European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Foulkes of Cumnock Excerpts

Committee: 11th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 28th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goldie]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady McIntosh for her comments. In response, I will need to be fairly brief. Clause 13 gives effect to Schedule 5, which is a technical but important part of the Bill. Quite simply, Schedule 5 seeks both to ensure that our law is sufficiently accessible after exit day and to provide for rules of evidence replacing those currently in the European Communities Act. I acknowledge my noble friend’s intention to oppose that Schedule 5 stand part of the Bill and will try to persuade her otherwise.

Paragraph 1 of Schedule 5 requires the publication of relevant instruments defined in the schedule as those that may form part of retained direct EU legislation and the key treaties likely to be of most relevance to, or to give rise to directly effective rights et cetera forming part of, retained EU law under Clause 4. My noble friend will understand that, after a period of more than 45 years of membership of the EU, a huge body of law has developed. Without wanting to seem patronising, that is exactly why this Bill before us is so vitally important. We want to make sure that all the protections, rights and benefits that our citizens in the UK have enjoyed under that huge body of law will flow seamlessly on exit day into our UK domestic law.

On the specific question that my noble friend asked about whether there was any central archive, I am not aware of any specific central archive, but I shall certainly have officials look at that and I shall undertake to write to my noble friend.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab)]

Could the Minister also deal with the question of Scotland? As I understand it, the Queen’s printer applies only for England, Wales and Northern Ireland. There is a separate Queen’s printer for Scotland, under Section 92 of the Scotland Act 1998, who is responsible for Acts of Parliament for Scotland. Does not that create some problems in relation to the drafting of Schedule 5?

[Baroness Goldie]

I do not have a response to that specific point, but I shall certainly undertake to write to the noble Lord and provide more detail.

I revert to my noble friend Lady McIntosh, who I think sought a figure for the number of instruments or individual components of law. I am unable to provide that; I do not think that such a figure exists. Obviously, a lot of work has been done across departments to ascertain what is likely to affect the activities within departments and what is likely to become part of retained EU law post exit day. Again, I shall double-check that and, if there is any more information that I can give in that connection, I shall do so.

The remaining provisions of paragraph 1 provide for the power to publish other documents, such as decisions of the Court of Justice of the European Union or anything else that the Queen’s printer considers useful in relation to those things. It also ensures that, in accordance with the snapshot, anything repealed before exit day, or modified on or after exit day, does not have to be published. This is supported by the targeted and what I have already described as common-sense power in paragraph 2 to enable Ministers to narrow the task of the Queen’s printer by ensuring that instruments that are not retained EU law do not have to be published. We have had an interesting debate on that and I have given certain undertakings to look at the contributions from Members.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

I have another query. We are all talking about the Queen’s printer. As I have said, that is the Queen’s printer applying for England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Can the Minister tell us who the Queen’s printer is? As I understand it, the Queen’s printer has responsibility—and it is a good job that we have two Bishops here—for printing the Bible, I think in the King James version. I have just had a nod from a Bishop, which is very exciting. I think that the Queen’s printer may currently be Cambridge University Press, but I may be wrong on that. Everyone including the Minister is talking about the Queen’s printer, but hands up who knows who it is? There are not even hands up in the Box. I know that the Minister is the fount of all knowledge, so who is the Queen’s printer?

[Baroness Goldie]

I can always rely on the noble Lord to lighten the proceedings and introduce an element of light relief. I do not imagine that the Queen’s printer is some inky-fingered individual stabbing away in a dark basement. If the Queen’s printer is as busy as the noble Lord implies, the less we give them to do, the better. That is why I think that the direction to exclude things from the Queen’s printer would be very timely. I shall of course find out more information for the noble Lord.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Goldie]

I do not wish in any way to diminish the talents of the Queen’s printer, whoever that person or group of persons is or wherever they dwell, but I think that the noble Lord belongs in this Chamber making the powerful and important contributions that he does.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

The noble Lord, Lord Lisvane, has been helpful to an extent by saying that the Queen’s printer is the Keeper of the National Archives. However, that raises the question: who is the Keeper of the National Archives?

