European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill

Lord Liddle Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & 2nd reading (Hansard)
Monday 13th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, I assure my good friend the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, that, as far as I am concerned, the argument about trying to stop Brexit is over and done with as a result of the general election. However, before she gets carried away with her arrogance on this subject, I gently remind her that the Conservative share of the vote in that election went up by 1.3%. They got a majority of 80 because of the way our electoral system works. This makes the case again for a consideration of electoral reform, which I have supported for the last 40 years. I also agree with the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, that we should not try to put forward amendments that in any way threaten the deadline of 31 January, but we should exercise our proper role of scrutiny on this Bill.

What has happened is heartbreaking for me, but there is also a certain sense of relief about it; I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Bridges, about that. My main concern now is that there is—and has been—hardly any debate on the post-Brexit future for Britain in Europe and the world. This debate has hardly begun. The date 31 January 2020 marks the end of an epoch that began on 31 July 1961 when Harold Macmillan announced that the Government had decided to apply for membership of the EEC. Over Christmas I read The Winds of Change, the wonderful book by the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy. I was struck by how much thought and analysis went into Macmillan’s decision. Where is the grand design for Britain’s future that he personally wrote, as Prime Minister, now that we are facing the future of Brexit? I do not see it and I think the Government are simply going to stumble along.

We face the prospect, at best, of a bare-bones trade deal this autumn, and let us be clear now that a bare-bones deal is a hell of a bad deal for Britain. It is bad for manufacturing because it does not ensure frictionless trade. Getting rid of quotas and tariffs does not guarantee frictionless trade, when you have problems such as regulatory standards and rules of origin. It is bad because of the false promises that have been made to the fishing industry: the EU is going to demand access to our waters in return for our selling our fish on the continent. It is bad for UK services, whose voice will struggle to be heard in the mad rush to agree something by December 2020. It is rather like 1914: we will be the victim of an artificial timetable and it will end with us in a very bad place.

Where does this leave pro-Europeans such as me? Nothing will make me abandon my belief in a united Europe in which Britain plays its full part, absolutely nothing. This may now be a matter for future generations, but let us be clear: internationalism and European unity are as relevant to today’s world, in the 2020s and beyond, as they were in the 1950s.

The Conservatives are making themselves very clearly the party of English nationalism. They are losing in Scotland, they have abandoned Northern Ireland and they are left with populist English nationalism. On our side of the House, having suffered a devastating defeat in the election we have to remake and rebuild our party in a completely new and different way, but let us be certain that we must remake ourselves as the party of Europe, confident in our view that the only route to economic and social progress at home is by working in partnership with our European friends to tackle the multiple challenges that the world now faces.

European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard continued) & Committee stage & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard continued): House of Lords
Wednesday 15th January 2020 Lords Chamber

Finally, I can at least take comfort from the fact that the Minister will not be able to rise to his feet and tell us how badly drafted the proposal is because he drafted it himself.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the amendment moved by my noble friend Lady Hayter. I particularly support the speech of the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull. He is already establishing himself in this House as an excellent chair of the EU Select Committee, succeeding a previous excellent chair. My only regret is that I am no longer on that committee to serve under his chairmanship.

In my experience from my four years on the committee, the attitude of successive Secretaries of State towards the committee was always one of good will but they made promises they never kept. At one stage, we were told, “Oh yes, every month you’ll see me and I’ll come to answer your questions.” My recollection is that we saw David Davis at intervals of perhaps five months during his time as Secretary of State. I think that we saw Mr Raab once; I might be wrong about that. Mr Barclay was the most attentive towards the committee. He seemed keen to improve in the next phase of the EU negotiations on his own degree of accountability. He saw maximum transparency in the conduct of the negotiations as being in the Government’s interests. I am sorry that No. 10 has decided to go for breach of promise on all this. That is a great shame.

Whenever the issue of the European Parliament’s rights to scrutiny is raised, you get a vigorous shaking of the head from the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Callanan. I would love to hear his explanation of why those rights are not what we all know them to be. He seems to reject the notion that the European Parliament has many more rights than the British Parliament to access information and question officials to find out what is happening, but that is the case. The role of the European Parliament was greatly strengthened by the Lisbon treaty, and again by the ECJ judgment to make it easier for the Commission to negotiate on the EU’s behalf on services as well as on goods. It has also been strengthened by the brouhaha over the Canada agreement; a stronger role for Parliament clearly would have prevented the difficulties that the agreement then ran into in its ratification in member states. I think it is in the Government’s interests to be more transparent.

