European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Wednesday 21st February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

My Lords, if the noble Lord will allow me, there is certainly one attached to Clause 11 that has my name on it, as well as the names of a number of other noble Lords. He will find that Amendment 303 sets out a basis for having common frameworks. Indeed, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, has one in very similar terms, Amendment 304, which certainly provides a basis for moving forward. We are in opposition. The onus is on the Government to come forward with this. Let us not kid ourselves. The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, makes a fair point, but it is the Secretary of State for Scotland who promised amendments on Report in the House of Commons. He has made the commitment to amendments, so the onus is not on the Opposition to come forward with these amendments but on the Government.

I hope that when the Minister replies he will tell us what the colour of the Government’s amendments will be. In the European Union negotiations, TF50 sets out where each of the parties is and gives us great transparency—where there is disagreement and where there are things that have to be clarified. This whole exercise would benefit from far greater transparency so that we can see what progress is or is not being made, who is holding things up and who is genuinely seeking to make progress. I appeal to the Minister to make a commitment when he replies that, following tomorrow’s JMC on the European negotiations, that transparency will become a reality.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I hope that an Englishman, albeit one with a Scottish name, may be allowed to add something to this debate, because it is depressing for someone who lives in the north of England to hear a debate about how much of a privileged relationship the devolved Administrations should have with the United Kingdom Government, when the north of England is likely to suffer very much from leaving the European Union in terms of the loss of European development funds, and at the moment lacks any sort of forum for negotiation or consultation with the very centralised government of England in order to make its case. I am very conscious that the poorer parts of northern England were among those that voted most heavily to leave and that recent studies have suggested that they are also the regions that are likely to lose most from Brexit.

Amendment 227, when we come to it, addresses the question of how far a new mechanism will be needed for the central government in London to consult with English local authorities. My understanding is that the Local Government Association has been in conversation with the Government on that and that the Government have not yet come to an agreed view. I just wish to give notice that this is a very important point, politically and constitutionally, and when we come to it I hope that it will be given sufficient weight.

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, this has been a shorter debate than the previous one and I will try to honour the Minister’s strictures earlier in the evening and limit my remarks to the Bill and to the issue before us, rather than wander into a premature debate on Clause 11 at this stage. At Second Reading, right at the beginning, while our attention was still good, the noble Baroness, Lady Evans, who introduced the debate, said that it was to be guided by two key principles, the first being the need for a functioning statute book on exit. I pause there to suggest that what I hear from Cardiff and Edinburgh is that there the devolved Governments too want a functioning statute book the day after exit, which is why we need some resolution of these matters, difficult as they may be. Secondly, she said there were to be,

“no new barriers to living in and doing business across the UK”.

We have no difficulty there. She went on to say:

“We will shortly be publishing our initial framework analysis”.


If the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, has difficulty with the word “normal”, I promise him that I have difficulty with the word “shortly”, especially since, on 30 January, “shortly” suggested to me that we would have something before us now, but we have not. As the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, said, perhaps the amendment is born of frustration. All that time that went by without any consultation at all which could have produced something that we could be looking at, leads us to want to put in a caveat that if what has been promised does not materialise, it is serious enough for us to feel that we have to offer something quite drastic to shake people to their senses. It is in that spirit, I think especially at Second Reading, that we must look at this amendment.

The noble Baroness said:

“Noble Lords will be aware of the Government’s commitment to bring forward amendments to Clause 11”.


Those are her words, not mine. She said:

“This is a complex area”—


she would agree with the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth—

“that we need to get right, and I hope these amendments will put us on the best possible footing to achieve legislative consent”—

her words, which we echo, of course, in the amendment we are looking at—

“which remains our overarching objective”.—[Official Report, 30/1/18; cols. 1374-75.]

When my noble friend Lady Smith rose to reply to that opening speech, she agreed with those objectives without hesitation and promised that from these Benches we would want to co-operate with the Bill in order to get those agreements in place in time. But where are the amendments? How can we proceed? When will promises be fulfilled? Is it not frustrating—and it is at several stages that I have found this to be happening—that here we are, at this hour of the night, debating this matter, when tomorrow the Joint Ministerial Committee will be meeting? Would it not be lovely if it had met yesterday and then perhaps we could have withdrawn the amendment? But it must stay there until we have a bit more satisfaction than we do.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 26th February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Coussins (CB)]

My Lords, I rise to speak briefly in support of Amendment 10, with particular reference to the Erasmus+ programme, for two specific reasons. First, if we were no longer part of Erasmus+, there would be adverse consequences for the employability of our young people in general. Secondly, Erasmus+ is an essential part of the pipeline for modern foreign language teachers, where there is already a significant shortage. Uncertainty over our continued participation in Erasmus+ is one of the reasons for the continued decline in university applications to study modern languages. Over the past 10 years, applications have dropped by 57% and more than 50 universities have now scrapped some or all of their MFL degree courses.

