European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 27th February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

I knew that some noble Lords on the other side would not like this but they are going to hear it. We had the heartless expropriations of Catholic property by Oliver Cromwell, and again in the 18th century, contrary to the Treaty of Limerick. We had a series of broken promises—four major historic broken promises—the Treaty of Limerick itself, the promise made to Grattan’s Parliament in 1782, the promise made by Pitt in 1800 to introduce Catholic emancipation and the promise made by Asquith to bring in, live up to and carry out the third home rule Bill. All those promises were broken.

Even at that point the British Government did not get it. We did not get the Easter rebellion. We tried to impose conscription on Ireland. Even when Sinn Fein won every seat in the November 1918 elections except, I think, for two in the 26 counties, we still did not get it and, within two months, we had the Anglo-Irish war. We know what happened to that. After the treaty, we neglected Irish matters in this House. We allowed Stormont to get away with an absolutely scandalous programme of deliberate job and housing discrimination—job discrimination even explicitly encouraged by a unionist Prime Minister by the way—and other breaches of civil rights, and, of course we did not get it. We did not intervene after the attack on the civil rights march by Paisley’s thugs at Burntollet bridge. We then had the appalling violence and terrorism by the IRA.

In the last 20 years we have had the brightest moment in Anglo-Irish history that we have had in 800 years, starting with the Belfast agreement. It may have been prepared before the Belfast agreement in the great co-operation that took place between our two countries after we both joined the European Union. I remember Garret FitzGerald, a very great Taoiseach, saying to me once over lunch that that had transformed the position of the Irish and the British. After 800 years in which we had been the patronising imperialists and the Irish had been the petitioners, we were equals, involved in the same programme and the same agenda in the European Union, or the European Community, as it was originally, and we needed each other’s support and votes to get our business done. That was the basis on which a new relationship was created. That has been a great asset and great achievement of the last generation. It is now at risk if we gratuitously decide to impose a border upon the beautiful country and proud people of Ireland. It does not matter whether the border is a mechanical border, a human border, an electronic border, an analogue border or a digital border, it is a border, a frontier. That is the important psychological fact and we cannot get away from it. There is no way you can get away from it. It is completely and utterly out of the question. The Government are quite good at saying that we had the discussion on the previous set of amendments about them dismissing the idea of our remaining in the single market through being a member of the EEA. Why do the Government not—as they should—dismiss the idea altogether of being a party to the end of freedom of movement in the island of Ireland, let alone, of course, within the United Kingdom itself?

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, we should remember Sir John Major and Albert Reynolds and the fact that my noble friend Lord Trimble shared the Nobel prize with John Hume for what they did to create the foundation for a peaceful settlement. No one in this Chamber needs a lecture from my friend the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Stamford, and a rehearsal of Irish history—a very poor rehearsal as my noble friend Lord Trimble interjects.

We have had some very notable speeches in this debate. I pay particular tribute to my noble friend Lord Empey and the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice—

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

The noble Lord is very welcome to correct me and if I have made a historical error I apologise, but will he tell the House what the historical error was?

[Lord Cormack]

The noble Lord certainly left out Henry VIII and many other things. The noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, put the thing beautifully in context and gave a very remarkable speech. We should all be grateful to my friend the noble Lord, Lord Hain, for introducing the amendment in the way that he did but I hope he will not push it to a vote. I say that with great respect. He knows I mean that because I had many dealings with him when he was Secretary of State and I had the honour to be the chairman of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee in another place. I had members of seven parties on my committee and we remained unanimous throughout, even though we looked at issues such as organised crime, prisons and many others. He knows how closely we worked together as a committee.

What we need today—and I hope we will get it—is an assurance from my noble friend the Minister that the Government truly recognise the importance of the points that have been raised. They recognise that Northern Ireland is not only in many ways the most beautiful part of the United Kingdom but also the most vulnerable. We are not going to strengthen this procedural Bill by hanging this amendment on it. There may well be a time when we return in the context of the negotiations that will follow. There may well be amendments later in this Bill that I will feel I need to support to ask colleagues in the other place to think again, but this is not one of them and I very much hope that my friend the noble Lord, Lord Hain, will withdraw his amendment at the end of the debate.

[Baroness O'Loan (CB)]

My Lords, I actually live in Northern Ireland and have lived there for the past nearly 50 years; I have experienced the Troubles personally, having lost a child in a bomb explosion, and having nearly lost a son to a sectarian attack. Article 50 is about taking the United Kingdom out of the European Union—it is not about the Good Friday agreement; it is not about the security of Northern Ireland. To attempt to introduce it in this haphazard and hasty way—with great respect to noble Lords—does not serve the interests of the country. The interests of the security and the economy of the United Kingdom and the security and the economy of the Irish Republic will be best served if these things are dealt with in the course of negotiations, with complete flexibility. We should not, in any way, attempt to fetter the discretion of the Prime Minister. This is not an amendment that would benefit the United Kingdom or any part of it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lamont of Lerwick (Con)]

My Lords, although I oppose this amendment, I can imagine two circumstances in which a second referendum might be justifiable. The first would be after we had actually completed the negotiations, left the EU and then people decided they wanted another referendum. That would seem perfectly justifiable.

The second situation where a second referendum would be well justified would be if the original referendum question had been framed in such a way as to say, “Do you wish the Government to enter into negotiations about leaving the EU, and then to put the result of that referendum to a second referendum later on?”. However, that was not the question on the ballot paper. As we have heard endlessly, the question was whether to remain or leave; it was quite unambiguous. It seems that we are slipping into the habits that the EU itself has with referenda. Mr Juncker on one occasion famously said, “If the people vote the wrong way, we must go on voting until we get the right answer”. I suspect that that is the real motivation behind the amendment. We saw this in the EU with the referendum on Maastricht. After the Danes said no, they had to vote again. We saw it with the treaty of Nice: when Ireland said no, we had to have another vote and that reversed the first one. We saw it most blatantly of all with the European constitution, as proposed, which was rejected in recommendations by both France and Holland. In order to avoid a referendum, that was then translated by a device into the Lisbon treaty. We absolutely should not go down that road.

[Lord Cormack]

If we had a second referendum and the question was, “Do you want to stay out or go back?”, how could that realistically be asked, unless we knew that they wanted us back?

[Lord Lamont of Lerwick]

I think that the question of whether they want us back is a very real one. I wanted to come to that very point. At Second Reading I quoted the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown, as having said that he was firmly opposed to a second referendum. He is shaking his head; if he wants to correct me I will gladly be corrected, although I have three other press reports of where he said a second referendum was not desirable and should not take place: one in the Times on 20 September; a report from Asia House of his speech there on 6 September, together with a second report of that speech; and an article in Somerset Life on 24 June—so I have quite a lot. The noble Lord may have been misreported. If he has been misreported once, I apologise to him, but he seems to have been misreported several times.