Yes, Brexit is happening—as I said in my Second Reading speech, I fully accept that—but the Government do not yet realise what trade negotiations are really like, because they have not done them for half a century. Having served for three years in DG Trade, or at least in the cabinet of the Commissioner, I can tell you that they are brutal. The people in charge of the EU side in these negotiations stand up for EU interests with tremendous firmness. I suspect that this is what we will encounter once we have allowed ourselves to become a third country, which in a few weeks we will be. They will treat us like any other third country.

One has to be transparent about the trade-offs. I will cite just one example. How do we rate the relative importance of the fishing and car industries? The fishing industry has tremendous political profile and thinks that as a result of Brexit it will get much more fishing in British waters and that we can keep continental boats out—but it represents 0.5% of GDP. How much are we prepared to sacrifice in our negotiating position for the fishing industry? The car industry employs up to 1 million people in this country, when you look at the supply chain. If we do not achieve the kind of customs partnership that Mrs May said she was in favour of, there is a real risk that inward investment by the overseas companies that rebuilt the car industry in Britain will go elsewhere over time. There has already been a lot of talk of that on their part. This would be a devastating blow to one of Margaret Thatcher’s main achievements in the 1980s and 1990s in being able, as a result of creating the single market, to attract to Britain huge amounts of foreign investment, which has greatly benefited our people. I repeat: 1 million jobs.

If there is not transparency, how do the Government explain to people that they are not guaranteeing the future of 1 million jobs but have put all their negotiating eggs in the basket of trying to give a few more opportunities—not actually saving any jobs—to our fishing? We need openness if we are to have a proper debate in this country about where our interests lie. That is what we need in the coming 12 months if we are to have any hope of a harmonious outcome to these rushed negotiations.

[Viscount Trenchard (Con)]

My Lords, I will comment on the views of the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, about the European Parliament and the relative degrees of parliamentary scrutiny. He has much more experience of Brussels; I have worked there, but not for nearly as long as he did. It is not correct to say that the European Parliament’s rights in this matter are greater than the United Kingdom Parliament’s. Article 218 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union states that the European Parliament must be kept

“immediately and fully informed at all stages of the procedure”,

but does not give it a role in deciding the substance of the negotiations. However, it must pass the final agreement by a simple majority vote. So it has to agree at the end, but it appears not to have the right, stage by stage, to dictate to the Government what they are to do as they negotiate.

[Lord Liddle]

I never claimed that. I claimed that the Parliament was so fully informed that it had a grasp of the trade-offs that it would have to make in deciding whether to vote for this deal at the end of the day.

[Viscount Trenchard]

As far as I understood, the noble Lord said that the European Parliament had much more say in dictating the mandate, but perhaps I misunderstood him. In any case, it appears that during the last three years the UK Parliament has been exercising power to control the Executive, and the Executive have not been seen by their interlocuters on the European side as having the right to negotiate, because all the time noble Lords opposite, and others, were saying to individuals in Brussels, “Don’t worry, Parliament isn’t going to allow the negotiating team to do this. We will reverse it.” Now the people have spoken and the House of Commons has a strong majority of 80 Conservative MPs, all committed to a real Brexit. That is known. This amendment is designed to obstruct because the House of Commons will not accept it, and noble Lords know this well.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Callanan]

As the noble Lord is well aware, it is the role of the Commission to do the negotiating. It will report back to the Council and the Council will provide steers on how it will do that, but the detailed negotiation is a matter for the European Commission.

[Lord Liddle]

There is a meeting every fortnight of officials from member states that monitors what the European Commission is doing.

[Lord Callanan]

There is not a direct analogy between the position of the UK and that of the EU. The UK is one member state and the EU is 28—shortly to become 27—member states. My point is that this enables the UK to speak with a single voice in negotiations and ensures that partners can have faith that the Government’s position is the position of the United Kingdom.

It goes without saying that the Government will of course support Parliament in fulfilling its important role in scrutinising the actions of the UK Government in the negotiations. Both Houses will have all the usual arrangements for scrutinising the actions of the Government. I find incredible the statements that have been made about how little a role Parliament will have to play in these negotiations. This House alone has spent over 650 hours on debates on EU-exit-related themes since the 2016 referendum—believe me, from my point of view sitting on the Front Benches, it has sometimes seemed even longer. I find it difficult to believe that noble Lords will not want to question and interrogate me or whichever other Minister is in my place at the time on these negotiations. Indeed, committees of this House have already published three reports on this Bill after fewer than 10 sitting days of this Session.

