European Council

Lord Newby Excerpts

Monday 26th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for repeating the Statement. We fully endorse her comments about the extraordinary bravery of police officers both in the attack in France last week and here at home as we commemorated last week. We recognise the bravery and commitment of those who have lost their lives and we will never forget their actions, which are truly heroic. We should also pay tribute to the police officers and members of the other emergency services who never know what danger they may face on any and every day. They and their families live with the knowledge that they always have to be prepared to ensure that we are safe.

I turn to the security issues outlined in the Statement. We welcome the recognition of the necessity for co-operation. Specifically on Russia, we were grateful for such swift and strong support from President Tusk and the EU 27 following the Salisbury attacks. Even in the midst of what are obviously very tough negotiations, our EU partners have not hesitated to offer both solidarity and action, which emphasises our shared values. Action has now followed across the world, with the announcements today of Russian diplomats being expelled from European and North American countries. We look forward to further updates on the detail of future security arrangements, but is the noble Baroness able to provide any information on discussions regarding UK participation in vital schemes such as the European arrest warrant?

The Government have been reluctant in the recent past to take action to protect the British steel industry, so we welcome that the Secretary of State for International Trade has now joined in representations to the US Government against US-imposed tariffs on EU steel. But we have to ask: would he have been able to achieve this on his own, without the support of the other 27 nations? I wonder whether we might now see a conversion by the Secretary of State to the benefits of joint and co-ordinated action by the EU in all our interests. The exemption that has been achieved, while positive, is only temporary. With talks ongoing between the EU and US, I hope the noble Baroness will confirm that the Secretary of State will provide an update through a Statement in the House of Commons in due course.

Turning to Brexit and the discussions on key issues, the noble Baroness will know that we have been calling for an agreement on a time-limited transitional period and we welcome the Government’s recognition of the necessity of this, not least for the British businesses that lacked certainty on their ability to trade with the EU after March next year. But although I understand the noble Baroness’s and the Government’s reluctance to use the word “transition”, labelling it as an “implementation period”, as in the Statement, is pushing it a bit when it then says it is an implementation period to “prepare properly” for the future. Surely an implementation period would be to implement what has been already been agreed, rather than to allow more time for Ministers to plan for the future.

As we heard in the debate this evening, the Government seem yet again to accept being tied into an absolute cut-off date. It seems a little like watching the sand run through an egg-timer and when it gets to the end, that is it. Does the noble Baroness accept that once the principle has been agreed that there is to be a time-limited period, as it now has been, there is a need for a little flexibility beyond having to return to Parliament? Such flexibility has no impact on the effect of the Bill and, as we heard in the last debate, it would be helpful and useful to the Government. I was sorry to hear the Minister, who is in her place at the moment, rejecting building such flexibility into the legislation. The Prime Minister has already discovered the pitfalls of setting firm deadlines when she rushed over to Brussels to announce the phase 1 agreement only to find she had not properly squared off the DUP. A couple more days were needed. Such flexibility would avoid that kind of embarrassment.

The Statement is clear that the issue of the Northern Ireland border remains to be resolved, but it seems that the Statement misses the crucial point. It talks of,

“how our commitments to avoid a hard border … should be turned into a legal text”.

That is part of the issue, but the fundamental point is not about the legal text and the language to be used, but is about the policy agreement, the practicalities of delivering the frictionless border we all want and maintaining our commitment to and operation of the Good Friday agreement. In her Mansion House speech the Prime Minister outlined her vision of a technological border, despite her Brexit Secretary’s previous description of these proposals being as an example of what she called “blue sky thinking”. If the Government insist that it is now just a matter of a legal text, can the noble Baroness tell us how the Government will give practical effect to the commitment that there should be no hard border in Northern Ireland?

I have two final points on clarity. Last week, this House passed two significant amendments on Euratom in the Nuclear Safeguards Bill. This issue was flagged up in the Prime Minister’s Mansion House speech and is one of vital importance to the country. Can the noble Baroness clarify whether the Government will accept those amendments when they are considered in the Commons, and/or bring back alternatives in the withdrawal Bill?

My final request for clarity is on the position of UK nationals. The noble Baroness is aware that I have raised this numerous times in this House before, including on the previous EU Council Statement from the PM that said that the Government had protected the rights of UK nationals. I raised then that unless the issue of onward movement is addressed the Government will have disadvantaged UK nationals, but will have protected just some of our rights. I ask her to look at two documents. The first is the withdrawal agreement of 28 February. I thought it was clear, if, to me, unwelcome on this point. Article 32 says:

“In respect of United Kingdom nationals and their family members, the rights provided for by this Part shall not include further free movement to the territory of another Member State”.