[Lord Cormack]

His name is Mr Jeff James.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, I am not seeking to make party-political points in this debate; this issue is going to embrace us on all sides of the House. I note, though, that at the moment we still do not have proper arrangements in place for what is going to happen over the mayoralties in the great county of Yorkshire, which is a hugely important set of issues. There is massive disagreement taking place between different cities in Yorkshire and the Government about how this should be handled. At the moment we still do not have strong powers for any of the mayors outside London. The treatment of the counties of England that are not going to be embraced by the new city mayors is very problematic in the current arrangements, partly because it is genuinely problematic. We have never been able to resolve the issue about how you devolve to local government in England outside the major cities.

This is going to be a big ongoing source of debate, and rightly so. As these debates have demonstrated, we have done much better by Scotland and Wales in recent years, not least because they now have their own devolved Parliament and Assembly. We have done our very best to ensure consensual power-sharing government in Northern Ireland although, to our great regret, the Assembly is not sitting at the moment. Before long we are going to have to start giving equal attention to the government of England.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

I hope my noble friend Lord Adonis will forgive another Scottish voice, but I completely agree with every word that he has just said. Is not one of the ironies that our asymmetric devolution, which is the problem, is something that we could be tackling now with legislation in this Parliament if we were not preoccupied with this futile Bill and the other eight Bills that are going to follow it, which are totally unnecessary? We would have the time to deal with it.

[Lord Adonis]

I entirely agree with my noble friend; he is completely right. However, it is rather a sad commentary on our politics at the moment that we in this House need to be frank and accept that, but for Brexit, a lot of these issues would not have been flushed out. I do not think that, but for Brexit and the Brexit referendum, we would be addressing them.

At the moment, I am spending a lot of time travelling around the country, particularly to places which voted to leave. Most of these places are remote from London. There is an almost direct relationship between the distance from London, particularly the time it takes by train to get to places, and their likelihood of having voted to leave the European Union. What comes through so powerfully from the people I am meeting there is a massive sense of isolation and alienation not just from Brussels, although that is an issue, but from London and our Government and Parliament here. That is not a stable state of affairs for the future of government and democracy in this country, and it will have to be addressed.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

I completely agree. I feel so frustrated because for the past three years, I have been trying to persuade the leader of our party to consider a constitutional convention or to discuss the issue even within our party. I agree that we need to come back to that, but I turn to the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Wigley. I call him my noble friend because, especially on this Bill, we agree on so much. I am grateful to him for tabling it. Although it applies to Wales, as others have said, it could apply equally to England and Scotland.

As others have also said, I am pleased that it is the noble Lord, Lord Bourne, who will reply to the debate, because I have had dealings with him, as he will testify, on a number of occasions both before he was a Minister and since, and he looks at these things carefully, seriously and sympathetically. I expect that he will do the same again today.

I will not go through the whole list, but in Scotland we will lose structural funds, scientific grants and the Social Fund, and the Erasmus funding is in doubt. There is the European Investment Bank, which has funded roads, railways, hospitals and many other things. None of this can be continued when we leave—if we leave: the noble Baroness, Lady Humphreys, is absolutely right. I should always use the phrase “if we leave”, because it has not yet been finally decided, we are going through a process. It was the noble Lord, Lord Roberts, who said it, not the noble Baroness, Lady Humphreys. I am getting completely mixed up. As we go through the process, we are seeing more and more problems that will be created by Brexit.

I do not know whether any of your Lordships have visited the Falkirk Wheel, now one of the great tourist attractions in Scotland but also one of the great engineering attractions. Again, it was partly funded by the European Union. The Scottish Parliament estimates that more than 40,000 jobs have been created with European funding. As I said, I do not want to list them all—I could go on at length if that were appropriate, but I will not.

We have had vague promises that funding will be continued if we leave the European Union. We need, if not today then in the near future, more detail, more specifics. We need to know exactly what kind of funding there will be. Will each of the funds lost be replaced? What will replace the common agricultural policy? What will replace the regional development fund? What will replace the scientific grants? What will replace the Social Fund? It needs to be more specific. It is exactly like the immigration arrangements, which get put off, put off and put off. We have been promised them again and again but they have not been published. We do not even have a White Paper, let alone a Bill.

People need to know. If, as I hope, we will have a final say, if the British people will be given a final say, they will need to know whether these funds are to be replaced, how they are to be replaced and whether they will be replaced pound for pound, pound for euro, or whatever is appropriate. I hope the Minister will give such an assurance.

