European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Spicer Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 31st January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Spicer (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher. I remember well partnering her late husband in tennis in West Virginia when we played against the American Senate. He was, certainly in private, a very charming man. I also agree with her about the dangers of Russia, but I am not going to talk about that now.

It is clear from this debate that your Lordships’ House is not exactly rabidly Eurosceptic. I am, though, and perhaps I owe the House some explanation of that. I start with what has become the customary homage to the speech of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leeds. He is of course right that economics is not the only matter affecting this debate, although they are not completely unimportant or irrelevant. When you are dealing with a protectionist trade bloc, which the European Union is, it is bound to have ultimately a negative effect on your trade and economy. There is certainly a read-across there.

Much more important, and the reason why I think we should get out of the European Union, is democracy. The European Union is undemocratic for two reasons. It does not have a mechanism for true democracy, which requires a direct relationship between the electorate and the Government. The electorate chooses a party, preferably in private, and votes it in. There is such a connection between the electorate and the Government that the electors, having elected their Government, are willing to pay allegiance to them. There is a synergy about the whole thing. In Europe, the matter is aggravated by the fact that the laws are made on the whole by the European court, which is undemocratic and relies on the acquis communautaire for its inspiration. The acquis is quite clear that it requires the court to make judgments in one direction, towards a federal state of Europe, that is irreversible.

Some people say that this process can be reformed. In the foreseeable future at least, that is highly unlikely. Take, for example, Britain. If we were to go back into the European Union, it is absolutely unimaginable that the court would not insist that sterling would be joined to the single currency, and quite rightly so. You cannot have a single market for ever without a single currency. That would be the loss of Britain’s freedom, which is involved in the sovereignty of Parliament and in no one Parliament binding another. That would just go. The trend in that case would be anti-democratic so far as this country is concerned.

I would like to refer to a speech made yesterday by the noble Lord, Lord Winston. It is something that has troubled me quite a lot about the attack that is made on people who think, like I do, that the nation state is the best unit of democracy. I will read one paragraph from it. He said that,

“Andrea Sella talks about a maternal ancestor. He is not Jewish but his ancestor was. Apparently she called him early in the morning when the result of the referendum became clear. She said, her voice choking with emotion:

‘How can these people forget so soon where nationalism leads you?’”—[Official Report, 30/1/18; col. 1521.]

The innuendo is clear. I could turn the whole thing on its head and say that World War II, for instance, was brought to a halt and peace was established by the nation state against the pan-European movement led by Germany. That absolutely turns on its head an argument that is constantly used against people such as myself and Eurosceptics, and quite wrongly so.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Spicer Excerpts

Committee: 6th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 12th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

I will add a brief note of agreement with the amendment, for the obvious reason that this country’s pharmaceutical industry is our most important and must be involved in drug trials. I have seen this myself, having been involved with various clinical trials in the past. These have been of benefit to British patients and, subsequently, to our economy.

[Lord Spicer (Con)]

My Lords, I have a tentative question. If it is true that we do not trust our own legal environment with medical research in which, as has been said, we have great expertise, why should we trust ourselves with anything else? Across the whole of the Bill, responsibility is being transferred to this country. Why should we not be able to do that for medical research as much as for anything else?

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

This benefits all patient populations, and is particularly important for paediatric and rare cancers—diseases which, precisely because they are uncommon, are among the hardest to research and treat. You therefore need a larger pool than the 66 million people who live in this country: Europe has a combined population of 510 million to draw on. That is nothing to do with trust; it is to do with how clinical trials need to be carried out. You need a larger pool of patients to test these drugs.

I was pleased to add my name to the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Patel. I raised this issue in my speech at Second Reading and will mention only one additional matter, which is to do with rare paediatric illness; tumour types which affect relatively few people; and rare cancers which translate to over 20% of all cancer diagnoses across the world. If the UK is to make progress on therapies for paediatric and rare cancer, it is vital that we can work closely with EU nations on clinical trials. Cross-border collaboration is crucial to paediatric and rare cancer clinical trials. Some 75% of clinical trials in the EU involve cross-national collaboration, rising to 86% for rare disease trials. As noble Lords have remarked, that is because of the patient population across Europe. We will be doing a huge disservice to our children, and to the cancers which threaten a few of them, if we fall out of this system. It is as simple as that.

