European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Foulkes of Cumnock Excerpts

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

[The Advocate-General for Scotland (Lord Keen of Elie) (Con)]

My Lords, I thank noble Lords for the amendment concerning the European Economic Area, which seeks to ensure that the UK remains a member of the EEA.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab)]

My Lords, I wonder if the Minister will give way—

[Lord Keen of Elie]

Not yet, no. While I understand the issues raised and agree with the desire to debate them in this House, I cannot accept the amendment.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

I wonder if the Minister can clarify—

[Lord Keen of Elie]

I wonder if the noble Lord will allow me to make a little progress before he launches into the water. This Bill is about the process of our leaving the European Union. It is not about the Government’s approach. I will happily debate these matters with your Lordships, and I am sure that there will be other occasions on which to do so over the coming months and, indeed, years. But as the other place has shown, this Bill is not the place to put constraints on the Government’s approach.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

What is it that the Minister says? I am obliged to him for giving way. As this is the first time we have heard from the Minister on this subject since the weekend, I wonder if he would care to comment on one of the most significant happenings. A very distinguished Member of this House, who sat through almost the whole Second Reading on Monday and Tuesday—a former Deputy Prime Minister for whom we all have the greatest respect—has said that he is going to oppose his own Government on this. He is completely against Brexit. What is the Government’s reaction? Are they not going to take account of the views of someone so distinguished, someone with such great experience of government and of the European Union? Would the Minister care to respond?

[Lord Keen of Elie]

Yes, of course. The noble Lord to whom the noble Lord refers is not in the House today.

It is my intention to make some progress with this matter. The Prime Minister clearly set out her vision for the future of the UK post-exit in her speech on 17 January, including our future trading relationship with the EU. She was clear that we do not seek membership of the single market. Instead, we seek the greatest possible access to it through a new, comprehensive, bold and ambitious free trade agreement. We want the UK to have the freest possible trade in goods and services with the EU’s member states but also to be able to negotiate our own trade agreements. As the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton of Epsom, observed, we seek our own, bespoke deal.

The United Kingdom has always been a leading voice for free trade, not only in the European Union but globally, and we have been consistently clear that we want the maximum possible freedom to trade for businesses in both Britain and Europe. But we also want to take back control of our laws and control immigration to Britain from Europe.

Being a member of the EEA would mean complying with the EU’s rules and regulations that implement the four freedoms—in respect of capital, goods, services and people—without having a vote on what those rules and regulations are. It would mean accepting a role for the European Court of Justice that would see it still having direct legal authority in our country. It would mean not having control over immigration. EU leaders in the other 27 states have been clear as to their belief in the indivisible nature of the four freedoms, and we respect that. The people of the United Kingdom voted to leave the EU, not to maintain partial membership of its bodies or institutions. When the people of the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union institutions, they did not intend that we should leave by the front door and rush back to attempt entry by the back door.

As set out in the White Paper, we recognise that we will require alternative forms of dispute resolution once we leave the EU and are no longer subject to the European Court of Justice. But again, these mechanisms are common both to agreements between the EU and third countries and in international agreements to which the United Kingdom is also party, of which there are many examples. Once we leave the EU, the EEA agreement will no longer be relevant for the United Kingdom. It will have no practical effect. It will be an empty vessel. That is because the agreement is defined as covering all EU members and those three EFTA states—Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway—which have chosen to join the EEA. As we are leaving the EU, we will automatically be outside this definition, as found in Article 126 of the EEA agreement. So there is no choice open to us to leave the EU and remain a member of the EEA, which would require a separate negotiation with the EU and the three EFTA states that I have just mentioned. For example, Switzerland, which is also a member of EFTA, has separate bilateral agreements with the EU even though it is not in the EEA. EFTA membership is not, of course, the same as EEA membership.

Although it will have no practical effect after the EU exit, we are considering what steps might need to be taken formally to terminate the EEA agreement as a matter of law, as we will remain a signatory to the agreement. This could be done through Article 127 of the EEA agreement on giving 12 months’ notice, or by some other means, but no decision has yet been taken on that. We have laid out in the White Paper, however, the relationship we are seeking: a new strategic partnership which includes a new customs agreement and an ambitious and comprehensive free trade agreement. We are seeking the greatest possible access to the single market as part of this.

The noble Lord, Lord Lea of Crondall, referred to the fact that we would not be at the table. That is absolutely right, and that is not what 52% of our population voted for when they voted leave. It is one thing to have power without responsibility; it is another to have responsibility without power, and that is what we would have in these circumstances. It was suggested that freedom of movement could be open to a variety of interpretations. That is not the view in Europe. It is open to only one interpretation—one which we have been under for a number of years.

