Brexit: Appointment of Joint Committee

Lord Robathan Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Robathan (Con)]

My Lords, it is often customary to say what a good debate people have been having. As it happens, on this occasion we have had some very good speeches—of varying quality, of course, but really very interesting—and although I may not have agreed with them, I have found some very interesting points made which deserve an answer. I am an optimist and always have been—but, like my noble friend Lord Cormack, I am pretty depressed at the moment. I have been depressed for about two years about politics, perhaps longer, and the current situation is really not good.

Brexit has turned some people in this country completely barking mad on both sides of the argument—especially the Liberal Democrats, of course; I will come to them in a minute, do not worry. We are not properly prepared, as we have heard, for a no-deal Brexit and it is a great pity because some people, including my noble friend Lord Bridges, I know worked pretty hard to get us into a state where we would be in a position to negotiate and leave in a better state. I can say absolutely categorically that I do not want no deal.

I particularly liked the optimistic point made by my noble friend Lord Howell about the EEA and I hope he is right, because I fear that that may be where we end up going. We have heard some cataclysmic speeches, which again were pretty depressing, and I hope that they were wrong, but this Motion I find somewhat unedifying. It is frankly a political ruse. It is designed to tie the hands of an incoming Prime Minister—and for the long term. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt—who, by the way, was absolutely right about the divisions that have been created—hinted that he would like to see Brexit stopped, as many people in this Chamber would.

[Noble Lords]

Hear, hear.

[Lord Robathan]

Thank you. This House is unelected, privileged and unaccountable, and the last word is the most important. I think we should be very wary of trying to stop Brexit—which, I have just heard from the shouts of “hear, hear”, many people wish to do.

Regarding no deal, I sit on one of the EU sub-committees and we have heard about many of the preparations. Indeed, my noble friend Lord Bridges referred to the number of SIs that have been done and so on. In some places we are ready to leave; I accept that entirely. Let us take transport. A couple of years ago we were told that aeroplanes would not be able to fly across the Channel and land because it would all be hell. I think everybody has realised that that is not true.

We heard other things about how we will be queueing all the way from Dover to Lincolnshire. Nobody really thinks that and nobody really thought it at the time. A few hours ago, somebody said to me—I hasten to add in jest—that he was going to fatten up to prepare for a Brexit winter. We hear about that as well: there will not be any food, there will not be any medicine—or whatever.

But this Motion is to my way of thinking a ploy. Whether one likes it or not—I do not believe that referendums are a good idea—17.4 million people voted to leave. They did not say, “I will vote to leave just as long as we get a good deal”. We might not agree with the result, but they voted to leave. That was the decision, and the public believed that their decision would be accepted because, for instance as Keir Starmer said:

“We all have to accept and respect the referendum outcome. I campaigned to stay in the EU, and I would have expected the result to be honoured if we had won it”.


Or let us take Vince Cable, who said:

“The public have voted and it is seriously disrespectful and politically utterly counter-productive to say, ‘Sorry guys, you’ve got it wrong. We’re going to try again’”.


I have other quotes, but I will not bore the House with them—the best of all is from the leader of the Liberal Democrats.

I say to the Liberal Democrats, who are here in force, that they have form on this. The noble Lord, Lord Newby, who spoke eloquently, was on the Front Bench in 2008, and there is certainly one person here who stormed out of the House of Commons when Nick Clegg led a stunt on 28 February, I think, to protest against the fact that the amendment that the Lib Dems had tabled to have a vote on a real referendum was not accepted. That was in their manifesto of 2010. So when they say they want another referendum, let us not pretend that that has always been their position.

I go back to the fact that we are not accountable. Many of us here have never had to listen to the electorate, and we are not elected. I regret to say to people here who do not like it that the electorate have spoken. We are in a hugely privileged position which people in the country are not in, so we should not be prepared—this is the point of the Motion—to tell the little people outside, to quote Vince Cable again, “Sorry guys, you’ve just got it wrong”. That would be very unwise.