The BEACON clinical trial system is an example of how cross-national collaboration is fighting back against rare paediatric cancers. Neuroblastoma is a form of cancer that affects around 100 children, mostly under the age of five, every year in the UK. More than half the children with aggressive forms of the cancer will see it return and, for these children, there are few treatment options left. In 2013, Cancer Research UK scientists and paediatric cancer specialists launched the BEACON-neuroblastoma trial to find the best chemotherapy treatment for children and young adults with recurring neuroblastoma. To do this, it is bringing together clinicians and scientists from 10 European countries and two international consortia, with funding from Cancer Research UK and European partners. It is a fantastic example of successful European collaboration. The rarity of this neuroblastoma and the low number of patients means that trials could not have happened in a single European country. It is vital that this type of cancer trial—

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Spicer Excerpts

Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 23rd April 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness (LD)]

My Lords, it was obvious from contributions at Second Reading and in Committee that this was a particularly thorny and sensitive issue. It is to the credit of the Government and not least to that of the Minister that they have been in listening mode and that a sensible arrangement has been reached. I heard what he said in response to the questions asked by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, not least his affirmation of the independence of the judiciary. We have reached a satisfactory point. There is nothing I can usefully add. I will prove the point by not continuing to speak but by resuming my seat.

[Lord Spicer (Con)]

My Lords, I shall give a brief lay man’s perspective. Being brief, I shall follow the advice of the late Cecil Parkinson, who said to after-dinner speakers, “Get up, say you’re very proud to stand before them and sit down”. I shall be a little longer than that, but not very long.

I think that we can all agree on one thing: that pretty well all of us had a fixed view on Brexit before this Bill even reached this House. Tactics is a different matter. I am very interested in the remain tactics so far as the generality of the Bill is concerned; I shall come to the specifics in a moment. They seem to be along the lines of: “We absolutely agree that we are coming out—no, we’re serious; we agree we’re coming out—but we’re coming out to a new single market backed by a strengthened court in such a way that it is quite indiscernible that we have come out in the first place”. This debate is about the court and what part it is going to play in all this. I think that it is generally accepted that the court is not only very powerful but foreign—my noble and learned friend brilliantly summed up the foreignness of the law being introduced—and different. It is based on politics rather than on precedent in law.

I first came to this in 1992. On 3 June of that year, I tabled an Early Day Motion which started the rebellion against the Maastricht treaty, so I have some form. What is the relationship between a debate which was then concerned with the single currency and today’s debate and amendment? There is a close relationship with matters to do with the currency. As Henry VIII recognised, the currency is immensely important. “This Realm of England as an Empire” was all about changing our currency back to gain control over it. The currency is vital, and the question is what the relationship between it and today’s debate is. If we did not come out of the European Union, I would not rely on us retaining our currency and our control over it. It is unimaginable that the European court would decide to run a competitive trading arrangement with the one country left to manage its own economy. It is therefore of enormous importance not only to the future of this country but to this amendment.

We debated earlier whether it counts for anything that we have become so deeply embroiled in foreign law. I suppose that where I differ from lawyers is that I believe that there are things in politics that matter as symbols, even if the lawyers can prove otherwise. It is therefore vital that we kick out Amendment 21 today.

[Lord Goldsmith]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Spicer, has made a very interesting observation, but it seems to go wider than the amendments which the House is being asked to approve, so I shall not say anything about the issues that he has raised. He referred to the “remain tactics”. I am not aware that there are any remain tactics in relation to this amendment. On the basis that we are leaving, all the amendment is about is making sure that it works properly. That has certainly been the guiding principle as far as I am concerned.

On the formulation of the amendment, I do not want to use the word “helpful”, because that is the one word that I do not like—the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, knows that. The problem with “helpful” is that it is a little subjective. A noble Lord, who is not in his place so I shall not identify him, told me in the previous debate that he was going to say something. I said, “Okay. Is it going to be helpful?” He said, “You might think so”. Let me tell you that it was not helpful at all. He might have thought it was, which is the problem with “helpful”. In any event, I do not imagine that the courts will have regard to something that they do not think is helpful for the purpose of the issue before them, so I am happy with “relevant”. The important point is that it will not be perceived as a political decision being made by a court in wanting to follow a decision from the European court. That is the point that we were making in earlier stages on this part of the Bill, and I thank the Minister and his department for dealing with it.

