European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 6) Bill

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 6th September 2019 Lords Chamber

In Brussels, I heard that if an extension was offered, it was liable to be offered for long enough for the UK either to change its Government or to have a new referendum, giving us time to do that and then come back and renegotiate, or do whatever the Labour Party wishes to do. What I heard in Brussels yesterday was that the United Kingdom was likely to get a very long extension. Let us say that the extension goes up to December 2020. The European Parliament has not engaged with any of this House’s European Union Select Committees since the triggering of Article 50 in March 2017, there is no access to the Commission, which is a new Commission with a very activist work programme, and we are not allowed to jeopardise the attainment of the Union’s objectives, which we have some idea about but do not know because the new Commission is not appointed. Given that, could the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, explain whether that would imperil the United Kingdom’s interests for a period which, in reality, started from when the Parliament and its committees stopped engaging with us, or—taking the minimalist view of this—from 29 March 2019, when the United Kingdom was due to withdraw and this condition started to apply? This is a new condition and it applies from 11 April 2019. The United Kingdom could potentially be in a position where its interests would not be adequately safeguarded or represented for 18 months or so.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, the problem we have today is that we are constrained on time. That is entirely the fault of the Government for deciding that Prorogation should take place next week. Therefore, we are in something of a constraint. We owe a great deal to my noble friend the Chief Whip, the noble Baroness the Leader of the Opposition and those who reached a sensible compromise solution in the early hours of Thursday morning. We are grateful to them. They say, and I accept, that we need to conclude proceedings on the Bill today. This is because of the Prorogation guillotine, which was announced by the Prime Minister two weeks after he decided to do it—we know that from the depositions in the Scottish court.

I regret that there is no Minister to reply to these debates. It is frankly an insult to the House and I deeply regret it. But when he was here yesterday my noble friend Lord Callanan made it quite plain that he knew that our European friends and neighbours would accept two things. One was the revocation of Article 50. Clearly that will not happen and I do not want it to happen, but he also made it plain that the deal that had been on the table—Prime Minister May’s deal—was still possible. He also made the point that he had enthusiastically promoted it, as indeed he had. All members—I correct myself—most members of Mrs May’s Government promoted it valiantly.

I believe that we now have the opportunity under the Bill, imperfectly drafted as I acknowledge it is, with the Kinnock amendment, to bring the Theresa May deal back and enable this Parliament to make a decision with a fourth vote on it. I am bound to say that I believe it will be a service to the country to do that. As I said yesterday, it is only the beginning of the beginning, because there are many more rounds of negotiations to take place, but it would at least mean that we had something that had been supported by the present Prime Minister and Mr Rees-Mogg in the third vote, so clearly they believed it was the right thing to do at that time. I wish we could now get on and do it.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

I entirely agree with my noble friend on the subject of getting on with discussing these amendments and their nature, but is he seriously arguing that if a problem that affects our national interest arises from the drafting of the Bill, we should just ignore it and allow it to go forward? It is perfectly possible for the sponsors of the Bill to agree the amendment, for it to go to the House of Commons, come back and for it all to be covered before Prorogation, particularly since both Front Benches have agreed to take whatever measures are necessary to try to expedite it. It is perfectly possible. Surely we need to address the point that the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, and other Members of the House have identified. All this repetition of all the arguments we have already had for the past three years is, frankly, a waste of time. We are at the final point now and we need to put the Bill on the statute book, but in a way that makes sense. We cannot as a House say that we are going to pass imperfect legislation because the Government were responsible for Prorogation.

[Lord Cormack]

That was a fairly lengthy intervention, but the fact of the matter is that we have been placed in a straitjacket by the Government’s decision on Prorogation. We have an agreement between the two Front Benches here. That is why we should move forward and get the Bill on to the statute book as quickly as possible.

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)]

I had not intended to follow my noble and gallant friend Lord Stirrup’s remarks because he included in them an invitation to some EU constitutional experts. I absolutely do not aspire to the status of an EU constitutional expert, but what he said was absolutely correct. There are two possible statuses: one is the that of a member of the European Union, the other that of a former member. The noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, is absolutely right that there is no provision in Article 50 for qualitative conditions on an extension. Temporal conditions—the length of the extension—are possible. That is what we are talking about.

The point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner of Margravine, about the European Council decision refers to the treaty rights and responsibilities of a member, one of which is the duty of loyal co-operation. That is set out in the treaty. It would not be possible to withdraw treaty rights by European Council decision. The only way to change treaty rights is by amending the treaty, which requires unanimity, and while we are members we would presumably not vote to limit our treaty rights.

The language in the decision referred to by the noble Baroness relates to the contingency, which sadly has now arisen, that the United Kingdom is not present and voting in all committees and regulatory organisations of the European Union. The United Kingdom has voluntarily decided not to exercise some of its treaty rights. Some of these organisations operate by unanimity. If there is an empty chair there and we are a full member with full voting rights that we have not exercised, decision-taking machinery among the European Union—of which we are a member—being exercised by only the 27 could grind to a halt. That is why that language is in the European Council decision. That is why our Government, though in my view quite wrongly, has decided to operate an empty-chair policy in certain parts of the European Union organisation. They have agreed that the Finnish presidency shall exercise our voting rights as though we were there so that unanimity, where it is necessary for a decision to keep the business going, can still be reached. That is the purpose of the language of the European Council’s decision.

The key point is that paragraph 3 of Article 50 is about only temporal extensions. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, for whom I have huge admiration—of course, she is a lawyer and I am not—that I believe it is not possible to set conditions to the extension of time under Article 50. I therefore say to her and to the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner of Margravine, that both amendments are unnecessary and should not be pressed.