European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill

Lord Bridges of Headley Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & 2nd reading (Hansard)
Monday 13th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bridges of Headley (Con)]

My Lords, while it is always a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, who I know, like a number of your Lordships, feels a sense of regret and sadness at the passing of the Bill—and it will be passed—I myself feel a sense of relief, not just because, as my noble friend Lord Forsyth said, there is no longer that blue-suited star-spangled man on College Green shouting “Stop Brexit!” every two minutes but because we are now able to break out of the political gridlock that was exhausting and frustrating not just this Parliament but the entire country, and we can get on with Brexit. I say that as someone who voted to remain.

I have always believed, and argued from the Dispatch Box and from the Back Benches, that we have to honour the result of the referendum, but for the last three years this nation has twisted and turned in the wind because the Government were in office but not in power at Westminster and therefore lacked real credibility at the negotiating table in Brussels. The powers and role of Parliament and those of the Executive, as my noble friend Lord Forsyth said, became blurred. That lack of clarity led to even more uncertainty, not helped by those who rejected the result of the referendum in the first place, and our European partners saw that. The President of the European Commission said just last week in London:

“During the Withdrawal Agreement negotiation, there was always the uncertainty around whether Brexit would happen. It was an uncertainty that made the negotiation inevitably tense.”


That is one way of putting it. I would say that the sense that Parliament was in control rather than the Government made concluding the negotiations nigh-on impossible, and that is why the general election was, as I have argued before, an inevitability. That election in December provided a clear result, so now at last we have a Bill before us that will enable us to leave the EU.

Of course, as we have been hearing from a number of noble Lords, we as the second Chamber should scrutinise its contents. We have heard a number of concerns. I want to focus on one, and it is to do with that little word “scrutiny” and the role of Parliament in the negotiations that lie ahead. What do we actually mean by scrutiny? Do we mean Questions in Parliament, ministerial Statements, Select Committee hearings and debate? Yes. Do we mean the interrogation of Ministers as they bring legislation to this House? Of course. Do we mean searching questions about delegated powers? Again, yes. But if by “scrutiny” what people are really saying is that they want to go back to a situation where Parliament is trying to dictate the terms of the negotiations or the process, I would gently point out that that is what the British public voted emphatically to put an end to at the general election. While I read with interest the views of your Lordships’ European Union Committee, in its excellent report that was published on Friday, that the future negotiations,

“will be subject to detailed and transparent scrutiny by the European Parliament. The UK Parliament and the British people deserve the same transparency and accountability”,

I remind your Lordships that this House’s own Select Committee on the Constitution concluded:

“we do not recommend directly replicating the European Parliament's treaty scrutiny mechanisms at Westminster”,

although I should add that it said:

“lessons may be learned from it, particularly in relation to information provision.”

I am sure we would all agree that information provision is one thing but creating new legislative processes is quite another. We should bear this in mind over the next few days for, as my noble friends Lord Forsyth and Lord Cormack said, how this unelected Chamber handles the Bill is as important as what we say about it.

The last few years have eroded many people’s trust in our political process—trust that was already battered and bruised. If we now want to restore trust in our system and want people to see this unelected Chamber as adding value to the parliamentary process, we cannot and must not allow the public to think that we are frustrating the will of the elected Chamber. They can sense the difference between proper scrutiny on the one hand and wilful obstruction on the other.

The tough part of the negotiations is only now about to begin. However, the battle of Brexit, leave versus remain, is well and truly over. We are leaving. The time has come to turn those Brexit swords into ploughshares and focus on what we begin each day praying for: the uniting and knitting together of our society.

European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill

Lord Bridges of Headley Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard continued) & Committee stage & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard continued): House of Lords
Wednesday 15th January 2020 Lords Chamber

In both scenarios, an extension of negotiations would clearly be in the national interest. The only third option, in the event of a failure to agree a comprehensive agreement by October, would be for the Government to negotiate an amendment of the withdrawal agreement to agree an extension of the implementation period, notwithstanding the current cut-off date of 31 June, and then to amend this legislation along the lines of that amendment. This would be, in one sense, what the Government did twice last year to extend the Brexit date for further negotiations and to get the legislation through Parliament. But in that, as in the other two scenarios, having the current Clause 33 in the Bill is simply unhelpful. It is unnecessary and potentially damaging to the economy, our security and the national interest. It should be deleted now.

[Lord Bridges of Headley (Con)]

My Lords, just before the noble Lord sits down, I quickly ask him something on a point of information. He spoke for 10 minutes and did not mention two words: “Salisbury convention”. I am sure he knows that, on page 5 of the Conservative Party manifesto, there is a clear commitment not to extend the implementation period. Does he agree that this amendment is in contradiction to the Salisbury convention?