Of course, Erasmus is not just for linguists and I cannot emphasise strongly enough how important Erasmus+ is for employability prospects across the board. Not only does the Erasmus year abroad help to improve language skills, it also helps to develop an international mindset and a cross-cultural attitude to work. We know from British Academy research and from a recent US study that employers rate these skills in some cases even more highly than expertise in the STEM subjects. We also know that graduates who have spent their year abroad under the Erasmus+ programme are 23% less likely to be unemployed than those who have not done so.

So, as others have said, it really is not good enough for the Government to commit to funding Erasmus+ only to 2020. That is no help at all to people in their first year of university now, whether they are linguists or studying some other discipline, who do not know whether they will be able to spend their third year abroad. It is of no help to sixth-formers or those coming up shortly into the sixth form who might be thinking about keeping up a modern language.

We need a clear commitment to be part of Erasmus+ beyond 2020 in exactly the same way as Norway and other non-EU countries, including Macedonia, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Turkey, which are all full programme partners. We would certainly be cutting off our nose to spite our face if we do not do this, not least because the European Commission is planning to double participation in Erasmus+ by 2025 by extending opportunities for exchanges and placements to school pupils, which, it is very easy to see, might turn out to be a critical factor in encouraging the continued take-up of modern languages at A-level and university. At the moment, we are simply not producing enough graduate linguists to meet the needs of teaching, business or the body of interpreters and translators working in international organisations such as the UN.

The other element of self-inflicted backlash if we ditch Erasmus+ would be to turn our backs on a vital part of the supply chain for modern language teachers. The Department for Education estimates the current shortage to be 3,500 if the Government are to meet their EBacc target. This shortage risks getting worse and more precarious post Brexit because such a significant proportion of MFL teachers and language classroom teachers are non-UK EU nationals. If they are not guaranteed residency status post Brexit, language teaching in our schools will become very precarious indeed. I implore Her Majesty’s Government to exercise a massive amount of enlightened self-interest and ensure that the UK remains a full programme partner and a full member of the Erasmus+ programme in the long term.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I will talk about two aspects of Horizon 2020. One is the question of certainty and the other is how this links with freedom of movement. I declare two interests. My wife has been on some of the advisory committees concerned with the definition of Horizon 2020 and what happens beyond it. British participation in defining research priorities across the European Union has been high in the last two or three exercises. That is not something that has been imposed on us and it is one of the things that we will lose.

My second interest is that I have a son who is a mathematical biologist and who spent his graduate and postgraduate years—up to 10 years—in the United States and came back to this country under an EU-funded scheme to bring bright young researchers back to Europe. He had his two-year Marie Curie fellowship and was advised not to apply for European Research Council fellowship, which would have naturally followed on, because we were perhaps leaving the European Union and that would make it difficult for him. The uncertainty is absolutely there. Happily, he now has another grant. He was persuaded to return to the University of Edinburgh by an Italian professor who led a multinational team there. That is how British universities work. I have been to many universities in other European countries where the overwhelming majority of staff and students come from that country or, in one or two countries such as Belgium and Spain, from that region. Those universities are not of the same quality or calibre.

I sometimes fear that there are hard Brexiteers in this country who think that we have too many foreigners in our universities already and that it would be much better if we went back to being proper British universities again, which would be much more in tune with the British national spirit.

As a mathematical biologist, my son is currently in Paris for six weeks at the Institut Pasteur, having spent some weeks last year in Heidelberg, because the sort of work you do in the life sciences is multinational and naturally collaborative. That requires easy movement, short term and long term. Anything which raises difficulties of travel in and out of this country, which is part of the intention of leaving the European Union, will make it much more difficult for our universities to go on being quite as good as they are. So I stress that, as we leave the European Union, we have to ensure that we remain internationally competitive and, in our universities, this matters.