Let me address the points made by the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, and the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, on the role of the European Parliament and the famous Article 218. The noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, is sadly not in her place but we have served in the European Parliament and know the reality of these matters. It is important not to draw unhelpful comparisons between the Commission which, as I said, negotiates on behalf of the 27 member states, and the UK Government on how negotiations are conducted. The information provided by the Commission to the European Parliament is carefully calibrated to not put the EU at a disadvantage in the negotiations. The detail of what information shall be provided to the Parliament is left entirely to the discretion of the European Commission.

The European Parliament will, as this Parliament often does, try to insert itself into the negotiations and want to influence their conduct through its various committees and organs. That is entirely right. It happens in the European Union and I suspect it will happen in this country as well. However, we need to be careful not to overstate what Article 218 does. It is not specific on reporting requirements and that compares very well with the Prime Minister’s commitment to keep Parliament fully informed about the progress of these negotiations. Article 218 does not specify what documents will be available or when.

Of course, it also bears saying that this Bill is not the final word on engagement between Parliament and the Government. As I indicated to the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, when we met and as I have said a number of times, the Government will want to start a process of discussions with Parliament into exactly how the various committees and organs in both Houses will scrutinise the work of the Government in this area. In our view, there is no need to set out bespoke statutory reporting requirements in the Bill or impose a statutory duty on a Minister to provide public commentary on the likely outcome of confidential negotiations at a fixed point, as was proposed in Amendment 28. In our view, this risks seriously disadvantaging negotiators acting for the United Kingdom.

I also note that setting out requirements of this type in legislation might well not have the desired effect, as an attempt to pre-empt outcomes and timings can be easily overtaken by events. Let me give the House an example. Last week, I delivered an update in this House on the Government’s negotiations and on Article 50, as required by Section 13 of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 and the Benn Act which many Members in this House spent many hours telling us was essential. For that debate, which took place at 10.30 in the evening, virtually the only people in the House to debate these matters were myself and the noble Baronesses, Lady Ludford and Lady Hayter. Many of the Members who insisted on passing the Benn Act and introducing these statutory reporting requirements did not trouble themselves to come along and take advantage of the legislation they had passed. There were only three speakers in that debate, myself and the two noble Baronesses.

European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Report stage & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords & Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords & Report: 1st sitting
Monday 20th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Barwell]

It is not for me to speak for the Government, not least because I do not sit on the Government Front Bench. Indeed, noble Lords who have followed the debate closely will know that I do not entirely agree with the position that the Chancellor set out; the previous Government believed that there was a case for aligning with certain EU rules and regulations. But, having said those things, I do not think that the Chancellor of the Exchequer has done what the noble Baroness suggests. If one looks at the slides that the European Commission has published on the level playing field, one will see that, on the vast majority of issues, it is not suggesting that dynamic alignment is required; it is effectively asking for non-regression from existing commitments. There are some areas where there may well be a problem in the negotiation, particularly state aid—I read what it has said as looking for an ongoing commitment to align with EU state aid rules—but I certainly do not think the Chancellor has gone as far as the noble Baroness suggests.

I was interested in remarks that several of your Lordships made: the Chancellor’s comments to the FT came as no surprise to me at all. That has been the clear policy of this Government from the point at which they were formed.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

Has not there been a fundamental change in government policy without any putting of that change to Parliament for discussion? There has been a fundamental change from the policy that the noble Lord, Lord Barwell, pursued with the Prime Minister, which was to secure as close a relationship as possible on trade and, if possible, to make it frictionless. The noble Lord and the then Prime Minister thought it very important to try to protect manufacturing jobs with complex cross-border supply chains. Now, it is quite clear from what the Chancellor has said that the Government have chosen something completely different —that it is worth paying a high economic price to secure sovereignty. That is the choice it appears that Mr Javid is announcing, but he does not have parliamentary approval for it and it has never been properly debated. Is that not scandalous?

[Lord Barwell]

I do not intend to get into this debate in detail; I wished to speak briefly. All I will say is that that approach has been clear for some time, and the Government got a clear endorsement for it in the general election. I say that as someone who had a different view.

I conclude my remarks by simply saying this. There is a case in some circumstances for the Government seeking approval for particular positions; it may strengthen their hand in negotiations. But there is also a real danger, as my noble friend said, that if both sides set out their positions in detail at the outset, you rule out possible negotiating solutions.