[Lord Newby]

No, because it does not require the period to be extended at all. If the Prime Minister is correct and we pass this amendment, there is absolutely no let or hindrance to the Tory party manifesto being adhered to. Deleting this clause will, I fear, make the Prime Minister’s life easier. He should welcome it.

European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill

Lord Bridges of Headley Excerpts

Report stage & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords & Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords & Report: 1st sitting
Monday 20th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bowness (Con)]

My Lords, I have added my name to this simplified amendment. In Committee, I appealed to the Government to recognise that many people remain concerned about the nature of our future arrangements with the European Union. This is not about for or against Brexit but about the future. The Government appear to want us to take everything on trust, but we need to know in advance not the details of their negotiation but the approach they will take in negotiations.

This is not a novel idea. I know that in the United Kingdom we are not keen on adopting approaches taken by other countries, but—without going into the details—I refer Ministers to the working of the grand committee of the Finnish parliament. It is a good start to learn how other parliaments reconcile coming to an agreement with their Governments about their approach to European Union matters and the attitude we seem to be taking. That approach, with modifications, is to be found in the proceedings—and indeed, so far as Finland is concerned, in the constitutions—of member states. It is not a novel idea.

Statements, Questions and take-note Motions in arrears of events are no substitute for the kind of procedures to which we refer. The citizens who accept Brexit but want to ensure that we try to keep as many of the benefits of the last 40 years as possible need to be listened to. If the Government do not bring forward any amendment at Third Reading to deal with this, I am afraid many people will feel that the Government, in the name of an ideological pursuit of a hard Brexit and possibly no deal, have no intention of healing the divisions in the country. The Government need to establish some trust among the rest of us.

[Lord Bridges of Headley (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak very briefly on this, largely echoing a lot of what the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, said. In Committee, much was said about how the Government are “deliberately cutting” Parliament

“out of any meaningful role”, [Official Report, 15/1/20; col. 719.]

to quote the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter. We heard it again just a moment ago, when she said the Government are shutting out voices from the debate.

I concede entirely that—as the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, rightly put it—this amendment is a watered-down version of the one debated in Committee, but my objections to it remain the same. I will not overstate the case; it is important not to do so. For example, I would not claim that this amendment will bind the hands of Government, and of course it will not thwart Brexit. I will make just two simple points.

The first is that the amendment creates what I see as a legislative straitjacket that binds us into an inflexible parliamentary process that cannot really take account of the diplomatic and political reality of the negotiations, which—as we all know—by their very nature will not abide by the bi-monthly reporting cycle that the amendment sets out.

The second and much more profound point—this is what the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, was referring to—is that Parliament already has considerable powers of scrutiny to hold the Government to account. I know my noble friend slightly dismisses them; I do not. I see them as absolutely intrinsic to the way that this House and the other place work. I am not talking here about the shenanigans we saw in the last Parliament, with MPs taking control of parliamentary business, but those traditional means of scrutiny—the other means that Parliament has, in this House and the other place, to interrogate and scrutinise.

I asked the Library to do some research for me. I asked how many PNQs, Urgent Questions, Oral Statements, Select Committee reports, Written Statements, Oral Questions and Written Questions have touched on Brexit since the day of the referendum. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, may say that this is nothing or is irrelevant; I totally disagree. In the calculation the Library made, it excluded the Bills we have debated, including the 650 hours this House has spent on debating EU-related issues. Let me give your Lordships the results of this exercise. Since the referendum, there have been, in Parliament as a whole: 10 Private Notice Questions related to Brexit; 32 Urgent Questions; 116 Oral Statements; 179 Select Committee reports; 743 Written Statements; 6,241 Oral Questions and supplementaries; and 15,366 Written Questions. I do not think this can be just waved away as nothing; I see it as fundamental. This is 22,687 items that drive a coach and horses through the need for this amendment, 22,687 ways in which Parliament has had a meaningful role. It can interrogate Ministers on the points that the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, made, and I believe this is 22,687 reasons why we do not need the amendment.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

If the noble Lord’s research had gone a little further back, he might have been quite startled by what he found. He would have found that the procedures laid down in this amendment are almost precisely those that the Conservative Government applied in 1970 when negotiating our accession. Regular reports to Parliament, regular Questions by all in both Houses—they are all there, and there is nothing wrong with it.

[Lord Bridges of Headley]

I totally take that point, but I do not believe we should be setting this out in statute—as the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, said. There is nothing to prevent the Government and Ministers coming to this House and the other place to make that point, nothing to prevent MPs calling for Urgent Questions and so on and so forth, so I am sorry to say that I disagree with the noble Lord.