Since the Government intend to leave the European Union in 13 months’ time, we need some rapid certainty on Horizon 2020. I suggest to the Minister that, well before the Bill leaves this House, the Government should have a clear answer, highly relevant to the Bill which takes us out of the European Union, on what the implications are of leaving and on which bits we are not leaving. Please may we have an answer?

[Lord Patten of Barnes (Con)]

My Lords, I will not only say that I will be brief but will be brief. I shall not pursue what has been said about Erasmus, with which I strongly agree—Erasmus must have been very grateful for all we have said about him today, although I think he would have some doubts about the present state of rationality in some of our political debate in this country.

I will instead follow the point made so well by the noble Baroness, Lady Royall. I declare an interest, which is not financial. As the noble Lord will know, I was chancellor of a Russell group university in the north-east of England. I am chancellor today of another Russell group university. Perhaps just as significant, when I ceased to be a European Commissioner, I was asked to chair the committee which established the European Research Council. It did so on the basis of the recommendations in particular of Lord May, one of the greatest contributors to the debate about research and about universities in this country.

We established the research council on the basis that it would distribute funds by peer group review—not according to what individual countries had contributed but according to the research capacities of those countries and of particular institutions. And guess what? It demonstrated that we have the second-best higher education system in the world and arguably the best higher education system in Europe: we did extraordinarily well out of that research budget. As the noble Baroness pointed out, we get a great deal more back from the European budget than we put into it, which indicates how good our research community is in this country.

I realise that there are constraints under which the Minister has to operate—he has our sympathy and our prayers as he moves forward. I agree with what my noble friend Lord Deben said earlier: we do not expect him to do wonders. I am not sure that he will be able to tell us now what the Government’s intentions are in relation to the European research community. I do not blame him if he cannot do that, because I do not think that anybody in the Government has the faintest idea—certainly, I do not know anybody in Europe who has the faintest idea of what we want to happen—but I hope that, at the end of the day, as right reverend Prelates might put it, we will still be members of that research community.

So I do not expect the Minister today to be able to spell out precisely what arrangements we will have in the future—whether they will be similar to those which Switzerland has today, whereby it is part of the community but takes no management decisions about it. Israel is in a similar position. However, I hope that, even if he cannot tell us exactly what the relationship will be, he will at least give us one simple guarantee—and I am sure that the Chancellor of the Exchequer would want to stand over this very strongly.

When we leave the European Union we will lose the considerable surplus that we have at the moment in research spending—as I said, getting back more than we put in. Will the Minister guarantee this evening, even if he cannot give us any details about our future relationship with the European research community, that any shortfall in that funding after we leave the European Union will be made good by the Government?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

The Minister says it is too early to decide whether we will co-operate. Can he tell us in what circumstances we will decide that it is not in the national interest for the UK to participate in the next Horizon programme?

[Lord Callanan]

I very much expect that it will be in our interest to participate in it. As I said, we are taking part in discussions. We have not yet seen the detail of how it will be financed, but, given a fair ongoing contribution, I suspect that we will want to participate. But they are a matter of negotiation. It is fine for us to say that, yes, we would like to take part; we need the EU side, the other side to the negotiation, to say that, yes, they would like us to take part as well. It is a negotiation. We can give a commitment that we would like to; we cannot give a commitment that we will be accepted.

As part of the new deep and special partnership with the EU, we will recognise our shared interest in maintaining and strengthening research collaboration. The UK will seek an ambitious agreement, one that promotes science and innovation across Europe now and in future. For the avoidance of any doubt, in response to the many questions that have been asked, let me say that we support Erasmus, we support Horizon 2020, but, contrary to what many noble Lords have suggested, these are EU programmes. The UK cannot adopt a unilateral stance; there has to be bilateral agreement on them. That agreement depends, first, on understanding the shape of the Erasmus programme in May and framework programme nine, when it is clarified by the Commission, and finding a mutually acceptable financial arrangement. Subject to those conditions, we would be very happy to be able to participate in both those programmes in future.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Monday 26th February 2018 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

12: Clause 1, page 1, line 3, at end insert—
“( ) Regulations bringing into force subsection (1) may not be made until the Secretary of State has laid before both Houses of Parliament procedures agreed with the EU for continued coordination of foreign and security policy, including association with the EU’s military staff and the European Defence Agency, and these procedures have been approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament.”

