European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Tugendhat Excerpts

Committee: 10th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 26th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I have indeed said that none of us gained a mandate from the election. That is precisely the position in which we all find ourselves. We should therefore be modest and moderate in the way in which we attempt to interpret the confused and disengaged opinion of the British public, with which we now struggle.

In the Statement the Prime Minister has just given in the Commons, which is about to be repeated in this House, I was very struck by the warmth it attaches to our co-operation with our European partners, the solidarity we gain from other members of the European Union with whom we have “shared values and interests”, and the assumption that we need to continue to co-operate with them on major issues from resisting President Trump’s tariffs and Russian threats to a range of other areas from which we will absent ourselves in March 2019 under the current arrangement. Therefore, as these negotiations move on, we need to continue this process of discovering where our interests lie, how we will continue to co-operate with our neighbours and partners if and when we leave, and not to leave until we are sure that we have a worthwhile alternative arrangement agreed.

We know why this measure is in the Bill: the hardliners in the Conservative Party and the Government have reached a point where they are prepared to accept all sorts of concessions that the Prime Minister may make to the European Union so long as we leave. The most important thing for them is that we leave what they consider to be the hated domination of the European Union. They have no thought of shared values and interests because they want to be out of the European Union. They want to be out even if we have a transition period of a further 21 months in which we continue to accept and follow all the rules and regulations of the European Union without being present around the table.

It is absolutely against the national interest for us to leave the table until the end of the transition period or to do so until we know—and Parliament has agreed—what our future relationship with the European Union will be in a range of economic, foreign policy, defence and internal security areas. We must not be stuck, as other Members said, because we have a fudge in October and a general political agreement without much content, and, following the Foreign Secretary saying to us, “You’re all too pessimistic about this. Let’s just be optimistic”, we then jump in, splash, and hope that the water is deep enough.

[Lord Tugendhat (Con)]

My Lords, this is the only intervention I will make in Committee, and I shall do it rather less contentiously than my old friend, the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire. However, I agree with the underlying thrust of what he said, just as I agreed with the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, and the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington.

At the heart of these amendments is a matter of trust. Initially, the change was put into the Bill, as a number of noble Lords said, because there were people in this party and in the Government who doubted the Prime Minister’s and the Government’s resolve to take us out of the European Union. I do not think that anybody can doubt her resolve on that point now, or doubt the resolve of the Government. The negotiations are moving ahead, and, whether or not one is quite as optimistic as Mr Davis was on television yesterday, clearly they are moving ahead better than many people at one time expected, and a deal looks a likely outcome. Therefore we do not need to worry about giving credibility to the Government’s ambition; we need to worry about making sure that we are in a position to secure the best deal we possibly can.

Anybody who has been involved in a negotiation, whether international or commercial, or to buy a house, knows that if one puts a gun to one’s head, one puts oneself at a great disadvantage. It seems extraordinary that we should be confronted with the proposition in a Bill of this sort that puts our negotiators at a disadvantage. Then there is the other point, which my noble friend Lord Hailsham and others have raised, on parliamentary sovereignty. The Bill takes the decision out of the hands of Parliament, because the curtain comes down at a particular point. Again, that makes it harder than it need be for us to secure the best possible deal.

There has been a large element of unanimity in this debate. Although I recognise that my noble friend on the Front Bench is no doubt operating within tight guidelines, I hope that she will be able to indicate that, having heard the contributions to this debate and having registered the unanimity, she will be able to undertake to go away and think about it and try to find some means to ensure that we do not put a gun to our negotiators’ heads.

[Lord Bowness (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly to the amendments in this group, particularly Amendment 343, to which my noble friend the Duke of Wellington has already spoken.

