Priorities for the Government

Lord Howarth of Newport Excerpts

Thursday 25th July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I thank the most reverend Primate for his comments. He is right that there are things that the Government can visibly do, but there is also support and there are things on the ground that we need to help develop, and that will certainly be part of our plans. The new Prime Minister has set out his vision covering domestic policy. I am delighted that I was not asked a question on Brexit because we want to look at how we can improve quality of life for people across our country and to focus on our future. That is why he is particularly focused on, and has highlighted, the fact that he wants to protect older people from the fear of having to sell their home to pay for care. I hope noble Lords will be pleased to hear that we will be publishing proposals in this area soon, because it is one of those areas that will make a significant difference to families across the country and to people’s lives, and it is something that we really must grapple with.

[Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab)]

My Lords, if money is now to be abundant, and if the new Prime Minister and his Ministers genuinely seek to build a more just and humane society, why is there no mention in the Statement of the Government’s intention to remedy the grave failures in recent years in terms of access to justice? Perhaps, in this new fiscal climate, there is now an opportunity to restore the cuts in legal aid that should never have been made and to create more decent conditions in our prisons. If the Government really intend to pursue the liberal and just policies that they proclaim, I hope they will include those among their intentions.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I am afraid it is slightly above my pay grade to add further priorities to the Prime Minister’s list, but obviously we have a new Secretary of State for Justice and I am sure he will be very interested in the comments that the noble Lord has made. I am sure there will be lots of new thinking going on within the department in order to tackle some of the issues that he has raised.

European Council

Lord Howarth of Newport Excerpts

Monday 25th March 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I think the noble Lord will recognise that I have never breached that convention, and I will not be doing it now.

[Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab)]

My Lords, will the noble Baroness clarify the constitutional issue raised by the noble Lord, Lord Robathan? Is it not the case that, under the terms of the EU withdrawal Act, if Parliament does not approve the statutory instrument, we leave on 29 March? Is she none the less saying to us that EU law does not permit the Parliament of the United Kingdom even to determine the date of Brexit? If that is so, does it not illustrate powerfully why a majority of voters in the referendum who cherish our parliamentary democracy believe passionately that it is right for us to leave the EU?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I am afraid I can only restate that 29 March is no longer a date on which we can leave the EU. The agreement made is a matter of international law. It has always been the case that agreements at an international level take precedence. The House of Commons voted to seek an extension to Article 50, which is what has been done. Rejecting the SI would not stop the extension being agreed or coming into force because it is a matter of international law.

Lord Speaker: Powers

Lord Howarth of Newport Excerpts

Thursday 31st January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I assure my noble friend that the Chief Whip and I do everything we can to ensure fairness around the House in answering Questions. In fact, almost 85% of tabled Questions asked since July did not come from the government Benches. We try to ensure as Question Time goes on that all Members of the House are given the opportunity to speak and to ask questions, which is an extremely important part of scrutiny of the Government.

[Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Dubs (Lab)]

My Lords, how does the Leader of the House choose between us?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I think noble Lords have just shown that they can do it for themselves.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords, does the noble Baroness the Leader of the House recall Walter Bagehot’s distinction between the dignified parts and the efficient parts of the constitution, and his observation that the dignified parts were imposing, old and venerable? Does she agree with me that the Lord Speaker on the Woolsack should remain dignified—not to mention imposing, old and venerable—and should not become efficient because, as the previous Lord Speaker has said, it is crucial to the effectiveness of this Second Chamber that we preserve our culture and practice of self-regulation?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I entirely agree with the noble Lord.

Leaving the European Union

Lord Howarth of Newport Excerpts

Monday 21st January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

What I can say to my noble friend is that the Government and all Members involved in these meetings are approaching them in a constructive spirit without preconditions, and everyone who has been met has taken the same approach. As the Statement made clear, following discussions with senior parliamentarians, the Prime Minister will be considering how we might meet our obligations to the people of Northern Ireland in a way that can command the greatest possible support. She will then take those conclusions back to the EU.

[Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab)]

My Lords, does the Leader of the House agree that parliamentary government requires that the Government lead? Does she accept that there is a widespread view, shared by the ghost of Mr Gladstone, that procedural initiatives by Back-Benchers in another place, to wrest from the Government control of the agenda and the timetable for parliamentary business, are subversive of parliamentary government and set a dangerous precedent?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I do not think that my directly commenting on Commons procedures is helpful. I can certainly say that attempts to remove the Government’s power to negotiate our orderly exit from the EU at this crucial time are undoubtedly concerning and risk further paralysis in Parliament.

