European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

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

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

My Lords, I support this amendment. One of the primary purposes of the Bill is to promote legal certainty: I cannot understand how it can be anything other than destructive to legal certainty for Parliament to enact a Bill that includes Clause 6, which removes the jurisdiction of the Court of Justice of the European Union from exit day—defined as 29 March 2019—when the Government’s own intention, and that of the European Union, is that there should be a transitional period during which the Court of Justice will retain jurisdiction, and during which we will agree to that jurisdiction.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords, I too support this amendment. I will be very brief. It seems that if the Government try to maintain the text as it is they are basically marching Parliament up to the top of the hill in order to march it down again—they are also marching Parliament to the top of the hill to defend a position on which they themselves ran up the white flag some weeks ago. Frankly, this is not a sensible way of proceeding. It will make a mockery of Parliament if it is asked to legislate something which it knows not even the British Government want to happen. Surely, the right answer is to remove Clause 6, as the amendment proposes.

If by any chance everything collapses or changes, or the Government somehow persuade the European Commission to draft the text in a different way, it will be perfectly possible for the Government to put it in the withdrawal and implementation Bill that will come forward after the conclusion of negotiations. Meanwhile, we should start with the standstill as it has been agreed and without this provision.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Keen of Elie]

I often think of Sir Thomas More, but not on this occasion.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

I find it rather hard from the Cross Benches and as a non-politician to make this point, but I wonder whether the Minister has considered what the Government are proposing to do. They are proposing to offer in an Act of Parliament signed into law by the Queen something which they know is not going to happen. They have offered that up; their supporters will, no doubt, rise cheering to their feet; and then, three or six months later, they will repeal that part of the Act, at which point there will be cries of betrayal and perfidy—and those are probably rather mild words compared with the ones that will be used by the Daily Mail and others. Have the Minister and his colleagues not given any thought to that? Is not the simple thing to do to accept the amendment, and then there will be no betrayal and no perfidy, or if there is it will have been done already?

[Lord Keen of Elie]

There is no betrayal and no perfidy, but I feel misrepresented by the noble Lord because he said “knowing that there will be an agreement”. We do not know for certain that there will be an agreement. Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed. Of course, we have an aspiration; we seek to secure the implementation period, and when we do we will then legislate for that in the withdrawal agreement and implementation Bill. Meanwhile, this Bill is designed and intended to accommodate the situation in which there may not be such an agreement.