It is also ironic, as I said earlier when I was having an exchange with my noble friend, Lord Adonis, that we are wasting a lot of time in this debate.

[Noble Lords]

Hear, hear.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

Thank you very much. There was a huge measure of support there, principally from the Cross Benches. I do not think I have done anything to offend the Cross Benchers; quite the reverse, I was keeping them amused earlier on.

However, this is a serious point. Not only are we taking a lot of time dealing with the Bill, including Wednesday mornings, but we are spending a lot of money. My honourable friend in another place, Stephen Doughty, got an Answer recently that stated that £395 million has been transferred to the Home Office just for dealing with Brexit. Just the process is taking up a lot of money. In fact, we ought to have more Questions and Answers about exactly how much is being taken up by the actual physical process of dealing with this, including civil servants and travel. I understand that Mr David Davis does not like to travel by Eurostar so takes charter flights to Brussels, so the costs are mounting day by day and week by week.

My last point is more general. We now know that the leave campaign has been guilty of fraud and continues to be under investigation by the Electoral Commission. We now know that money was transferred illegally from the leave campaign to the BeLeave organisation, and that unfortunately some of my colleagues and former colleagues in the Labour Party were involved in that because one of them, a former MP, was a director of the Leave campaign. I think it is particularly reprehensible that she was involved in that.

That brings me back to the point made not by the noble Baroness, Lady Humphreys, but by the noble Lord, Lord Roberts, about if Brexit goes through. People are becoming increasingly disillusioned by the way in which we were duped during the referendum campaign, and that strengthens the case for having a new look—

[Lord Cavendish of Furness]

The noble Lord will remember from an earlier debate that it seems that Euratom was understood in detail in Yorkshire by not tens or hundreds but thousands of people. I think people were probably not duped.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

That is a matter of opinion. More and more research is being done, including recently by an organisation whose exact name I am trying to remember which carried out some work, about which I had an email this morning, showing that people who voted leave did so for a whole variety of reasons, unconnected in some cases to the whole question of the EU. That is one of the problems of referenda generally, as we have discussed before. Still, as we discussed earlier, if the decision was made by the British people, there is a very strong argument that it needs to be undone by the British people. We need to look at that again as the arguments become even stronger.

To return to the amendment, I hope we will get some specific promises and details from the Minister. As I said when I started, he has been known for his credibility, sincerity and honesty. I hope we will see that again today.

[Lord Thomas of Gresford]

My Lords, I have a specific question for the Minister: do the Government accept the proposition, put forward so clearly by the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, in introducing the amendment, that they are bound by the promises made by the leave campaign? They say, “It is the voice of the people that we are following”. The Government had a number of choices that they could have made, but in fact they have chosen to follow a model that must bring great delight to the most extreme Brexiteers. If they do that, they are bound by those promises, I submit—I accept what the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, said.

It is suggested—this is the weak and feeble argument put forward by the leave people these days—that it did not make any difference, and that what they said really had no impact whatever. Before the people spoke and before we heard the voice of the people, the people listened. And what did they listen to? They listened to a universal lie about the National Health Service, that it would receive £350 million a week. The noble Lord, Lord Liddle, has referred to this as “lying”, but I prefer the word “cheating”, which has been used elsewhere in this building this week. The campaign, we now learn, was prepared to send out contradictory messages to targeted people. We do not know what those messages were and we do not know who the people targeted were, but that was cheating. So when the people spoke, they had listened to the lying and cheating propaganda that had been put forward.

Let me be more specific about Wales, where specific promises were made. Wales has been the net recipient of £650 million a year from European funds. That is not something to be proud of; it is because Europe recognised the needs of Wales, and gave money in structural funds and agricultural support that addressed those needs. I will not enumerate precisely what they are, because my noble friend Lady Humphreys has already covered that ground quite fully.

There is a moral imperative about this Government: if they are going to campaign for the sort of Brexit that the most extreme Brexiteers want, they should fulfil those promises, and make it clear in the report that the amendment calls for. In Wales it was said by leave campaigners, in terms, “You will not lose a penny”; that was said widely, across Wales, in all the campaigning that took place.