As I said, this debate has brought out some very interesting points that are worth listening to and should be addressed by the Government, which is, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said, pretty much paralysed at the moment. But if we try to thwart the will of the people, which I think underlies the Motion, we will be very, very ill-advised.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, I shall try to concentrate on some factual points rather than opinions. In preparation for this debate, I looked back at previous Brexit debates. What struck me was how the situation and our expectations have deteriorated in the past year or so. I was also struck by the airy promises and assurances I received from a succession of Ministers which are now manifestly unachievable. We have been through the phase where no deal was unthinkable, through that of accepting that it was a possibility for which preparation was important, and are now in the phase where it is the preferred choice of the majority of Conservative Party members and is therefore being positively promoted by leadership candidates.

I start by talking about transport. Our whole economy rests on the shoulders of our transport industry. Looking at the industry, it is obvious how complex the process of addressing the costs of no deal would be. Let us start with the cost to government in preparation. There have been more than 60 transport-related SIs, which will have involved thousands of hours of preparation. There will be a whole new wave of them, because quite a few refer to the original 29 March date and will therefore now have to be revised. Many of our agreements with the EU on transport are limited to extending the current system for a small number of months. Those months were specified—sometimes it was September; occasionally the end of the year—so all that will have to be looked at again.

Then there is the money spent in preparation for no deal. The most commonly cited of those preparations, of course, are the ferry-less ferry services. Initially £100 million was allocated for assisting ferry companies—including the one with no ships—to provide additional ferry services. Because of fundamental errors in the way the contract was written, it has ended up with the Department for Transport having to pay many tens of millions of pounds of compensation to a fourth ferry company and to Eurotunnel. Because the other contracts specified 29 March, they too had to be scrapped and the ferry companies compensated for not getting the business, and it is now starting all over again.

There are ongoing preparations to avoid massive lorry queues into Dover. You can see the impact of Operation Brock on the M20. The initial costs were given as £7 million, but it must be a great deal more than that because it is a permanent separation of lanes to create a lorry park—with, of course, an impact on local businesses because of delays and accidents that have occurred there. In fact, the whole Kent economy is impacted by this. Think, too, about the cost to HMRC of 300 million additional customs declarations per year for our ports.

Then there are the costs to industry; many will admit that their preparations cost millions of pounds. The Government’s estimate is that there will be an 87% reduction in cross-channel trade for three to six months after a no-deal Brexit. Think about the impact of that on Eurotunnel and the freight and ferry operations. Some 16,000 lorries per day go through Dover to Calais. The impact of the queues for that number of lorries is considerable. At the moment you simply need an EU operator’s licence to transport goods to Europe. No deal could well lead to hauliers having to rely on a system of permits, of which our quota is 4,000. There are 38,000 freight operators and 4,000 permits; think about the impact on our industry. Clearly, many small operators will go out of business.

I turn briefly to aviation, which is worth £52 billion per year to our economy. Fifty-four per cent of scheduled flights go to the EU. Some operators are already moving a chunk of their business abroad, with costs to our economy, to qualify for cabotage rights in future. There have been agreements between the EU and the UK, but they are not written in a way that would prevent them being swept away in the event of a no-deal Brexit. Going through an airport at the moment, it takes 25 seconds for a British passport and 90 seconds for a third-country passport to be inspected by EU border forces. If you multiply that up, the impact of the queues on airports means vast costs to our economy.

The automotive industry is already suffering badly. The tide of Japanese investment is already flowing out; it came here only because we were in the EU. Job losses have been announced for Swindon, Sunderland and Bridgend, but remember that 160,000 people are employed in the supply chain as well—those are the hidden jobs. There are also costs to us as individuals. The noble Lord, Lord Robathan, once told me that he could not remember the international driving permit ever having existed, but people are buying those permits at the moment.

[Lord Robathan]

How can I ever forget? I still have my international driving permit from about 1970.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, this has been an extraordinary debate. Three years after the vote to leave the European Union, it is in many ways extraordinary that we are still debating what the consequences of a no-deal Brexit could be or considering the need to set up a committee to look at them.

As the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, suggested, this debate is arguably rather too late. One might think that it should have happened in July 2016 rather than July 2019. During debates on the EU referendum Bill in 2015, one or two of us called on the Government to have documents that looked at the consequences of leaving the European Union and the alternatives to membership. There was some reluctance on the Government Benches to produce such documents but eventually they did so. In addition, there was of course the notorious Treasury document that raised the spectre of the massive implications of leaving the European Union.

