European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Cormack Excerpts

3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 16th May 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Framlingham (Con)]

My Lords, the days that we have spent debating amendments to the Bill have been very dark days for your Lordships’ House. Sometimes when we have successfully scrutinised a piece of legislation in the past, it has been described as the House at its best. Without any doubt, these days will go down in history as the House of Lords at its worst.

Noble Lords, some of whom have been elected to or worked in Parliament for many years, have used and abused the gentle, forgiving system in your Lordships’ House to further their own ends of stopping us leaving the EU. I have watched and listened with growing concern and incredulity as people who should know better have tabled and spoken to amendments, most of which have been technically out of order and nothing to do with the Bill. I speak as an ex-Deputy Speaker in the other place: it is interesting to note that if we had a Speaker—and that day may now be much nearer than we think—none of the amendments put down by wreckers of the Bill would have been called and the Bill would have been back in the Commons long ago.

I do not know how the House of Commons will deal with the irrelevant amendments we will send to it, but I know that irreparable damage to our reputation has already been done by the antics of these dark days. We have set ourselves up in such a disreputable way, as guardians of wisdom and the common good, in so many of the amendments that we have passed.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

If anybody is doing damage to the reputation of the House, it is my noble friend.

[Lord Framlingham]

That is a chance I will have to take. I do not agree with the noble Lord. I think that I am speaking up for this House, for this country and for what we are trying to do.

I repeat: to set ourselves up in such a disreputable way, as guardians of wisdom and the common good, in so many of the amendments that we have passed, simply in an attempt to wreck the Bill and thwart the will of the people, is both false and dangerous.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, for this opportunity to say what I want to say now: those whom the gods would destroy they first make mad. Through the progress of this Bill in Committee and on Report, noble Lords collectively have taken leave of their senses and, in doing so, have put the whole future of your Lordships’ House as an appointed Chamber at stake.

When the coalition Government decided that they wanted to reform your Lordships’ House, I became a humble foot soldier supporting my noble friend Lord Cormack in his campaign to preserve an appointed House. We emphasised at that point that our job was to revise and improve legislation, but never to challenge the supremacy of the elected Chamber. I am not sure that we have kept to that. We seem to have had a very large number of amendments—much reference has been made to the 15 amendments made by your Lordships’ House. Many of them strike me as having been quite outside the scope of the Bill.

I went to see the Clerk of the Parliaments when I was withdrawing my amendment, which talked about preparing for no deal if we wanted a good deal, because I thought it completely irrelevant to the Bill. The Clerk of the Parliaments assured me that everything was completely in order and the amendments were quite acceptable; indeed, he said that they would have been totally acceptable in the other place as well. I then talked to a right honourable friend of mine in the other place who has watched the progress of the Bill in the House of Commons. He said that Conservative rebels had tried to table an amendment basically mandating us to remain in a customs union. This was judged in the House of Commons to be outside the scope of the Long Title and ruled out of order. Now my noble friend Lord Framlingham, who has experience of being a Deputy Speaker in the other place, tells me that many of the amendments that we have passed here would never be allowed in the other place.

This raises a serious question: are we as an appointed House going to have greater powers to put down amendments than the democratically elected House down the way? How comfortable are we in that position, when we have no democratic legitimacy whatever?

My right honourable friend Dominic Grieve at least has constituents whom he must go to and he may even stand at the next general election, but I do not have to remind the House that we have no constituents and probably will not stand at any general election ever again. The rebels in your Lordships’ House are therefore in a completely different position from those in the other place.

I have to say that support for our appointed House is drifting away. We are losing friends and gaining no new ones. One might reckon that my honourable friend Jacob Rees-Mogg would support an appointed House. Even he gave the warning the other day that we were playing with fire, so I do not think that we can rely on his support either.

When we beat off attempts during the coalition Government to reform your Lordships’ House, the person who really came to our aid was one Jesse Norman. We owe him a great debt of gratitude that we exist in an appointed House today. Jesse Norman was very courageous and sacrificed several years of his ministerial career as a result of taking such a courageous stand. He is now a Minister and I am glad that he is there, so we cannot count on him to rally right-wing Tory MPs and to save us next time round.

I am afraid that we have done enormous damage to our reputation in the country generally. Everybody says, “Oh, there’s nothing to worry about”. I have been in this House for 12 years now. I have never known a petition going down asking for the abolition of your Lordships’ House, but my noble friend Lord Robathan yesterday told me that the number of names on it was 163,000 and rising. We are being rather complacent if we think that we can carry on in this extraordinarily arrogant way telling people of this country who voted to leave the EU that they got it all wrong and that somehow we must come out with a solution that keeps us half in the EU and deny the people the vote they have made.

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords, I feel provoked to respond, because my noble friend Lord Hamilton of Epsom was kind enough to refer to the Campaign for an Effective Second Chamber, of which he was indeed a valued member and which my noble friend Lord Norton and I founded some 16 years ago. However, after that, I part company with my noble friend. He has read it completely wrong. By implication, he criticises the Clerk of the Parliaments and the advice given to your Lordships on tabling amendments. But what do Members do? They take advice and according to the procedures of this House, advice is given. I speak as one who was a Chairman of Committees for 15 years in the other place. It is not precisely the same advice as would be given in another House but we have behaved entirely according to the rules. One of the fundamental precepts of, and our whole purpose in, the Campaign for an Effective Second Chamber—the members of this group are drawn from all parts of your Lordships’ House, including a number of prominent Members on the Liberal Democrat Benches—is to fight for an effective second Chamber while always acknowledging the primacy of the other place.