Brexit: Preparations

Lord Lea of Crondall Excerpts

Monday 21st October 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan]

It is extremely difficult to say. However, the noble Lord is well experienced in parliamentary matters. The previous referendum, I think I am correct in saying, took about seven or eight months in total to get through the various Houses and their procedures and to take place. That was with a Government with a majority and a manifesto commitment to do it, so we can draw our own conclusions as to how long it would take to get referendum legislation through when this Government will manifestly not introduce that legislation. There is clearly no majority in either House for it and no agreement on what the question should be, or the franchise or the rules governing it. Many Members who are much more experienced in the workings of the House of Commons than I am have estimated that it could take even longer than that.

[Lord Lea of Crondall (Lab)]

My Lords, paragraph 10 of the Statement repeated by the Minister reads as follows:

“Furthermore, no formal response from the EU has yet been received to the two letters sent by the Prime Minister on the evening of Saturday 19 October”.


Is the Minister surprised that there has been no formal response to these two letters, which say opposite things? One of the letters is not signed, and that is the view of Parliament. The other letter is signed by the Prime Minister. It says that the EU can ignore the first letter, which is unsigned, because it is only the view of Parliament. Is the Minister surprised that in a parliamentary democracy it should be so surprising that the European Union, in all its manifestations, has not replied to these two letters on the grounds, first, of the strange constitutional concept behind them and, secondly, that they say totally opposite things?

[Lord Callanan]

What the Minister is surprised about is that the noble Lord clearly has not read the letters. We do not say in the second letter that the first one could be ignored. We were complying with the terms of the Act. We were sending the letter as required by the Benn Act but making clear what the policy of the Prime Minister and the Government is. The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, and other legal commentators have said that that is perfectly within the law.