European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Newby Excerpts

Ping Pong (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 20th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, the House of Commons has done what we had hoped: they have considered and debated our meaningful vote amendment. They have not done what some of us hoped and agreed with it, but I think we should celebrate how far we have come on this issue since the Bill arrived in this House. At that stage, there was absolutely nothing in the Bill about a vote, meaningful or otherwise, on the withdrawal deal and there was no mention of no deal. All the Prime Minister had said was that there would be a vote in both Houses on a deal. There was no commitment to that in law and the result of such a vote would have had no legislative consequence. The vote would have simply been on a Motion, which could be ignored—I will not go into whether it would have been amendable. Any such vote in this Chamber would have been particularly meaningless, as either we would have felt obliged to vote the same way as the Commons, whatever our view, or we would have voted differently and then been ignored, both of those, of course, being meaningless for this House, because as my noble friend Lord Grocott rightly feared, if there were two votes, one in each House, it would raise the question of the primacy of the House of Commons.

So that was all we had: the promise of a Motion but untied to any legislation. What we now have in the Bill is that the withdrawal agreement, including the framework for the future relationship, can be ratified only if it has been approved by the Commons and debated here. That is a legislative requirement akin to the Article 50 requirement for a vote in the European Parliament. That is a major concession. It would not have been there without the hard work of the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, without your Lordships’ commitment to ensuring that this matter was in the Bill, and without us sending the amendment back on Monday.

However, I have a query about what would happen if there was no deal, as to my mind the rather extraordinary last-minute Written Ministerial Statement, as a result of which Dominic Grieve seems to have felt that he could support the Government this afternoon, does not really clarify things. I am not sure what it means. Will the Motion be amendable? Liam Fox is already out and about, briefing that actually there is no change as a result of that. To me, it reads that it still leaves it to the Speaker to decide whether or not it is sufficiently neutral to be amendable. So it is not actually an undertaking that such a Motion will be amendable. Perhaps the Leader could shed a bit of light on the significance of what made such a difference to the right honourable Dominic Grieve.

In the meantime, with the catalogue of changes to the Bill outlined by my noble friend Lady Smith on Monday and the insertion of parliamentary approval of the withdrawal deal agreed today, I hope even the Government will recognise the vital role played by your Lordships’ House, and that our detractors, particularly in parts of the press, will realise that it is our role to ask the Government, and the Commons, to think again. We have done that, and to quite a large extent we have been heard.

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, it seems rather hard to believe but this really will be the last time we debate the withdrawal Bill in your Lordships’ House.

As we did on Monday, we are focusing on only one issue—indeed, the significance of just two words in relation to a Motion that the Government would bring forward in the event of reaching no agreement with the EU on Brexit terms. The two words are “neutral terms”—a phrase, incidentally, which most of us have never heard before. The argument which won the day in the Lords was that “neutral terms” would preclude the Commons having the opportunity to express a view on the merits of the Government reaching no deal in the Brexit negotiations and on what should be done next. The Government argued that their formulation was necessary to preserve the constitutional role of Parliament and that the Grieve amendment would mandate the Government in completely unacceptable ways and they would not countenance it. Your Lordships’ House took a different view and that is why we are still here today.

Between the Bill leaving your Lordships’ House on Monday evening and this afternoon, the Government have clearly thought deeply about this matter and realised that their understanding of parliamentary procedure on Monday was flawed. They produced the Written Ministerial Statement—which, unless I missed it, the Leader did not refer to at all, yet that has been the crucial thing in the debates today—which, in lay man’s terms, says that it will be up to the Speaker to decide whether or not any government Motion in the event of no deal would be amendable, and that, in any event, there is nothing to stop the Commons debating any Motion that they want to on this issue, and that time would be found for them to do it.

There is now a battle of spin as to whether this represents a significant climbdown by the Government or whether winning the vote represents a victory. I wish that the right honourable Member for Beaconsfield had supported his own amendment this afternoon. But if I am disappointed, neither the Government nor Parliament can take any satisfaction from what has happened today. This week’s events demonstrate the contempt in which the Government hold Parliament. First, they try to muzzle it by putting “neutral terms” into the Bill. Then, fearing defeat, they publish a Written Ministerial Statement just minutes before the debate in the Commons which rips up their earlier justification for using the “neutral terms” ploy. At every turn they have demonstrated their only consistent characteristic: the determination to survive to another day. If there were a World Cup in kicking the can down the road, the Government would win it hands-down. But the can cannot be kicked down the road for ever.