European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 (Exit Day) (Amendment) Regulations 2019

Lord Hamilton of Epsom Excerpts

Wednesday 27th March 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, like my noble friend Lord Robathan, I was rather enthusiastic about the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter. It starts rather well, going on about how the Prime Minister has conducted the negotiations very badly, and regrets,

“the manner in which Her Majesty’s Government have conducted withdrawal negotiations with the European Union which has resulted in widespread uncertainty as to when the United Kingdom will leave”.

“Hear, hear”, to that, I say. I would have been happy to support that. But the amendment goes on, of course, to say that we should support all the machinations in the other place, where Executive powers have now been transferred to the House of Commons and away from the Government.

If that is what the noble Baroness wants, quite clearly the Labour Party is resigned to remaining in Opposition in perpetuity. As we do not have a written constitution, this will become enshrined in the way we do our business, and the Government will not be able to govern in the future—and that will apply to any future Labour Government as well.

The real problem is that these negotiations could not have been conducted worse, if anybody had tried. One of the problems—here I speak in support of my right honourable friend the Prime Minister—is that people have constantly wanted to rule out no deal. No deal is not half as bad as everybody likes to make it out to be; indeed, as the preparations have been done for no deal, most businesses now are prepared for it. For some reason, all this hysteria has been built up about no deal. The result is that, by mandating the Prime Minister to rule out no deal, we have completely undermined her negotiations with the EU. It would have been totally different had she actually been able to say, “If you can’t give me concessions, we will end up with no deal”. That has not happened. As a result, the EU has said, “We have given you an agreement and we have no wish to renegotiate it”. There is no downturn potential whatever for the EU from facing her down, which is what has happened constantly.

As my noble friends have said, the result is that the Prime Minister has been in a position where she has told us—108 times—that we will leave on 29 March. Gullible, stupid people like me believed her, and where are we now? We are talking about extensions to 12 April, and perhaps beyond. So it is not surprising that people are becoming very disillusioned with this Government and with her. It is undermining the whole position of government in this country. The Opposition have a serious responsibility for making a very bad situation worse.

It is all very well Members on the opposite Benches laughing. The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, actually wants us to stay in the European Union—

[A noble Lord]

At least he is honest.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

Yes, he has been honest enough to say that. But who are we, as an appointed House, to tell the British people that they got the referendum result completely wrong and that it should be reversed? We have had this argument so often before. Where does it leave Parliament if Parliament cannot deliver on a referendum? A referendum is a delegation by Parliament to the people to make a decision. If Parliament does not carry out the decision, where does it leave us? It is a disturbing issue, and not one that all these remainers, particularly in your Lordships’ House, are really prepared to address. But what happens if we end up back in the EU, which the people have told us we should be leaving? People do not like to think about this very much, but it has enormous ramifications for democracy in this country.

We are now in a very difficult position, seeing endless extensions of the date on which we might leave. I am very sad that 29 March has now gone out of the window. Many of my friends who think, like I do, that it is critical that we get out, will be mindful of the powers given to the Prime Minister under the EU withdrawal Act so that she can at any time go back to Europe to ask for extensions, presumably for years if necessary. We have to think about that very closely before we decide how we will vote on the absolutely dreadful agreement that she has reached with the EU. It may be the least bad of all the bad options in front of us.

[Viscount Waverley (CB)]

For the record, the noble Lord may not be aware of breaking news. The Prime Minister has agreed to resign before the next phase of Brexit, in reality—I was going to say appropriately—because she will not stand in the way of a desire for a new approach in a bid to get Tories’ deal through.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

I am extremely grateful to the noble Viscount forgiving us that information and I am delighted to hear it. If we have a new leader, we may well see very different results in our negotiations with the EU.

[Viscount Ridley (Con)]

My Lords, perhaps it is inappropriate to continue, therefore, with the speech that I was going to make, but I will start anyway. Earlier this afternoon, I was having tea with my son and past the window went a tugboat which was going against the tide. It was really struggling. I know how it felt. But I cheered myself up with the thought that the tide turns. The water goes down stream in the end—the tug was going up stream, I should explain.

Perhaps I can cheer up my noble friend Lord Framlingham by emphasising that 17.4 million people voted to leave the European Union and this genie is not going back in the bottle. If we fail on this occasion, there will be another chance to get it right. After the second Punic War, which imposed the Carthaginian peace that Mr Boris Johnson likes to talk about, there was a third Punic war. That did not end well either, but perhaps this one will end better—for the Carthaginians, that is.

As noble friends have said, the Prime Minister said 108 times that she would leave on 29 March, come what may. She said 50 times that we would not extend and she said 32 times that no deal was better than a bad deal. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, talked about the need to heed the will of Parliament. But surely we also need to heed the will of the people. There was a time when people on both sides of this debate, shortly after the referendum, emphasised that that is what they wanted to do. Hilary Benn said:

“You vote to leave? We’re out. That’s it. We’re going”.


George Osborne said:

“There’s no second vote. This is the crucial decision of our lifetimes. Do we stay in the EU, a reformed EU or do we leave?”


Yvette Cooper said, “I don’t think you should be trying to unravel a decision the public has made”, and so on and so on.

The noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, speaks of her hope that there will now be a U-turn on the second referendum issue as well as all these other issues. She is hoping for a Government who will do that. Maybe she should heed the will of MPs on this because the Wollaston amendment on a second referendum was turned down a few weeks ago by 334 votes to 85. But now they want a second vote on the second referendum and scheming is going on by Keir Starmer, Dominic Grieve and co to try to avoid an embarrassing defeat of that second vote on the second referendum. I understand that the Beckett/Kyle amendment, which is the result of this scheming, is a strange beast that tries to avoid getting blamed for this second referendum being turned down in Parliament.

Some of us wanted to abide by the result of the first referendum. Some of us are not convinced that there is any need to delay. Some of us are convinced that we were ready to leave. We may never get the chance to know just how wrong the scaremongering about no deal was. But we have known for three years that we were supposed to leave on 29 March. If we were not ready, then some people were preventing us from being ready. We have known for two years that the European Union was interested only in driving a very hard bargain and therefore we should have kept no deal firmly on the table.

Like my noble friend Lord Robathan, I deeply regret having to see this change enacted. I will not support the Government in making this change, but I cannot support the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Adonis]

I am aware of the fact that she has not literally gone today, but she is going very shortly.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

I am glad the noble Lord accepts that she will be going shortly. This will be the second Prime Minister that the EU has got rid of. Does he think it will make it a hat-trick?

[A noble Lord]

You guys did it. It was your party.