House of Lords: Sittings

Lord Hope of Craighead Excerpts

Thursday 20th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dykes]

Only once, and I am now a Cross-Bencher. The level of party politics in this country is abysmal and appalling now. I never saw such a strong lack of agreement in the House of Commons in that whole period. I have never before seen a Government ride roughshod over everybody with a Prime Minister whose superego is stronger than that of most past Prime Ministers, so what the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, said about the nature of the crisis in this country is quite right. Serried ranks of Tory Peers have been lined up to do the necessary thing if there is a vote, which I hope will not be necessary. I hope they will take on board what has been created by their complacency in going along with the recent very foolish decisions by the Prime Minister and the Government.

On 8 June last year, when the election took place, the Prime Minister had a unique and special opportunity to say that she had lost the mandate to pursue Brexit, which was the case, and therefore she could not go on doing it and would investigate alternatives to that scenario and report back to the House of Commons and the public in due course. No such deal was done; no such statement was made. Instead, a squalid deal was done with a rather unsavoury bunch of Protestant extremists in Belfast who were against membership of the European Union, although the public in Northern Ireland voted in favour. It is a very sad state of affairs that we have reached that position in this country.

I do not necessarily agree with the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, on the dates and think we should stick to what has been agreed. I acknowledge what the Chief Whip said and the efforts he has made to achieve that. None the less, to ignore the crisis and to treat it as a frivolity is very bad in this House today.

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)]

My Lords, my noble friend used the word “frivolous”, and I think that was an attack on the Chief Whip and the usual channels, of which I am not part. As I understand it, the aim, which I believe he is achieving, is that this House should express its opinion in a vote before the House of Commons expresses its opinion. He has achieved that in the timetable he has set out. Moving the date to a week earlier achieves nothing because the House of Commons will always be voting in the week it has chosen, so I fully support what the Chief Whip said. I also reject any suggestion that he or the other members of the usual channels who are in their place are being frivolous about this in any way.