. What we are doing here must involve Parliament. I would like to see it involving the people as well, but it must certainly be in other hands. We cannot let an enabling Act of the United Kingdom possibly lead to the catastrophe that took place in Berlin in 1933.

[Lord Blackwell (Con)]

My Lords, I have listened very carefully to those noble Lords who have proposed this amendment but I have concluded, on the basis of the other arguments which have been set out, that it is fundamentally flawed, for both constitutional and practical reasons. As the noble Lord, Lord Howard, said, the constitutional argument is that it risks completely confusing the roles of the Executive and the legislature. We have a system in this country where the separation of those is very clear. The Executive can command authority so long as they have a majority in the House of Commons. Their role is to bring proposals to Parliament; Parliament’s role is to be the legislature. You cannot have a negotiation where a Parliament seeks to be the negotiating partner: that is an impossible situation. Subsection (5) in the new clause proposed by the amendment allows Parliament to try and direct the details of the negotiation. That is constitutionally inappropriate—that is the role of the Executive. The Executive are accountable to Parliament but it is their role to negotiate and bring their proposals to Parliament.

On a practical level, even more importantly, and as other noble Lords have said, it would completely undermine the Government’s negotiating position if they did not have the opportunity to walk away. A negotiation has to involve compromises by both sides. If the European side of this argument knew that, however onerous they made the conditions, the Government would come back to Parliament, which could tell them to go back and concede some more, we would simply be offering the opportunity for one side of the negotiations to keep pursuing its case rather than compromise. That would completely undermine the practical basis on which negotiations have to be held between two sides which have the authority to negotiate, with proposals brought back for approval by the House.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, I have a couple of observations, one specific and the other more general. The specific observation relates to subsection (1) in the proposed new clause, which talks about the way in which a withdrawal agreement would be approved or otherwise by Parliament. This issue has been raised several times in the past by me and other noble Lords. If you require parliamentary approval, what happens if one House says yes and the other says no? This is particularly serious in relation to anything connected with the ratification or otherwise of agreements between the Government and the EU 27. Either House saying no—in this case it would probably be the House of Lords—would, in effect, be a veto on the whole process. To be fair, there is an attempt to deal with this problem, because proposed new subsection (1) requires approval,

“by a resolution in the House of Commons”,

but the simple,

“consideration of a motion in the House of Lords”.

My simple, factual and specific point is just this: we do not need an Act of Parliament in order for us to consider a Motion. We can do that any time we want to, pretty well, on any subject we choose. That is not any kind of control or limitation whatsoever. I would say, “Good, but what on earth is subsection (1)(b) doing in an Act of Parliament?” It is absolutely unnecessary—otiose may be the word, I am not sure, but it is irrelevant and we should not clutter the statute book with points such as this which are of no value whatsoever. My more general observation is that we are putting ourselves in a bizarre circumstance. We are saying that we, the unelected House of Lords, should pass an amendment which effectively tells the House of Commons how to hold the Government to account. Essentially, it is instructing the House of Commons. A lot of noble Lords have been in the House of Commons. That House holds Governments to account day in, day out. It does that by a multitude of different mechanisms: by debate, adjournment debates, emergency resolutions, questions to Ministers, and Bills.

The function of Parliament in general and the House of Commons in particular is to hold Governments to account. We are simply saying to it by this amendment, “We think you should have additional powers to hold the Government to account”. If the House of Commons wants to exercise control over the way in which the negotiations proceed, it does not need any advice, still less any extra powers given to it by us—it has them already. Government is subject to the House of Commons. The House of Commons is not the servant of government in a parliamentary democracy, to quote the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, but ultimately it is the other way round: the Government is the servant of the House of Commons.