European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Mackay of Clashfern Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Monday 26th February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Ludford]

I should briefly like to thank all speakers in this extremely valuable debate, especially the co-signatories to my amendment, the noble Lords, Lord Cormack and Lord Judd, and my noble friend Lady Smith of Newnham. It was evident that, almost without exception, there was very strong support for staying in these crucial law enforcement measures. I am not so sure we got what the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, asked for, which was a reply of real substance. We certainly did not get the clarity that my noble friend Lord Paddick asked for on the ECJ. Quite honestly, that was an extraordinary response to the noble Lord, Lord Pannick. As the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, said, there is no safety net in this area. The WTO is not much of one but it exists.

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Con)]

Is the noble Baroness talking of the European Court of Justice as though there would be no change in its constitution as a result of our leaving the European Union?

[Baroness Ludford]

There obviously will be a change, in that there will not be a British judge or British Advocate-General. What we want to know is how we will plug into what the Prime Minister asked for in Munich: to have respect for the sovereignty of the UK’s legal order—the Minister really emphasised only that—but also respect for the remit of the ECJ, at least when participating in agencies. That raises the question: will we also respect the remit of the ECJ when it rules on the individual rights of people who challenge, for instance, a European arrest warrant? We have no answer to that question but the people who are nationals of those countries will want to know exactly what the jurisdictional regime is. I am afraid we are no closer to knowing that. As my noble friend Lord Paddick said, however, we do have clear negotiating objectives in this area—this is perhaps unique in Brexit—as the Prime Minister has set them out and the Minister has just confirmed them. What we are utterly in the dark about is how the Government propose to secure the arrangements, structures and mechanisms for continuing effective and efficient cross-border law enforcement co-operation.

The Minister said that we will have a meaningful vote on the withdrawal agreement, which is supposed to give us an opportunity to scrutinise at the end of the process, and hence that this amendment is not needed. But that is not enough; we want a purchase and input into those negotiating objectives. The Prime Minister makes a speech in Munich and tells us, “These are the objectives”, but the Government do not deign to tell us how on earth those objectives are to be secured. Like me, the Minister is a veteran of the European Parliament. We found there that the European Commission, the member states and the Council learned the hard way that unless you bring the European Parliament, in that case, into your confidence about your negotiating objectives and how you are going to secure them, the danger is that at the end of the process the deal will be rejected because it has not been kept informed along the way. The lesson in Brussels was to front-load the process by keeping the people who might be in a position to block the deal informed of how it was to be secured.

I am afraid the Minister did not convince me, at least, that we are any further forward than we were with the future partnership paper, because that paper did not set out how we are to achieve these objectives. It said what the Government wanted to achieve. That has been repeated by the Prime Minister and the Minister, but we are none the wiser about how these measures will be replicated when we no longer have the structures and mechanisms of the EU. I fear that we will have to come back to this in all seriousness at future stages but, for the time being, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.