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister argued in winding up on the first group of amendments that we should be talking about the Bill and not about the issues raised by the amendments, which seemed a very ill-judged remark. This Bill is about a very wide range of policy areas—economic, constitutional and international—on which the Government are asking us to give them extensive powers, on trust, without telling us what they intend to do. The question for many of us is that we cannot trust the Government so far in giving them all those additional powers, unless they tell us rather more clearly what they intend to do.

These amendments deal with the implications of leaving the EU for British foreign, security and defence policy, and with the management of those policies when we withdraw. As we withdraw, which is what this Bill is about, we will also withdraw from the structures of common foreign policy and the common security and defence policy in the Treaty on European Union, as specified in a large number of articles. So what will we do then? The leave campaign never addressed this in the referendum, so there is no way one can say, “Well, it’s the will of the people, we can’t stand in their way”. The leave campaign denied that the EU was ever concerned with anything to do with security, foreign policy or defence. We were told when we joined that it was just about the common market, and now it has turned into something else. Anyone who has read Edward Heath’s 1968 Harvard lectures, what he said when he became Prime Minister and what Sir Alec Douglas-Home said as Foreign Secretary, what Jim Callaghan did as Foreign Secretary and what the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, followed through on, including his London report on strengthening the mechanisms of common foreign policy, and what Geoffrey Howe achieved, would know that Britain was absolutely at the heart of forming common foreign policy procedures in the European Union. I remember writing something about it for publication in a Chatham House journal in the late 1970s and being briefed very helpfully in the Foreign Office by the official who co-ordinated our input to common foreign policy, whose name was Pauline Neville-Jones. One or two Members of this House may, indeed, be familiar with the name. I also recall the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, who sadly is not in his place at the moment, insisting even after the referendum that the EU had nothing to do with British or European security—and I gave him an annotated copy of the 2015 security and defence review with chapter 5, which is entirely about European defence co-operation, marked for his benefit.

Last September, the Government finally published a position paper on common foreign and security policy, which said, remarkably, that,

“the scale and depth of collaboration that currently exists between the UK and the EU in the fields of foreign policy, defence and security, and development”,

is such that we need,

“a deep and special partnership”—

a familiar phrase—

“with the EU that goes beyond existing third country arrangements”.

It goes on to point out that the UK was a founding member of the EU’s CSDP and takes part in all 15 common security and defence policy operations and missions and concludes:

“The UK would like to offer a future relationship that is deeper than any current third country partnership … This future partnership should be unprecedented in its breadth, taking in cooperation on foreign policy, defence and security, and development, and in the degree of engagement that we envisage”.


Well, that was interesting. Nothing was said for months afterwards—and, finally, the Prime Minister last week gave her speech in Munich in which she went into a little more detail about what she at least, if not the rest of her Government, seems to envisage. She said:

“The EU’s common foreign policy is distinct within the EU Treaties … So, there is no reason why we should not agree distinct arrangements for our foreign and defence policy cooperation in the time-limited implementation period, as the Commission has proposed. This would mean that key aspects of our future partnership in this area would already be effective from 2019”.


In that case, it is about time the Government started to educate the population on what arrangements they propose to make with the European Union. I hope, at least, that someone has told the European Union the sort of things that we might like to envisage. She then goes on to talk about our: joining the European Defence Agency and the European Defence Fund; contributing to the European Union’s common development policy, but on the condition that we also play an active role in formulating future European Union defence policy—I am not entirely sure how we do that, as an outsider—co-operating in cyberspace and space; and dealing with a whole range of issues including, on internal security, a new bilateral treaty between the EU and UK.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard]

Before the Minister sits down, perhaps I may say to her that she will have responded to this debate admirably if she can think of a way of conveying to the Foreign Secretary—it might be relatively easy since he is here—that there are at least some in this House who believe that the right way of advancing the dossier of co-operation with the EU that we have left on a common foreign and security policy would be for us to put forward a draft treaty now—not waiting for the other side, not waiting for the Commission, the expertise of which is not on foreign policy, but putting forward a treaty drafted by the Foreign Secretary, with all his detailed, forensic skills.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, of course I shall withdraw the amendment, but I shall make a couple of comments. It is clear that we will have to return to this at the next stage if the Government do not provide any more detail. First, on the role of the Lords in considering Bills such as this, the noble Baroness said—as the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, said on a couple of occasions—that this is a largely mechanical Bill. Well, it is a mechanical Bill that gives very wide discretion to the Government to design our future relationship with our most important security, political and economic partners. So a House that concerns itself not with whether the principle of the Bill is correct but with the detail is entirely in accord with its role to ask for detail on what that discretion will be used for.