Then we had the updated document from last week. There is a mystery. Apart from the mystery that the noble Lord, Lord Newby, tried to raise earlier about what had been agreed and what had not, which the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, was not able to answer, we have Article 31 on the development of law and adaptations of Union acts, but I looked for Article 32 and it has gone. It has disappeared. We move straight to Article 33. Where is Article 32 about the rights of UK nationals when we Brexit? What will happen to them? It has mysteriously disappeared. It is a blank piece of paper. If the noble Baroness can explain the missing article, where it has got to and whether it means the Government have now come to the negotiating table to protect the interests of UK nationals it would be extraordinarily helpful.

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, I too thank the noble Baroness the Leader of the House for repeating the Statement. I echo her condolences to the families and friends of all those who died in Trèbes, particularly those of Lieutenant-Colonel Beltrame. On security, the Prime Minister is clearly to be congratulated on securing a co-ordinated EU response. To have 18 EU member states expelling Russian diplomats is clearly a major achievement. However, I wondered whether the noble Baroness would agree with the assessment from the noble Lord, Lord Ricketts, of why such an agreement is possible. He said:

“Those who weren’t keen on nailing the Russians were brought along by the powerful instinct for consensus that develops over a long summit discussion. It will be much harder to get that amplification of a UK position from outside the EU”.


It really is important to be in the room. Could the Leader say anything about how the Government will seek to replicate that ability to be in a room with other EU leaders when vital matters of our national security are being discussed in future?

More generally on our response to the Russian incident, when we debated this on the Prime Minister’s previous Statement, a number of suggestions were floated by the Government about further action being taken against individuals. Could the noble Baroness tell us what further action the Government now contemplate?

On Brexit, I absolutely agree with the noble Baroness the Leader of the Opposition about the use of the word “implementation”. It implies that there is something to implement. This is a standstill agreement or transition agreement; it certainly is not a period during which any agreement is being implemented. The process that has led to this agreement has been very instructive on the Secretary of State for DExEU’s negotiating strategy. It seems to follow the following rules. First, make a series of extremely bellicose statements. Secondly, have no meetings whatever with your main interlocutor for three months. Thirdly, wait to see what the Commission’s proposals are, having made no detailed proposals of one’s own. Fourthly, just accept them all: the customs union, the single market, a £40 billion payment and the European Court of Justice having a rule during the transition period. These were all things that the Government were ruling out at the start.

On the most intractable issue of all, the Northern Ireland border, if I were the DUP I would be seriously worried about the UK’s agreed fallback position of a customs union down the Irish Sea. The only alternatives that it has put forward are widely accepted as completely unsustainable and unworkable. The draft agreement applies the EU’s solution—that is, of the border down the Irish Sea—unless and until another system is agreed, yet detail of another system is there none. There is a curious passage in the Prime Minister’s Statement on which I would be grateful for the Leader’s clarification. It reads:

“I have explained that the specific European Commission proposals for that backstop”—


that is, the border down the Irish Sea—

“were unacceptable because they were not in line with the Belfast agreement and threatened the break-up of the UK’s internal market. As such, they were not a fair reflection of the joint report”—

that is, the December report. But they were in the December report. What has changed to make them unacceptable now when they were in the December report which the Government signed? I find that a remarkable statement.

On the agreement, most of it is in green, which is agreed, or in yellow, which is agreed in principle, but probably the biggest section in white, which is not agreed, is on ongoing police and judicial co-operation in criminal matters. This is a crucial element of the whole deal and of our relationship with the EU. What were the problems that have meant that we have not reached agreement in principle on the policy in that area? We have been able to reach agreement in principle on the policy on virtually everything else.

As for the future, the Government have so far produced no detailed proposals. Can the Leader give us some idea of whether the Government plan to do so at any point and whether Parliament might have an opportunity to discuss them?

The Prime Minister concludes:

“With a year to go, people are coming back together and looking forward”.


Well, they are looking forward, but the emotions which that forward glance fill them with vary. The Prime Minister said that,

“many are … tired of the old arguments and the attempts to refight the referendum over the past year”.

What does the Leader say to the majority of voters, including the majority of Conservative voters, who according to recent polling now believe that they should have a vote on any Brexit deal? How does the mantra of respecting the views of the British people sit with ignoring the views of the British people in respect of approving any final Brexit deal?