Trade Bill

Lord Taylor of Holbeach Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansarad): House of Lords
Monday 21st January 2019 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.

Amendment to the Motion

Moved by

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

My Lords, it is quite unjustifiable that anybody should accuse people in this House of filibustering on this matter. One can see that we have taken only 35 minutes on a very important matter and I do not think that a single intervention has lasted for more than three minutes. By no stretch of the imagination can that be regarded as a filibuster; it is quite possible that, given the gravity of the situation in our country, the public may well feel that we have spent too little time so far on this Bill.

It has already been said that we live in exceptional circumstances. Is it not exceptional that, over two and a half years, we have had a negotiation with the EU about our future relationship with it and have just decided by an enormous majority that the whole of that negotiation has to be terminated? It was the right decision, but it is the most extraordinary situation. Equally, on the matter of trade agreements, Dr Fox has been happily running around the world for the last two and a half years, no doubt at the taxpayer’s expense, and achieving precisely nothing.

This country’s handling of the whole Brexit issue has been marked by the most extraordinary incompetence; the whole world knows that. That incompetence has often consisted of a quite extraordinarily naive tendency to overestimate our own bargaining power and underestimate the intelligence and bargaining power of other people. That is the very basis of incompetence in a negotiation, but that is the way this has been handled.

If you go to any country and say, “I am afraid we have just walked out of the trade arrangements that we have had for many years. We are in a bit of a mess and would like to negotiate a trade agreement with you. We would like to roll over the existing agreement you have with the EU and have the same benefits as we had when trading with you under it”, they will naturally say, “We will be interested to talk to you about that, but we have a number of points ourselves that we would like to settle on this occasion”. You have somebody else with an agenda, seeking advantages, and it takes a long time for the negotiation to come to any conclusion. That is the rule of business throughout the world. I do not think that Dr Fox has much experience of international business, so he might be surprised to find that is the case, but it would not be a surprise to anybody with the slightest experience of the field.

This is a serious matter. Is it really true, as the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, said, that if the Government are completely paralysed and completely fail in achieving their purpose after two and a half years, Parliament should do nothing about it? Of course it should: we exist to make sure that there is a proper balance in the constitution. If one part of the constitution is obviously not performing as it should, the other parts should do something about it. There is no question of filibustering on the Bill. It is an extremely urgent matter. All noble Lords should be paying attention to it and deciding what the country needs to do about it. Under no circumstances should this House abdicate its responsibility for doing that in this crisis.

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

My Lords, I rise to respond to the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness the Leader of the Opposition and to subsequent speakers. I note what the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, said about the roles of the usual channels and the Government, and the relationship between the two. I also note the comments of my noble friend Lord Strathclyde. However, I cannot allow the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Reid, about the Good Friday agreement, to go without comment. I have no hesitation in saying that what he reported to the House was completely untrue.

[Lord Reid of Cardowan]

My Lords, I am not sure that it was parliamentary to accuse another noble Lord of putting an untruth before the House. I said that we read reports this morning. The noble Lord might check the Daily Mail or the Daily Telegraph, for instance. I may be mistaken, but I would be grateful if the noble Lord would withdraw his comment that what I said was an untruth.

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

All I said was that what the noble Lord reported was an untruth; he himself was not, perhaps, being untruthful. Those newspapers are not in my reading.

The House has heard the arguments made by the noble Baroness and subsequent speakers, and it will have to take the amendment she proposed at face value. However, it is difficult to understand why the House should agree to it. After all, we are shortly going to go into Committee, when all the arguments which have been expressed this afternoon will, no doubt, appear again in the form of amendments and in the debates that surround them. I can only agree with the comments about the Bill by my noble friend Lord Lansley.

The effect of the amendment is to prevent Report stage proceeding until a subjective condition has been fulfilled. I note that in recent weeks many noble Lords opposite have expressed their desire to continue with the Bill, apparently frustrated that the Committee was not scheduled to start earlier. Yet here is an amendment to delay the passage of the Bill. The oddest thing of all is that the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, who is leading for the Opposition on the Bill, has tabled amendments covering the issues listed in the noble Baroness’s Motion. It seems pre-emptive of her to ask the House to reach such a conclusion now, before the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, has even started to make his case.