That leads to the fourth question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, which was about the protection, safeguarding and upholding of the independence of the judiciary. We raised that on the previous occasion; it is hugely important. I join the noble Lord in congratulating the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, on coming out and supporting the judiciary at a time when others in government sadly were not. The assurance on that sought by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, is important, and I am grateful that the noble and learned Lord has succeeded in answering it already—it was slightly out of turn, but it was good. I shall ask him to go a little further, because the obligation to uphold the independence of the judiciary does not rest just on the Lord Chancellor. I believe that the Constitutional Reform Act which set that out imposes that obligation on the whole of the Government, and it is important that it should. We cannot have a situation in which one Minister, in perhaps one of the more political jobs, is able to say unhappy and unhelpful things about the judiciary and think it okay because the Lord Chancellor will stand up and say, “We shouldn’t really be doing that; we should be protecting them”. It is important to recognise that it is the whole Government. I would single out as well the Attorney-General as one who should uphold the independence of the judiciary. When I was in that office, I certainly regarded it as part of my job, although the Lord Chancellor was in that primary position. I would be grateful if the Minister when he replies for the second time could touch on that point and see what assurance he can give.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, raised an important point about ossification, as he put it, which is the one worry I have. As this structure works, so far as the Government are concerned, I think that the effect is that, in the areas to which the subsection would apply, the lower courts will be bound to follow decisions within that scope and it is only the Supreme Court that will be able to depart from them. That leads to the risk that the law will ossify and that cases will have to go to the Supreme Court which really do not need to because they are not that important—although it is important to clarify the law. The noble and learned Lord’s suggestion that the Government should look at the possibility of widening this so that the courts of appeal in different parts of the United Kingdom would be able to depart from what would otherwise be binding law is a good one.

I think that this suggestion would also be welcomed by some others—although I have not specifically raised this with them—who are worried about this provision. They are aware that there are rights—for example, in the field of workers’ rights—where there is some movement in EU law and are concerned that, as it stands, the retained EU law that we will have will lag behind what happens in other jurisdictions, which we all hope will still be partners, although not partners in the same Union. They are concerned that if this has to go to the Supreme Court it may create an unhappy difference between them. There may be circumstances where we all know that a particular piece of law is right for consideration by the top court, but it takes time to get there and it may not always get there.

I was going to ask the Minister whether he could give any assurances about how the Government would assist, at least where they are the other party, in getting cases to the Supreme Court where there is good reason to think that a relevant decision will be departed from. But it seems to me that opening this up to the courts of appeal would actually be a neater and more traditional way of doing that. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say about that. I should have mentioned at the outset that my name stands on the original amendments as well.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Spicer Excerpts

Report: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 25th April 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Skelmersdale (Con)]

My Lords, I have never been a self-respecting MP, nor am I ever likely to be one. The amendment would leave us in total limbo. The noble Lord, Lord Lisvane, in introducing it, made reference to the phrase:

“A Minister of the Crown may by regulations make”.


He needs, in this amendment, to change the emphasis on the reason for which he does it. Unfortunately, the amendment would leave out the role of the Minister of the Crown. It is Ministers the Crown who make regulations. They always have and presumably always will. Therefore, who will make these regulations under whatever auspices? How is this supposed to work and improve the Bill?

[Lord Spicer (Con)]

My Lords, I enter one word of caution. The choice might not be between Parliament and Ministers, but between Ministers and civil servants. To change it to “necessary”, one has to use judgment about that word just as much as the previous one.

[Lord Bridges of Headley (Con)]

My Lords, I make a small contribution, having been at the birth of the Bill—if one can be a midwife to a Bill. I always saw the purpose of the Bill as delivering the orderly withdrawal of this country from the European Union and ensuring that we have a coherent statute book on the day we leave. I do not want to detain your Lordships, but as I said at Second Reading and as I still believe, it is imperative that we get the balance right between the powers of the Executive and parliamentary sovereignty. As the noble Lord, Lord Lisvane, so rightly said and others have commented, if we take the view that the referendum vote was about Parliament taking back control, it hardly seems right that excessive control be given to Ministers of the Crown.

