European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Stevenson of Balmacara Excerpts

Committee: 9th sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Wednesday 21st March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port]

While I will have a word to say in a moment about the use of the word veto, I will not claim to know the detail relating to the Council of Europe, to which reference has been made.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)]

It was the Council of Ministers.

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port]

I beg your pardon. I think the mistake is evidence of the fact that I am not qualified to answer that particular part of the noble Lord’s question.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Earl of Kinnoull]

I am very grateful to the noble Lord for making a jolly good point very well. At the lunch, that was hinted at, with rather less force. I wholly accept his reasoning and agree with what he said.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

I join many noble Lords in congratulating the Government on the way they have handled this issue and reinforce what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth: I have not seen any such movement from any Government in my time here in terms of trying to reach out to the points being made and accommodate them. That is terrific; long may it last. The test will be whether the noble and learned Lord in fact withdraws his amendment before the end of tonight—but I trust him in this case.

I also think that the idea of a probing government amendment is pretty good. It is nice to know that there is an open mind on the other side, and no better way of showing it than saying: “We haven’t got the faintest idea here, but here’s something you might want to consider and discuss and we will listen hard and take away the best bits”. It is good in the sense that it builds trust and engages debate. We have had a terrific debate—possibly a little overlong, but it has been very interesting—and I am sure that many points will take us forward. I recognise that the idea of probing your own ideas may not work unless we can actually come up with some ideas, so it behoves us all to think very hard about the advice that we want to give to the noble and learned Lord and his colleagues.

What do we want? There are five things that I would like to see in revised amendments. We should be looking for an agreed amendment among the various interests around the House as much as possible. There has been enough evidence about where the central points are—we may differ on the nuances, but there is enough there. It would be really good if we could have some informal discussions and meetings before Report—and Third Reading, if it goes that far. By that stage, I hope that we will have a firmer view of what we are going to do in Northern Ireland. I agree that the situation is beyond the power of this House to do anything about, but it is a real gap when we are trying to address our longer-term constitutional position. If we have nothing to say, that says more about us than about the situation in Northern Ireland. I hope that that will be taken into account.

My first point is a negative. The Bill has raised debates, ideas and thoughts that are really important, but they are far too time-rich and need more discussion before they go into the Bill. The Bill is at heart limited to ensuring that we have a legal framework if and when we leave the EU—as the noble and learned Lord said, a fully functioning statute book. We are wrong to try to overload it with too much. I hope that, in offering our advice either privately or in meetings, we will focus on the minimum necessary to get the Bill on the statute book in a way that will be effective and efficient, and will achieve what we are trying to do.

On the other hand, the debate should not be curtailed by the question of what is and what is not in the Bill. We must accept—some noble Lords were ahead of me on this point—that transfers of this amount of responsibility to admittedly mature Parliaments and Assemblies will start a new chapter in the devolution story, and it would be remiss of this House if we did not think through some of the implications of that.

I have no particular remedies here, but it is inconceivable that the current arrangements, under which we determine through a Board of Trade how we conduct trade policy, can accommodate the new arrangements. They will have to be expanded and thought through again. We will have to think about how we deal with treaties and how our ongoing relationship with the EU and its regulatory and other official operations will continue in a devolved situation where trade responsibility and policy is at a level other than national. There may well be a set of rules that will accommodate that. They will not fit into this Bill, but they need to be considered as we go forward.

We have to think also much wider—certainly much wider than this idea that somehow this paves the way to independence for any or all of the parts of the United Kingdom. We have to think about the opportunities that will exist as these things are devolved in terms of such matters as what happens to state aid rules when they are changed. This will raise a lot of concern and interest much more widely than in this House. We will do ourselves a disservice if we do not take that into account as we think this through. For the moment, though, let us think very narrowly about this Bill.

At the heart of it, we want an agreement that, on the face of the Bill, the underlying principle in play is that everything is devolved unless it is reserved. We also want a clear understanding of why certain things are reserved. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, gave a very good example of one way into this argument by saying that it was a question of when powers were in consideration which applied in more than one geographical area; however, I put it to him and to the Ministers who are working on this that this is not quite the full story. If you look at the note on the common frameworks that accompanied the full list of them, it goes much deeper than that. These are principles, as I understand it and as I think the noble and learned Lord confirmed, that were agreed by the UK, Scottish and Welsh Governments at a meeting of the Joint Ministerial Committee in October 2017, so they are not in dispute. The principles make clear that,

“common frameworks will be established where they are necessary in order to: … enable the functioning of the UK internal market, while acknowledging policy divergence;”

—the coda about “acknowledging policy divergence” is really important, and we need to know more about that—

“ensure compliance with international obligations;”

—I think that is fairly clear—

“ensure the UK can negotiate, enter into and implement new trade agreements and international treaties;”

—I have already said I do not know whether that will necessarily be the only way into that debate—

“enable the management of common resources;”

and then two rather important issues that we have not touched on but that surely have to lie at the heart of this:

“administer and provide access to justice in cases with a cross-border element;”

and,

“safeguard the security of the UK”.

It has always been the case that national security is the primary concern of all governments, but surely that plus the geographical “bite”, as indicated by the noble and learned Lord, give us—together with the other points I have raised—a much richer context within which the decision to reserve an item can be placed. It is important that this is on the face of the Bill. That is the key issue. There must not be a sense that something has been hidden or held back. We have to be open and trust those who are concerned about this that this will be the way forward. I hope that when the Minister comes to respond, he will be able to confirm that this is an issue that he might look at with some sympathy, because I think it will be the key to it.

I also think, as suggested by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, and others, that we should see the 24 policy areas included as a Schedule to the Bill. The point made by my noble friend Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale is very important: we are talking about those things that will have to be reserved for a reason. We should list them, and we should also understand the reasons why they are reserved.

There are two smaller points—in the sense that they are less full of implications; they are still very important—that I will tag on to the end of this. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, raised a number of points that will need to be picked up and that we must not forget, because the change to the existing Clause 11 will affect other aspects of the area. He made that point well. There have also been calls from all around the House for a sunset clause, which I absolutely support. That is the right thing to do. If that all comes together, however—and I think we are confident that it is possible—what we are signing up to is an agreement to agree on process, but that agreement will be able to get the consent of the devolved Administrations. That combination is vital to the way forward, and I recommend it very strongly to the Ministers.

Finally, if we are going to avoid the veto problem, which I think is a real issue that we have not really bottomed out, we are going to need a dispute resolution mechanism. There is no doubt about that. You cannot just go into this hoping that it will somehow be all right on the night. We need to know what happens when one area, for whatever reason—whether it is a political reason or truly an issue of conscience—wants to put down a veto and hold out. I do not think there has been any dispute, but we have not said it enough: at the end of the day the UK Parliament has to have a backstop power to legislate in cases that meet the criteria for why things are reserved. I think we should keep saying that until it has become part of the fabric of our lives. It is not said enough, as the noble Lord, Lord Lang of Monkton, mentioned.

But we also need to achieve the consent that is necessary to establish the agreements that will underpin trust and support for this in the long run. I absolutely think that the amendment proposed by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, has something in that regard. I am grateful that the Minister has said that he will take this away; we need to workshop it—what we should have is a hackathon—in order to work out together where we might go with it.

[Noble Lords]

Minister.