Those were government documents and perhaps received relatively little scrutiny. During the referendum campaign, they were rubbished by the leave side. If there is a case for a committee to look at these issues, it must be a committee of both Houses of Parliament and not the Government marking their own homework. We need full information, but it requires full and frank discussion on a cross-party basis and across both Houses. There needs to be truth and there needs to be trust.

The noble Lord, Lord Bridges, eloquently articulated the urgency of this matter and the things that need to be looked at—governmental preparations, legislative preparations and business preparations. He is absolutely right, but we on these Benches draw a slightly different conclusion. They are the right questions to be asked, but surely we are not going to ask the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, just to go away, write that paper and bring it back. It requires all parties to be part of this. It is not just about the Executive; it is about the legislature as well. It is about us doing our job as a responsible Chamber.

The noble Lord, Lord Robathan, raised some concerns. He seemed to think that this was an “unedifying” Motion, asked questions about our role and thought that it was perhaps a little cynical and was simply trying to tie the hands of a future Prime Minister. From a sedentary position, the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, said, “Well, of course, that’s what Parliaments do”.

[Lord Robathan]

Is it not the case that the Liberal Democrats wish to overturn the referendum result?

[Baroness Smith of Newnham]

My Lords, this debate is on a Motion to look at the consequences of no deal. It has been pretty clear and in almost all cases very focused. Many of us have been clear as to why we feel there should be a committee; in fact, I have heard no argument against it. The noble Lord, Lord Saatchi, seemed to suggest that the Motion did not go far enough, but were it to be asked what this House has done, surely the answer is that we have repeatedly demonstrated our concern about a no-deal Brexit, which is not in the national interest—a view that has been expressed by the other place. Now is the time to find a mechanism for us in this place to be creative about how we hold the Government to account. It is the role of Parliament to hold the Government to account. At a time of acute danger to the national interest, now is the time for us to be doing this.

It has been an extraordinary debate. The noble Lord, Lord Howell, channelled the noble Lord, Lord Owen—who is not in his place—in suggesting that we could simply stay in the EEA. Your Lordships should be prepared to be reminded by the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, that there have already been discussions and this is not on the cards.

We heard the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, quoting Boris Johnson—a Boris Johnson who was actually articulating remaining in the European Union. Of course, one of the candidates to be leader of the Conservative Party does have a tendency to change his mind on European questions, so although at the moment he is saying, “Do or die, leave on 31 October”, I will not hold my breath, because I quite fancy living beyond 31 October. We heard the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, and the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, expressing deep concern about the leadership campaigns in their party and, in particular, the dangers of prorogation. Stopping prorogation is not something that this House can do, but it would indeed be a constitutional outrage and it is up to your Lordships’ House and the other place to ensure that it cannot happen.

The noble Lord, Lord Robathan, said that the people have spoken, and the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, suggested we should all keep calm and carry on, but we heard about many areas of policy where the deal has not yet been sorted. We need to consider in great detail what leaving the European Union will mean and, in particular, what no deal will mean. The noble Baroness, Lady Bull, talked about the creative industries. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, talked about the NHS. The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, talked about just-in-time delivery and logistics, and my noble friend Lord Paddick talked about policing and about leaving the European arrest warrant and the Schengen Information System. There are so many areas where, if we simply leave on 31 October without a deal, this country will be in a precarious position.

It is the duty of this House to be a responsible Chamber. We may not be elected but we are responsible. Part of our duty is to scrutinise the work of government, and on this key issue of national interest we have profound reservations about the economic and political consequences of a no-deal Brexit, not only for the United Kingdom as a whole but for the unity of this United Kingdom, as the noble Lord, Lord Reid, so eloquently discussed; the noble Lord, Lord Hain, extended the implications to Northern Ireland and Wales. For all those reasons, it is vital that we take some sort of control, and setting up such a committee, or advocating to the Commons that we do so, is a matter of urgency, to respond to all the very profound questions that the noble Lord, Lord Bridges, and others raised. It is not too big a job: it is an essential job, and if it requires our working over the summer, so be it.