The Government frequently tell us from the Dispatch Box that they require flexibility in the negotiations, despite at the very beginning having ruled out the customs union, the single market and anything to do with the Court of Justice. Almost every single day brings to the forefront new problems that have not been recognised to date. Whether it is Gibraltar, Northern Ireland, the motor trade or pharmaceuticals, the difficulties are enhanced by our inability to contemplate the arrangements that we have already ruled out. I fear that the Government still refuse to tell people that the method of executing what they apparently see as a binding instruction to leave is deeply flawed. It would be possible to leave and remain in the customs union and the single market and recognise the Court of Justice for certain purposes. Indeed, this is being recognised in the proposed transition or implementation agreements which are being talked about.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Tugendhat Excerpts

Report: 6th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 8th May 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Robertson of Port Ellen (Lab)]

My Lords, in the dim and very distant past, responsibility was given to me by Neil Kinnock—now my noble friend Lord Kinnock—for dealing with the Maastricht treaty Bill in the House of Commons. John Major had come back from the Amsterdam summit with a flawed agreement and an opt-out on the Social Chapter of the Maastricht treaty. We somehow had to protect the treaty, which we supported, while making the case against the exclusion of the Social Chapter. For over a year and a half, I, along with my party and 26 Conservative MPs, one of whom was to go on to lead his party, ran the Government ragged and made life for my now friend, John Major, a complete misery.

Therefore, I know a little bit about the parliamentary tactics involved in dealing with European legislation. I know a bit about the European issue as well, and maybe that is why I have played such a small part in these debates up until now—I have had my fill of it in the past. But I knew about the way in which tactics play out. A lot of my friends in the House of Commons —the European supporters, some of whom are speaking in this debate tonight—kept questioning the tactics of the Front Bench. They kept asking, “Why are we doing this? We’re endangering the project as a whole”. I said, “Wait a bit. We’ve worked out the strategy and the tactics”. I also had to pacify the Eurosceptics on our Back Benches, who thought that I was not opposing enough. At the end of the day, because our strategy and tactics were right, we inflicted the first defeat on the Conservative Government in 14 years, and it required a Motion of confidence by the Prime Minister to get the opt-out from the Social Chapter through.

During this debate I have listened to my noble friends—they are long-standing friends as well—and they make a powerful case. Crashing out of the European Union, as we might do, would be almost fatal to the economy of this country and to the future generations for whom we have responsibility. However, I have to say to these noble friends that our Front Bench has been incredibly successful up until now by taking a careful and calculated view of the issues involved here. We have given the House of Commons a series of issues on which it can make the final decision. We have not overegged the pudding or overstretched ourselves; we have been careful, because my noble friends Lady Hayter and Lady Smith have carefully judged the mood of this House and have anticipated the mood in the other House. If it is their calculated view tonight that we should not vote for this amendment, I shall accept that judgment.

[Lord Tugendhat (Con)]

My Lords, it really is intolerable that my noble friend Lord Forsyth should give lectures about loyalty at a time when the Foreign Secretary is writing in the Daily Mail and the European Research Group is laying down ultimata. It is intolerable that he should cast doubts over the loyalty of my noble friend Lady Verma. Of course he is right to point out that we are considering the withdrawal Bill and to say that we are considering a number of matters that the House of Commons has already considered, but the role of the House of Lords is to give the House of Commons the opportunity to consider things a second time. In the end, its will will of course prevail, but we have a duty and a right to ask it to consider matters a second time.

Since the House of Commons last considered these matters, time has moved on and we have seen members of the Cabinet at each other’s throats. We have seen Ministers openly defy the Prime Minister in a way that I have never seen in the nearly 50 years since I was first elected to Parliament in 1970. We have seen Back-Benchers laying down ultimata in a way that has not been seen before. We have seen the most senior Ministers in the Government, as well as Back-Benchers, divided over the direction in which the country should go. If they are divided over the direction in which the country should go and if they are trying to hem in the Prime Minister, reduce her range of options and drive her down the road towards the hardest possible Brexit, we have a right to widen those options and to give her and other members of the Cabinet and the House of Commons a wider choice than they might otherwise have. It is not a question of thwarting the will of the people or of delaying the Bill; it is a question of trying to improve it in a way that will help the House of Commons reach sensible conclusions about the kind of relationship that this country should have with the European Union after our departure.