Lord Finkelstein
Main Page: Lord Finkelstein (Conservative - Life peer)Adjournment
Lord Finkelstein Excerpts
Lord Adonis
My Lords, I take that to be a substantial move towards the opinion of the House, which I welcome. I think the noble Lord understands that there will be a significant argument in the House on Monday if we meet and the Government are not in a position to tell us how they intend to handle business, including not proceeding with these ludicrous and deeply damaging no-deal regulations, which are inflicting huge cost on the public purse and huge inconvenience to the public.
Lord Finkelstein (Con)
I know the noble Lord is a very intelligent person and a great viewer of political events and that, like me, he does not want a no-deal Brexit. I just wanted to check that he is 100% sure that there will not be a no-deal Brexit. Everything he has said assumes that he is, but I do not think a single person in this House is 100% sure of that. I certainly am not.
Lord Adonis
My Lords, it depends on whether the Government listen to Parliament and act accordingly. As long as the Prime Minister picks and chooses which parliamentary resolutions she is prepared to respond to, of course that is the case.
Lord Finkelstein
The noble Lord knows that it does not depend on that but on lots of things, such as whether the House of Commons can agree a deal. I am a fan of Twitter as well; the noble Lord will know that the shadow Foreign Secretary has said that she does not approve of an extension beyond three months, and that the European Union may offer us a deal longer than that but she will not want to accept it. For all these reasons, it does not just depend on the things that the noble Lord talks about. As he addresses the House he also knows that, so I cannot see how he can say with great confidence that we should not go on with preparatory work. Of course we should.
Lord Adonis
My Lords, I have very great confidence that if we had a Prime Minister worthy of the title, this country would not be proceeding with a no-deal Brexit and the changes I refer to would have been introduced in Parliament. We are in this situation because of a chronic lack of national leadership. It is our job in Parliament do our best to substitute for that. We can use only the procedures available to us, but one of those is not to proceed with this deeply damaging no-deal Brexit planning.
On the basis that it appears that we will have at least some Statement from the Government on Monday, I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.