European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Wednesday 31st January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope (LD)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Grocott. He is an accomplished parliamentarian who has the benefit of consistency. The line that he has just been peddling, with which I profoundly disagree politically, has been held by him consistently since 1972, which is quite a claim to fame.

However, there was a glimmer of hope in the remarks he made, as he said that he agreed with some of the things that my noble friend Lord Beith said. I think that the House will look to him and all his political stagecraft and experience to make sure that scrutiny procedures are maintained, because we will need all the help we can get to make sure that the Government do not just give Ministers blank cheques.

The standout moment for me yesterday was when the noble Lord, Lord Bridges, said, tellingly, that keeping every option open was no option at all. That is the message that I hope this debate will carry to the Government, because it crystallises the problem politically as I see it. The standout moment for today, which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, referred to, is the graphic image from the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, of two noble Lords in a bath singing “Je ne regrette rien”. I apologise to the noble Lord, but I have to say this, because it is true. A mental image appeared in my brain of the noble Lords, Lord Lamont and Lord Cormack, in a hot tub singing it. That is an Instagram image to kill for. This is meant with due respect to both noble Lords.

This has been a very constructive debate—and worth listening to, because the points have all been apposite. It is not yet boring, although that might be different by 9.30 pm. I hope the Government have clearly understood that there is no attempt on anybody’s part to wreck the Bill. There was never any attempt to do that, and no appetite for it on any side. If there was, I would know about it—and there is not. I can tell the Minister with some authority that he need have no fears about the Bill not getting a Second Reading. However, in a political context, the Government are clearly the author of their own misfortune. As the noble Lord, Lord Radice, and some other colleagues have said, self-imposed red lines and deadlines with no end game in sight are a recipe for incoherence and incompetence—which is the position that we are in at the moment.

We are all anxious to burnish our credentials. I arrived in the precincts of the Palace of Westminster in 1971, and one of the first acts I witnessed was the Liberal parliamentary party of its day assisting the then Prime Minister, Edward Heath, as he took the country into the EEC. Among other things, that means that I am actually older than I look, which is a cross I have to bear. I have been here for 47 years one way or another, in different roles. I was my party’s Chief Whip in the Maastricht debate. Then there was a defined treaty, in plain sight and in hard copy. People knew what they were arguing about, and it was still difficult. There were no deadlines—but, again, the Liberal Democrats came to the rescue. I learned more new bad language in the Conservative Whips’ Office during the Maastricht debate than I ever had in any earlier parts of my life. It was all quite tense, but John Major won because we helped him.

Recently during the coalition we helped David Cameron by co-authoring a Bill which put a lock on the ceding of any further powers to Brussels, subject to a referendum. I do not usually say this, but the Liberal Democrat parliamentary group in the House of Lords deserves some credit for 47 years of solid, unwavering support—some might even say strong and stable support—for the position that the United Kingdom should stay at the heart of Europe.

I am a member of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee and, for me, the battle lines will be drawn on the content of Clause 7, Schedule 7 and, to a lesser extent, Clause 11. I pay tribute to yesterday’s magnificent short speech from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead on Clause 11, and I, too, will be speaking about it, for obvious reasons.

Cross-Bench votes—not just voices—are very important. I know that there are sometimes challenges among our Cross-Bench colleagues, but they are non-aligned and have a special value in this debate. They are excellent contributors to the scrutiny process and if they do not hold their end up and give their support we may lose votes—so I hope they will think about that really carefully.

The Leader of the House made some helpful comments at the beginning of the debate about how she was going to bring forward some new proposals in March. The new system has to be operational by April or May and that is too tight a timetable for this to be done sensibly. The Constitution Committee’s ninth report has done the House a signal service, and the battleground it maps out is the one on which I will seek to attack Clause 7 and Schedule 7. The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee needs further and better particulars and basic things like early access to drafts—if that is possible, it would help. We also need to smooth out the peaks and the troughs in the flow of the delegated legislation we consider, and resources to staff up the committees. I hope that these will be put in place meaningfully, otherwise the quality of the scrutiny—because of the volume of legislation—is bound to suffer, and that is not in our interests.

I also hope that the usual channels will start to look again at the Cunningham doctrine, which colleagues may remember suggests that in very limited circumstances the possibility exists for this House to reject statutory instruments. If the Government do not get this Bill right, Members such as I will be driven to thinking in these terms. We do not want that, so I hope that the Government will get on with this and make sure that the Bill is amended—particularly Clause 7 and Schedule 7 —in a way that guarantees a scrutiny role for this House, because that is what we are here to do.