The noble Baroness, Lady Quin, referred to the report of the House of Lords committee. I can reassure her that we take the terms of that report very seriously, and we will be taking forward our consideration of it in due course. The noble Lord, Lord Davies of Stamford, referred to the suggestion that somehow we could keep our options open so far as the EEA is concerned, but that is not the case. EEA membership is not an option that is simply open to us if we leave the EU. As I said, it becomes an empty vessel. We have to face up to the indivisibility of the four freedoms, as insisted upon. It is not a case of going to Europe and saying, “We would like to negotiate out of one of the four freedoms”. We are told repeatedly that they are indivisible, and we have to take that into account.

At the end of the day, we cannot embrace membership of the EEA any more than membership of the EU without freedom of movement in Europe. In these circumstances, I invite the noble Lord to withdraw this amendment on the understanding that we cannot retain membership of the EEA for the reasons I have sought to set out.

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[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

Except that I have not finished. Finally, on Amendment 22, there is an interesting idea in subsection (2). Ministers have been extremely active in engaging with Select Committees and both Houses of Parliament. My noble friend Lord Bridges has done an outstanding job in talking and engaging with everyone. There is an interesting idea that perhaps it is possible as we go forward with the Bill to find some way of operating with committees of Parliament with some degree of confidentiality, although experience tells me that dealing with Parliament with some degree of confidentiality is not always easy to achieve. I am just about to sit down but I give way to the noble Lord, now that he is awake.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

The noble Lord is giving former MPs in this House a bad name.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

I just say to the noble Lord that at least I am not asleep.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

My Lords, I will speak briefly in support of my noble friend Lady Quin. Before I do that, I want sincerely to say a word of thanks to the Front Benches on both sides. They have to sit through all these debates—they are obliged to, unlike those of us on the Back Benches. I pay particular tribute to my noble friend Lady Hayter, who has had a very difficult job, treading a high wire; she has done it with great skill and good humour and she deserves our thanks for doing so. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie. I do not think that under normal circumstances she would have chosen to spend her birthday in this way, but I am sure that we all wish her many congratulations.

I say to the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, that the Labour Party was against this referendum. We did not want a referendum. Mr Cameron got us into it in a casual way, without any careful thought of the implications or the impact that it would have. If we had had impact assessments before the vote, we might not have voted to come out. We would have known the implications. That is when we should have had these. We are going to have some very serious impacts in Northern Ireland, as we heard earlier, and in Scotland. The way things are going, we could end up with this whole United Kingdom breaking up, with Northern Ireland opting to be part of a united Ireland and with Scotland as a separate country. That is what David Cameron in his casual way has let us in for. I think that he will go down in history as one of the worst Prime Ministers this country has ever had.

[Lord Kerslake]

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord Hannay’s Amendment 22. I do so for one simple reason. I have a passionate belief that open government is better government. If we—as those who are in charge, if you like—want people to buy into what we are trying to do, we have to be able to trust them with the information that should be available to them. That is particularly true in relation to Brexit. We know that the referendum campaign was deep and divisive. We reached a point where virtually no one trusted anyone in that debate. That is fundamentally undermining to democracy. There is a growing gap between the governing and the governed, and one response to that is to have transparent government.

We have heard two arguments this evening for why a very simple amendment—to publish the impact assessments that can sensibly be published, which have already been done since the referendum—cannot be made. The first, from the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, is that you cannot trust impact assessments. Not every impact assessment is good. I might even have been responsible for a few that were not that good. But if that is the argument we are now making—that we will not publish impact assessments because they might be wrong—that way madness follows. What about trusting the people and Parliament to make their own judgment about the quality of the impact assessments? That is what transparent government is all about. If we cannot trust people to make their own judgment about the information, if we worry that they will be depressed because the impact assessments are too downbeat, there is something seriously wrong with our thinking.

The second argument that we have heard is that it might in some way interfere with the negotiations. It is possible that some information published might cut across them, and there has to be a responsible attitude to that, but I worry that that argument is going to be rolled out time and again to keep Parliament and the public in the dark about what is actually happening through the negotiating period to the point where it is impossible to impact the outcome of the process. We have to have a better system than that. I quite believe that Vladimir Putin does not want to publish his impact assessments, but we are not Russia: we are an open democracy and should trust the people to use the information that is made available to them responsibly. That is why I support the amendment.