European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Cashman Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Wednesday 31st January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cashman (Lab)]

My Lords, I am particularly pleased to follow the previous speaker. Perhaps that six minutes should be in my entry in the register of interests.

It has, for many reasons, been with mixed emotions that I have sat through this debate. One reason is that I wish the debate was not taking place. I wish that we were not preparing to leave the European Union, and not leaving on the whims, prejudices, and architecture of the Eurosceptic wing of the Conservative Party, aided and abetted by the right-wing press. But politics is not about wishing; it is about having the courage to take difficult decisions—not necessarily to follow public opinion, but to lead and fashion it, to challenge it and to offer other options. I believe that politics is about having the courage to be unpopular and to do what is in the long-term interests of your country. It is to put country before party or personal advancement.

Yet, sadly, the debate has barely moved on. The lack of knowledge about how the EU functions, and the role of member state Governments within it, is as shocking as it is depressing. Some would have us believe that Governments are dragged against their will into the European Union and the Council of Ministers, where they make their democratic decisions. Neither is there understanding of the role and duties of the European Commission, given to it by the treaties, or the directly elected European Parliament, in which I proudly served for 15 years. This is either ignorance or, perhaps, wilful misrepresentation.

The EU was born out of the ashes of the Second World War: the ashes of people’s hopes and dreams, and yes, the ashes from crematoria that were dotted across Europe. A group of countries came together to ensure that history would not repeat itself—that we would never turn away again. It is a European Union that has at its root and core fundamental human rights and freedoms that are non-negotiable, even on accession into it. It is a union of countries and peoples joined by common principles and a united purpose: never to look away again and allow countries or peoples to be scapegoated or sacrificed. It is this European Union that we now turn away from, as we seek isolation while fooling ourselves and our citizens that it makes us stronger.

I say to my own Front Bench in another place that out of the European Union was constructed the single market, which has equality and fairness at its root and core, and that we should maintain our membership of that single market. But we are where we are. The country is divided and people feel left out, isolated and unwanted. EU citizens living here feel under threat, their futures and their children’s futures insecure in a country that they thought they could call home and where they could play by the same rules, abide by the same laws, and remain safe and welcome. How shamefully we have treated them and our citizens who live in other parts of the European Union.

Where once we served as a beacon of hope, fairness and decency, we are now viewed in a very different light. The glow has gone and this sceptred isle fumes with a narrow nationalism, promoted and stoked by the right-wing press—particularly the Daily Mail, with its threats and attacks upon any who dare in a democracy to think or vote other than the way that the Daily Mail or the Daily Telegraph believe that we should. Is it traitorous to pursue what you believe to be in the best interests of your country? Or is it traitorous to abandon your principles and your country, and surrender to threats from those who wield power without responsibility or accountability? Where is parliamentary sovereignty, when attacks are heaped on parliamentarians for exercising their democratic rights in Parliament? We live in strange times.

Many noble and learned Lords have spoken of the deficiencies in the Bill. Organisations such as Liberty, Amnesty, the Fawcett Society and so many more have given their recommendations and shared their concerns, especially around the issues of equalities, human rights and the dilution of democracy. I share their views. In the debate in my name in your Lordships’ House on 12 December, I posed questions to the Minister on human rights post Brexit. I was not reassured by the replies, either during the debate or in subsequent correspondence.

I want now to refer particularly to the recommendations that came from the Equality and Human Rights Commission. On the withdrawal Bill, it advises that we retain the UK’s equality and human rights legal framework as we leave the EU by including within the Bill the following. First, we should rule out the use of delegated powers to reduce equality and human rights protections. Secondly, we should include a principle of non-regression of equality and human rights law. Thirdly, we should retain the protections of the European Charter of Fundamental Rights. Fourthly, we should introduce a domestic right to equality. Fifthly, we should ensure that the United Kingdom keeps pace with developments in equality and human rights law by ensuring that our courts have regard to relevant EU case law after exit day.

In light of the Bill's twin aims of ensuring legal certainty and continuity, removing the charter and the right of action based on the general principles is wholly inappropriate. The charter secures important rights, as others have said: education, protection of the elderly, and equality rights—including, I say as a gay man, LGBT rights—which could be seriously undermined, as well as the principle of non-discrimination. The Bill must be improved, especially with regard to the charter and the equalities that currently exist. If the Government’s intentions are honourable then they should put the protections I have outlined on the face of the Bill, and not in worthless reassurances or in a committee which, to quote a Minister in correspondence, is merely advisory. The noble Lord, Lord Howell, spoke earlier about ambitions. My ambition is simple: the protection of rights that have been fought for across generations—and fought against—and which define a civilised country.