It would be easier to accept that this is a mechanical Bill and not to raise these difficult questions one after another if we had some confidence that the Government actually know what they want in these areas. Part of our problem is that many of us have no such confidence. I do not think that the Foreign Secretary has a clue about what he wants by way of a future relationship with Europe: I doubt whether he has really thought about it for more than three or four minutes. He is too busy thinking about the next anecdote he is going to tell or the next joke he is going to make. His speech last week was a disgrace for a Foreign Secretary: the Prime Minister’s was of an entirely different quality. For a Conservative Party that has always prided itself on its commitment to a strong foreign policy, it must be a real embarrassment that we still have someone in place who is incapable of giving a serious speech on foreign policy. So this House is fulfilling its proper role in asking for detail on the implications of the Bill.

Secondly, I take up what the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, said: the engine room is important.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Earl Howe) (Con)]

My Lords, I think it is against the rules and the spirit of this Chamber to criticise a Member of another place by name. I hope that the noble Lord will see fit to moderate his comments accordingly.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I apologise for being perhaps a little stronger than I should have been in this respect. On the engine room—I wanted to return to the noble Earl, Lord Howe, on this—much of the business of multilateral organisations, be it NATO or the EU, is done in working groups and committees. The common foreign and security policy structure has some 40 working groups and committees, including a military committee that has been chaired by a British officer. If we are not in any of those working groups, we will miss out on formulating policy.

There are other details that matter a great deal. I remember the noble Earl, Lord Howe, saying on one occasion, when some of us were following the noble Lord, Lord West, and asking, “Where are you going to find the frigates to make up the carrier groups that we need?” The noble Earl said, if I remember correctly, “They do not necessarily have to be British frigates”. I took him as meaning that they might be Dutch, French, Belgian or whatever. Well, that also needs a certain structure, with certain training mechanisms and certain multilateral commands.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

Would the structure not be NATO?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

The noble Lord may not know, but, as I have quoted, we have been involved in some 15 EU operations, some of which have been naval. Had he visited Operation Atalanta at Northwood, he would have known that that is an entirely naval operation, commanded by the British with ships from a number of different nations. Operation Sophia in the Mediterranean has also involved British frigates working with others on the whole question of migration. So some operations are NATO, some are the EU.

I have said quite enough. Of course I am going to withdraw, but we, along with many others, do not know enough about this area to be able to give the confidence to the Government that we want—that is the whole problem with this “mechanical Bill”. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 12 withdrawn.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Wednesday 28th February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

That is the constant refrain from the leavers. We heard it all through the referendum campaign: “It’s our money”. It is money from all the European countries that comes in according to their ability to pay and goes out to different parts of the European Union according to their needs, and rural areas, transition areas and less developed areas are those which get it. But that is not the argument here; we have had that argument. It has been made and we can have it in another place.

Wherever it comes from, that money is within the European Union budget at the moment and is then allocated to these projects in different parts of the United Kingdom. We are asking for an assurance—we need a guarantee—that, if we leave the European Union, this money will go to the same projects and be funded by the United Kingdom Government. I hope that the Minister will be able to give us that guarantee; such projects will otherwise have an uncertain future. People’s livelihoods depend on them; people who have put their lives into developing them are now faced with uncertainty. The only way in which they can be given some certainty is if the Government accept my amendment or something like it, and make sure that the money that they currently get from those European Union funds will come in future from Her Majesty’s Government.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I apologise that I missed the first minute of the noble Lord’s speech. I want to stress, first, that the history of Article 174 is one of British leadership. The regional development fund was set up by one of the first British Commissioners, George Thomson, and was designed to help poorer regions in Britain and Ireland in particular cope with the impact of joining the European Union—it is very good that two of Lord Thomson’s sons-in-law are in this House and taking part in this Committee, although I do not see either of them in their place. I recall clearly how he carried that through the European Community, as it then was, in the early 1970s.