I had many misgivings about this issue, and I am most grateful to noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Lisvane, for sparing the time to talk to me about it. I have considered it. Your Lordships need to consider it in the round—the round being all the other limitations that currently exist on Ministers—and, most importantly, the amendment my noble friend the Minister is making to this point, which I believe addresses many of the concerns. All I ask your Lordships at this point is to consider this: are the Government acting in a reasonable way to ensure they have the powers necessary to deliver a smooth and orderly Brexit? That is the simple question in my mind. I believe that the Minister has moved enough and that he should be given our support. I completely understand the views of the noble Lord, Lord Lisvane, and my noble friend Lord Cormack on this point. I fear we just differ now on how far the Government have moved.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Spicer Excerpts

Report: 4th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 30th April 2018 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Leeds]

My Lords, I find myself torn between pragmatism and principle—the principle of parliamentary democracy and upholding and preserving the constitution; and on pragmatic terms, the ability the Government need to manage the process we are in. But I keep hearing in this debate the language of “telling the House of Commons what to do”. Call me ignorant, but I did not think that that was what we were doing. I thought the role of the House of Lords was to scrutinise, improve and ask the Government to think again. That is what we are called to do and that is where the principle applies. Then it is up to the House of Commons and the Government to decide what they do with the arguments put forward from this place. Not to do that is to deny the appropriate role of this House in doing its job.

[Lord Spicer (Con)]

My Lords, if this amendment is passed, this day, 30 April, should be called hypocrisy day because the overt objective is the opposite of the covert objective. The overt objective is apparently to give greater powers and a greater say to Parliament. The covert objective, as the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, said, will be to do the opposite. If one wanted examples or specific reasons why one says that, we need only look at the Factortame case a few years ago, when Parliament was clear that it wanted its way on a European shipping matter, and our courts eventually came down in favour of the European Court having the final say. There is no question but that if we stay in the European Union, Parliament will be one of the worst sufferers.

The acquis communautaire is another example. It is the basis of what the European Court does and is entirely to do with the centralisation of power away from national institutions and organisations such as Parliament. The proposers of this amendment may argue that they are in some way strengthening Parliament, but exactly the opposite would happen in the end.

[Lord Dobbs (Con)]

We all know what the intention of the amendment is: not to improve Brexit but to impale it. What does “meaningful” mean? A meaningful vote seems to be one that somebody has won; then, it is meaningful to them. Otherwise, it appears in certain quarters that “meaningful” is meaningless unless you have won. Was the referendum meaningful? Was the last election meaningful? Apparently not. Was the election to this House of the noble Viscount meaningful? I am sure that it was—although perhaps in hindsight we on these Benches might have done well to have inquired a little more deeply into his passions. It would have made for some fascinating hustings.

The Government have repeatedly promised a meaningful vote. Clearly, if words mean anything, that commitment is inescapable. Let us imagine for one moment that the Government broke that promise and tried to offer an unacceptable vote—or no vote at all. What would happen? There would be fury. There would be uproar in the Commons and all sorts of turmoil in the tea rooms. Your Lordships would beat their noble breasts. Speaker Bercow would be brought to bear. I have no idea whether the rather rude sticker about Brexit that was on the back of his car is still there—I cannot possibly repeat it—but I think we can guess that he would leave no parliamentary stone unturned.

The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, was right. The House of Commons has any number of different means to raise this subject. If all else failed, we could surely rely on Mr Corbyn. I know that the prospect terrifies some Members on the Benches opposite; I can see their tight lips and I felt a frisson of anxiety as I mentioned his name. But surely they could rely on their leader to slap down a Motion of no confidence, as happened time and again in 1978 and 1979, as the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, said. In other words, the Government cannot under any conceivable circumstances avoid a meaningful vote.

