United Kingdom Internal Market Bill

Lord Thomas of Gresford Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 19th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Thomas of Gresford (LD) [V]]

My Lords, since I am speaking from Hayman House, my home in Gresford, it would be churlish of me not to welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, and congratulate her on her excellent maiden speech.

On 2 October 2019 the Brexit Secretary, Stephen Barclay, told the EU Committee of this House that Northern Ireland businesses would have to complete export declarations for goods moving from Northern Ireland to the rest of the UK. Shortly afterwards, on 7 November, the Prime Minister told exporters in Northern Ireland, in answer to a question, that if any business was asked to fill in customs declarations, he would direct them to throw the forms in the bin. That is his typical jocularity. He said:

“There will be no forms, no checks, no barriers of any kind. You will have unfettered access.”


That is what the provisions in Clauses 44 to 47 of this Bill are all about: to save face. The Prime Minister cannot admit that he told off-the-cuff porkies—or more likely that he did not understand the written agreement he had signed.

The Government say that the Bill does not in itself breach the written agreement: only potentially, as the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth of Drumlean, argued earlier. The noble Lord, Lord Cavendish of Furness, went further a moment ago and asserted that there was no breach of the law at all. If I give a knife to a person of unstable temperament with the foresight that he will use it to stab somebody, I break the law. It is no defence to say that I thought that he would only use my knife “potentially”. These clauses are an instrument positively designed to empower Ministers, first, to act illegally and, secondly, to ensure that the powers of the court to stop them by judicial review are removed. It is as though I told the potential murderer, “Look, here’s a knife and I guarantee that you will not be prosecuted if you use it”. The noble Lord, Lord Lamont, said, “Well, all they’re doing is threatening to rescind an agreement they should never have made, to strengthen their negotiating position”. Well, it has not worked, has it? As the noble Lord, Lord Butler, said, it is a threat which should never have been made.

It would have been 1945, with Christmas approaching, when my father decided to make me a toy gun. He carved and varnished a wooden stock and added black piping to look like a barrel. On Boxing Day, I proudly took this toy gun out to play, but it was quite a tough area. It is in my mind’s eye now. I was approached by two youths who were four or five years older than me. They threatened to bash my face in if I did not hand the gun over to them. I did so, and you can see that it rankles after 75 years. A threat is not in the long run a good negotiating tactic. You may succeed for the immediate moment, but the resentment lasts for years; the reputation is damaged beyond repair. Why should the European Union believe any compromise the Prime Minister puts forward this coming week on state aid, fisheries or the like? He has weakened his bargaining position.

The Lord Chancellor justifies taking these powers on the basis that there

“could be a material breach by one of the parties”—

he does not say which party or what breach—of the withdrawal agreement. Do you have a better point, Mr Buckland? Robert Buckland comes from Llanelli. When the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Pittenweem, referred earlier to the oath of Queen’s Counsel, I remembered that it was another Llanelli boy and Lord Chancellor, Lord Elwyn-Jones, who took my oath of office in the Moses Room some 46 years ago. What, I wonder, would he have thought of such a manifest breach of his oath of office, which commences: “I swear by Almighty God to uphold the rule of law”?