EU Council

Lord Howarth of Newport Excerpts

Monday 17th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I can say to my noble friend that the focus of the Government is to get through the deal that has been negotiated—a deal that delivers for the UK and the EU and a deal that both sides say is the best deal possible.

[Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab)]

My Lords, when the noble Baroness the Leader meets her Cabinet colleagues tomorrow to discuss preparations for no deal, will she encourage them not to waste their energies on trying to conjure political rabbits out of the House of Commons hat, to dismiss the lurid propaganda about cliff edges and catastrophes, to apply themselves vigorously to preparing for an orderly transition to WTO rules and to embark at the earliest possible moment on negotiations for a free trade agreement with the EU?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

As the noble Lord knows, and as I have said in response to earlier questions, we do not want no deal but it is only right that a prudent Government plan for one. He will also be aware of the extensive work that has already been under way to prepare for no deal over the past two years: the 106 technical notices, the various agreements that we have in place and the money that we have put into preparing for it. This is not a situation that we want to be in but we have to ensure for the British people that all contingencies are covered, and that is what we are doing.

Brexit: Withdrawal Agreement and Political Declaration

Lord Howarth of Newport Excerpts

Wednesday 5th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab)]

My Lords, the Prime Minister has honourably striven to do the impossible: to find a compromise between remainers, for whom Brexit is above all a threat to our economy, and leavers, for whom what matters most is the recovery of our sovereignty. Remainers think that the economic cost of withdrawal on the terms she has negotiated is too great and see the deal as far inferior to remaining in the European Union. They think we should revoke our Article 50 declaration. The reckless among them seek a second referendum. A second referendum would do deep damage to the already battered faith in our politics and put paid to reconciliation in our country for a long time. For leavers, the deal fails to release us from the tentacles of the EU and from the democratic deficit that was built into it at its origins.

It is not only leavers who cannot accept that we should continue, perhaps indefinitely, to be subject, with no power of decision on our part, to rules determined by the EU governing swathes of our national life, including policy on the environment, employment, state aid, competition and even tax; to be subject to the continued jurisdiction of the CJEU as arbiter of the agreement and interpreter of EU laws by which we remain bound; with a separate regime for Northern Ireland; without the right to liberate ourselves at our own volition from the Irish backstop; and locked inside the customs union and the EU’s external tariff wall for as long as the EU wants, with no realistic chance of achieving an independent trade policy. How can we as democrats accept that?

Amid the passions of this debate, in your Lordships’ House we should seek to state the issues accurately. Let us dispose of the canard, as our French friends say, that the demand to take back control masks ugly attitudes towards immigration and a widespread vicious nativism at odds with liberal values and internationalism. Yes, there are racists and xenophobes among those who voted leave; their attitudes are odious. Nobody, however, can sensibly suggest that more than a minuscule proportion of the 17.4 million of our fellow countrymen who voted to leave were such bigots. It does not follow that, if you want to extricate your country from the undemocratic structures of the European Union, you are illiberal or insular.

The evidence published in April by the Nuffield Centre for Social Investigation confirms that the paramount concern of leavers is sovereignty: our right to make our own laws through our own representative institutions of government, accountable to our people, together with the supremacy of our own courts. We see this clearly now in the reaction of leavers to the withdrawal agreement. It ends free movement from the EU into the UK. If immigration was their key concern, leavers would be welcoming the agreement, but they are not. They are objecting that the withdrawal agreement does not allow us to take back control and to recover the sovereignty that we lent to the EU through the European Communities Act 1972.

Let us also have a realistic debate about no deal, on which the Motion in the name of my noble friend invites us to focus. The Government are right to prepare for no deal, and in no spirit of trepidation. They would be right also to prepare to protect those in poverty who are at risk of particular suffering during the transition, a point that the most reverend Primate made very powerfully. But no deal certainly need not be a disaster or a catastrophe, as so many noble Lords insist. It need not mean crashing out or a cliff edge. There would be no need for aeroplanes to stop flying, for Kent to become a lorry park, for supply chains to seize up, for medicines to be unobtainable and for food to be rationed, as the litany goes. We would not face the Bank of England’s worst-case scenario of a disorderly exit, which is, as the former governor, the noble Lord, Lord King of Lothbury, has noted, based on entirely unrealistic assumptions.