So the amendment is utterly irrelevant. It is also deeply—and, I believe, deliberately—damaging. It is designed to undermine our negotiating position—to confuse, to cause chaos and to give encouragement to EU negotiators to contrive the worst possible outcome, in the hope that some new vote, parliamentary decision or referendum will force Britain into retreat or even to hold up its hands in surrender.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Spicer Excerpts

Report: 5th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 2nd May 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Spicer (Con)]

I rise having just torn up the speech that I was going to make, as a result of the very eloquent speech that we have just heard, made by the former Hong Kong governor and present chancellor of Oxford University, and a person with whom I entered the Conservative Party on the same day. We entered the research department together on exactly the same day in the 1960s.

It was a very eloquent speech, but it had one flaw. What I agreed with, and why I have torn up my other speech, is that my noble friend is quite right in saying that we cannot mess about with this question of whether we leave or not, or whether there is a border or not. He is absolutely right in saying that we cannot have a sort of fantasy border. If you leave, what it means is that you depart one set of rules and one market to go to another market. He is quite right in saying that at that point, you acquire a border. I absolutely agree with that.

The question is whether the whole future of this country is to be dependent, as his speech seemed to imply, on one issue—our relationship with the Republic of Ireland. Is our whole future to be dependent on that? I have to say that I do not think that it should be. There are ways around it, and they do not include having a fantasy border. For instance, if we have a border between two different markets and we do not go down the path, which was one of my noble friend’s alternatives, of the Republic joining us, what we must have, in the normal way in which these things are done, is a bilateral agreement between Britain and the Republic of Ireland. We should probably do that—make the final agreement—after we have come out, because we will then be totally in charge of our destiny and be able to make whatever agreements we want and the European Union, with which the Republic of Ireland will have to make its peace, will be less inclined to obstruct such a bilateral agreement.

There is no reason why we should not have a bilateral agreement—and there is no reason why we should be particularly nice to the Irish Republic, as it has not been particularly nice to us in recent months. It is absolutely right, however, that we should try to maintain the good will and the pleasant relationship that we have had in recent times, but we can do it in the normal way in which these things are conducted. We do not have to have the whole of our policy towards the European Union obstructed by this one element. My noble friend suggested that to do this, we should turn our backs on what the British people have asked us to do and voted for us to do, which would be an enormous decision for us to have to make and quite wrong, in my view. A lot of what my noble friend said is good sense in terms of the actualities of the border and us leaving a market, but I think that his conclusion is the opposite of the right one.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, in Committee, I and others spoke about the importance of paying attention to the voices and rights of the children and young people of Northern Ireland in our considerations, not least because they had no say in the referendum but will live with the consequences long after the rest of us. Indeed, just on Monday, my noble friend Lady Massey reminded us how important it is to consider children in all aspects of our discussions on Brexit. From a meeting that I and others had with some children and young people from Northern Ireland in March, and reading reports of conferences that they themselves had organised, it is clear that they are really anxious about their future rights as citizens of the island of Ireland and about how their lives will be affected on a daily basis if the border issue is not resolved. As one briefing put it:

“Children in NI, and not just those living close to the border, live their lives ‘across’ what has become an increasingly seamless border”.


We owe it to these children of Northern Ireland to provide the certainty of writing the rights and protections into the legislation.

More generally, I and others have also emphasised on a number of occasions the centrality of human rights protection to the Good Friday agreement and, therefore, the importance of ensuring non-diminution of human rights in Northern Ireland as a result of Brexit and the maintenance of the equivalence of rights between Northern Ireland and the Republic. On a couple of occasions, I have also raised the fact that civil society organisations in Northern Ireland have asked for movement on a Bill of rights, promised in the Good Friday agreement and subsequent agreements, as they believe that Brexit makes it even more important now than before. The Minister, who has always been extremely charming and helpful in his responses, has not responded on this point. If he is not able to respond today, I would be grateful for the promise of a letter from him on that. The Minister has otherwise been consistently positive and reassuring on the questions of the Good Friday agreement and the border, which is of course very welcome.

As the noble Lord, Lord Patten of Barnes, said in his marvellous opening speech, I do not think there is anything in this amendment that the Government could not agree with. But warm words in this context are not enough. The children, young people and civil society organisations of Northern Ireland are looking for something stronger. That must mean writing such commitments into the Bill itself. That has both practical and symbolic significance. That is why I believe it is crucial that we pass this amendment on behalf of our fellow citizens—children and adults—in Northern Ireland, who are looking to us for firm, legally binding assurances about their future rights.