European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Pearson of Rannoch Excerpts

3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 16th May 2018 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Speaker (Lord Fowler)]

The original Motion was that this Bill do now pass, since when an amendment has been moved to insert at the end the words set out on the Order Paper. The question I therefore now have to put is that this amendment be agreed to.

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch (UKIP)]

My Lords, I trust that noble Lords are relieved that I have removed my Motion to Regret from the Order Paper. I did so because I did not want to prolong today’s proceedings and also because I have an unexpected family commitment this evening that may prevent me staying until the end of the debate.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

I have saved noble Lords an awful lot of time. I hope that students of Brexit will read what I said at Second Reading on 30 January in column 1392. The core of my argument was that the Government were underestimating the strength of our hand in Brussels, because politicians and bureaucrats do not understand how to do deals; that they should have resiled from Clauses 2 to 4 of Article 50, which give the Eurocrats control over our leaving process; and that they should have dictated our terms for leaving to the Eurocrats. Those terms have not changed, and remain in the interests of the real people of Europe—as opposed to those of the Eurocrats, with their determination to keep afloat their failing project of anti-democratic integration. We should be generous with those real people, by offering them wide mutual residence, our ongoing security support and the continuation of our free trade together, which their exporters need so much more than ours. If the Eurocrats accept all that, we should be generous with the cash that we give them. If they do not, we should leave anyway, and give them no more cash after 29 March next year.

As the Bill leaves this House for the Commons, the Government still do not seem to believe that we can legally resile from those Article 50 clauses and leave anyway —yet I am advised that there have been some 225 unilateral withdrawals from international treaties and organisations since 1945. I recommend Professor de Frankopan’s opinion in Money Week on 21 November 2016, which covers supportive decisions from the German constitutional court and confirms that leaving without the Eurocrats’ consent is just a matter of political will.

The area in which the Government seem most confused—and most unnecessarily under the thumb of Brussels—is trade. We have free trade with the EU, so why do we not simply offer to continue it with a new arrangement under the jurisdiction of the World Trade Organization and threaten to go under the WTO’s normal remit if the Eurocrats do not agree? As I have said, continuing free trade would be much to the advantage of the EU exporters to us because, if it stops, they would pay us some £13 billion a year in tariffs—under present WTO terms—against the £5 billion that we would pay them. Nothing would change. We would all just go on as we are and the inflated problem of the Irish border would simply disappear. Moreover, there is even an article in the treaties that I do not think has been mentioned in these proceedings. It obliges the EU to continue free trade with us after we leave it and become part of the wider world. Article 3(5) of the Treaty on European Union contains the following:

“In its relations with the wider world, the Union … shall contribute to … free and fair trade”.


Have the Government pursued this clause with Brussels?

I conclude with two further observations on the passage of the Bill. First, I regret that not one of our five former EU Commissioners who spoke, and only one of our 17 former MEPs who spoke, saw fit to declare their EU pension entitlements. I refer especially to the entitlements of the former Commissioners, which can be lost if they fail to uphold the interests of the communities—now the EU. Secondly, our 156 hours of debate so far have shown me something that I had not spotted before: Europhilia is a hallucinatory illness. It affects otherwise quite sensible people and leads them to see the European Union as a good thing, when any normal person can see that it may have been an honourable idea in 1950, but now it does nothing useful that could not be done much better by the democracies of Europe collaborating together. It has become a bad, pointless, corrupt and very expensive thing, which the British people, I am glad to say, have seen through. I trust that they will also see through the blandishments of so many of your Europhile Lordships in our debates so far, and take pride in the decision they so wisely took in the referendum on our membership.

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern]

My Lords, I would like to say a word about my attempts for Scotland. I am going to read this from my note, because I have shown it to Michael Russell. As I said to your Lordships, on the Monday before Clause 11 was due to be discussed in Committee, I met a member of the SNP, Ian Blackford, to whom I said that I had not received any briefing from the Scottish Government on that clause. Next day I received briefing from the Lord Advocate and Michael Russell, the Scottish Minister in the consultation on Clause 11. Having carefully thought over what they said, I tabled an amendment to provide a mechanism for the consultation that I thought would meet their concerns, and in Committee I stated my view of the relevant law that would return on Brexit.

On Report the British Government tabled amendments that fully met my suggestions, and indeed went further. I had suggested that, if the consultation failed to reach agreement, the participants should provide an agreed statement of their disagreement to the UK Parliament before it was asked to approve the instrument approving the framework agreement in question. The government amendment also proposed that any dissenter should have an opportunity to state the reasons for their dissent in their own terms. Your Lordships will understand my dismay when I learned from Michael Russell that the Scottish Government could not accept that amendment.

The First Minister of Scotland then wrote to the Lord Speaker with a number of amendments that she asked him to circulate, which he did. My noble and learned friend Lord Hope of Craighead and I decided that we should table the principal amendments in the letter: he would introduce them and I would explain the reasons why we could not support them. This we did. No member of your Lordships’ House questioned my explanations. The First Minister of Scotland has not corresponded with either of us; we have not corresponded with anyone other than Michael Russell and the Lord Advocate on this matter, and I have had talks with the UK Ministers and officials. Michael Russell has publicly and graciously acknowledged the help that my noble and learned friend and I have given, and I thank him for the courtesy he has shown in all his correspondence with us.

I am satisfied that Clause 11 as now amended is entirely in accordance with the devolution settlement, and is an appropriate way of dealing with the unique problem of adjusting the EU provisions for the internal market in the United Kingdom to the post-Brexit situation.

I have had my home in Scotland all my life, having been trained as a Scottish lawyer, and I am profoundly sad that I have been unable to achieve the agreement of the Scottish Government to these proposals. Although my concern was principally with my native land, I am glad that the Government of Wales have accepted the arrangements, and I send my best wishes to those in the other place, in the hope that they will succeed where I have failed.