European Union (Future Relationship) Bill

Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts

3rd reading & 2nd reading & Committee negatived & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & 3rd reading (Hansard) & 3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & Committee negatived (Hansard) & Committee negatived (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 30th December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I associate myself with the immense chorus of colleagues who have paid tribute to my noble friend Lord Cavendish. His good humour, balance and wonderful contribution to this House are a very great loss, and I am personally sad to see him go.

On Brexit, your Lordships’ House has not covered itself in glory. In the battle of Peers versus people, today the people triumph and we are within hours of becoming an independent country again. All those endless debates aimed at overturning the result of the referendum have been for naught. Four years of Question Time being hijacked by Project Fear have ended without the predicted planes that could not fly to Europe, the expat pensions that would not be paid, the impossibility of getting a free trade deal and, most sinister of all, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, and my noble friend Lord Robathan have pointed out, the claim that Brussels would soon bring Britain to heel.

Before the general election, I warned the Leader of the Opposition, the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, not to underestimate my right honourable friend Boris Johnson, and that he was a winner. Today, with the passing of this Bill, he has his triumph. His courage and determination have restored our sovereignty and freed Britain from rule by a foreign court, with its determination to advance the acquis. He and all of us owe a great debt to my noble friend Lord Frost and to Oliver Lewis for their determined, gruelling and successful conduct of the negotiations.

Can it be true that, as we say goodbye to the old year, the new year will mean zero tariffs, no quotas, freedom of Parliament to legislate as it pleases, MPs accountable to the electorate for our laws, an end to huge net annual payments to the Brussels bureaucracy and control of our borders and waters as a sovereign coastal state? Surely there must be a catch—something in the small print, perhaps. No. There are things I do not like, such as the arrangements for Northern Ireland, and there will undoubtedly be difficulties in transition, but the fundamental point is that our country is free again to make whatever arrangements it sees fit for our country, as the noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport, pointed out.

Lenin once said that liberty is

“so precious that it must be rationed”.

The President of the European Commission—and, it seems, some Members of this House—seems to believe the same is true of sovereignty. Today we take back our sovereignty. Now the challenge for the Government is to use it well in rebooting our United Kingdom and delivering the conditions necessary to enable our people to create new jobs and prosperity. The Prime Minister has been given the tools; now he must finish the job.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

Since the noble Lords, Lord Whitty and Lord Krebs, have withdrawn, I call the noble Lord, Lord Lamont of Lerwick.