Appendix A of the Bank’s response to the Treasury Committee, entitled “Impact on the UK economy of a transition to WTO”, offers a no-deal scenario that we can well live with. Philip Aldrick, economics editor of the Times, has helpfully translated the Bank’s technical prognostications into relatively plain English. In this scenario, he explains, we go to WTO rules after a smooth transition in January 2021, retaining for ourselves the EU’s existing 90 external trade deals; sterling falls by 8.5%; we welcome a net 85,000 immigrants—tens of thousands—into Britain annually; and our GDP is 5.25% less in 2023 than if we had remained in the EU. Under the Prime Minister’s deal GDP would be 3.75% less. The difference between the Prime Minister’s deal and an orderly no deal is just 1.5% of GDP.

Remainers assert that people did not vote to be poorer. With the orderly no deal projected by the Bank, they will not be poorer than they were; they will be somewhat less wealthier than they might have been. Leavers, who voted to leave despite the lurid warnings of the first project fear, will be happy to pay that price for the restoration of their sovereignty.

It is in the interests of the peoples and businesses of the EU to avoid chaos and agree an orderly no deal with us. The EU has already offered to reciprocate air traffic rights and aviation safety certificates, and in its own interests it will surely act sensibly in relation to road transport. Any additional checks would be very limited. There will be no legal requirement to inspect every vehicle or to carry out checks at the border itself, and anyway there will not be enough staff and equipment to check more than a minute proportion of vehicles. Indeed, new EU-imposed non-tariff barriers will be illegal under WTO rules so long as our products exported into the EU are still made to the same standards.

It is objected that under WTO rules and without the customs union, there must be a hard border within the island of Ireland. That problem has been greatly overstated and I do not believe that the Good Friday agreement would be in jeopardy. The Permanent Secretary at HMRC has made it clear that there is no need for the UK to erect a hard border in any scenario. Nor, as they have said, will the Republic or the EU impose one.

The US and China trade with the EU on WTO rules. We can do likewise. Better, of course, would be the rapid conclusion of a free trade deal with the EU. Given where we start from and based on the EU’s deal with Canada, that is entirely possible. EU countries that sell us £300 billion of exports will be impatient for the EU to reach a free trade deal with us. That is what the Government must now work for.

Leaving the European Union

Lord Howarth of Newport Excerpts

Monday 26th November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

My noble and learned friend is right, and the political declaration sets out a clear vision for our future relationship, covering an economic partnership, a security partnership and specific agreements on cross-cutting co-operation. It will deliver economic benefits and shows that, in our relationship with the EU, we are not just another third country. This will be the most ambitious free trade agreement that the EU has with any other country, and it will allow us to develop our own independent free trade policy to ensure that we remain a global Britain.

[Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab)]

My Lords, do the Government accept that there has already been a people’s vote, in 2016, and that the major parties undertook to honour its result? Do they accept that to break faith with those undertakings and agree to hold a second referendum would be to intensify and perpetuate social division, political disaffection and economic uncertainty? Will the Minister confirm that, in the event of the House of Commons rejecting the withdrawal deal, the Government will not renege on their stated refusal to accept the calls for a second referendum?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I thank the noble Lord for his comments. The Prime Minister has been repeatedly clear, as we in this House have been, that we have had a people’s vote—he is absolutely right—and the people voted to leave. We have now brought forward a deal to the House of Commons—we were told we would not be able to come to a deal, but we have—and it will make its decision. But we do not believe that there should or will be a second referendum.

Brexit: Negotiations

Lord Howarth of Newport Excerpts

Thursday 15th November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I am afraid that I do not agree with my noble friend’s assessment. We have agreed the principles of the UK’s smooth and orderly exit from the EU, as set out in the withdrawal agreement, and agreed the broad terms of our future relationship. We are delivering on the result of the referendum; we will be leaving the EU; and, going forward, we will be developing a strong partnership with the EU that will last for decades to come.

[Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab)]

My Lords, in the choice between democratic and material values in 2016, the people of this country voted by a clear majority to reclaim democratically accountable self-government. Is it not now incumbent on those who speak and vote on their behalf in Parliament to do likewise and to reject this deal, which fails to allow us the governmental autonomy that the people of our country ought to have?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

Again, I am afraid that I disagree with the noble Lord. This deal is bringing back autonomy to this country, and it should be supported.