The article as we now have it was inserted into the Single European Act by the British Government as one of its flanking elements, but it was then transformed by Margaret Thatcher because she committed herself to eastern enlargement—one remembers the Bruges speech and the point she made about bringing Prague, Budapest and Warsaw back into Europe. The regional development fund within the European Union became very much part of how we have helped to spread prosperity, and therefore stability, democracy and security, into those new member countries. It is worth noting that Norway contributes to the European Regional Development Fund and that in any conceivable deal which we strike with the European Union after we leave—if we end up leaving—it is likely that we will be asked to contribute in the same way. The noble Baroness, Lady Deech, might say that this is dreadful because the European Union spreads conflict, but I think that the rest of us will agree that the European Union has helped to stabilise the former socialist countries of eastern Europe. One has only to move from Poland to Belarus to see how much difference it has made.

Now that we appear to be leaving, the question of what happens to this country and what reassurance the Government can give us about the future of regional development in it is important. The Prime Minister said when she came into office that she wanted to bring the country back together and to reunite this very polarised public we have had since the referendum, but let us remember that England has the deepest regional disparities of any country in Europe—the United Kingdom even more so—and that the areas which qualify for and benefit most from the European development fund in Britain are Yorkshire, the south-west, parts of Wales, the north-east and parts of Cumbria and Lancashire. Recent studies have suggested that Yorkshire and the north-east are the two regions which will suffer most from Brexit because our trade is most clearly across the North Sea, from Hull and Newcastle, and the damage will be severe. Can the Minister begin to give us some reassurance that the Government are alive to this issue and that, as they attempt to bring the country back together, as we hope they do, they will have an active regional policy to cope with the impact of Brexit?

I read the Yorkshire Post—published by a company that used to be called Yorkshire Conservative Newspapers—and the image one gets of views in Yorkshire from our media and gossip are: that we are now governed by a very Home Counties, southern-English Government; that the north is forgotten; that the northern powerhouse is a placard without much behind it; and that the spending in the north on infra- structure, innovation, schools in rural areas and elsewhere falls well behind what is given to government. I should have thought that might leave the Conservative Party very worried. In replying, can the Minister give us some assurance—and feed this back into the Government—that, as we move towards an apparently inevitable Brexit, the Conservative Government are thinking actively about the regional disparities we already have, are taking into account that poorer regions will suffer disproportionately from a loss of European regional funds and realise that compensatory action needs to be taken by the British Government to prevent that?

--- Later in debate ---

Post leaving the EU, we have an opportunity, and leaving the EU will allow us to develop policy in the funding programmes with the flexibility and innovation required truly to meet the needs of the UK and support our industrial strategy. That brings me to the United Kingdom’s shared prosperity fund, which has been specifically designed to raise productivity and reduce inequalities between communities across our four nations. Unlike structural funds, the shared prosperity fund will be cheaper to administer and much less burdened by bureaucracy. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, is impatient to hear more about this, but we have already committed to consult on the precise design and priorities later this year. We will consult widely on the design of the fund and discuss with the devolved Administrations, local authorities, businesses and public bodies how the fund might work. That will give all interested parties the opportunity to contribute their views directly to the Government. As we look at where we can improve on current investment programmes, the devolved Administrations will have valuable lessons they can share with the Government.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

Can I ask an additional question? Interreg is very much about cross-border schemes and co-operations. As we all now understand, there is one very important cross-border relationship, which we have somehow to maintain, between the United Kingdom and Ireland. Will the Government’s devolution of these funds back to national level include a specific Irish co-operation dimension?

[Baroness Goldie]

It will in as much as, post Brexit, the United Kingdom will work within each of its component parts, which obviously includes Northern Ireland. I anticipate that discussions would principally rest in that respect on the subject of the question that the noble Lord has raised.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

Not necessarily with southern Ireland?

[Baroness Goldie]

I think that, in the first instance, as we look at how we will fund different parts of the United Kingdom, the primary discussions will be with those parts of the United Kingdom—they would have to be. That is without prejudice to the Executive in Northern Ireland, who I hope will be established. We will want to pay proper respect to that Executive when they are constituted and consider what they want to do. I would be very surprised if there were not a desire to have constructive discussions with the Republic of Ireland in the interests of trying to determine how best to address these needs, if there is a relationship. The Republic of Ireland, at that point, will be an international country separate from the United Kingdom, as it will be in the EU and the United Kingdom will not. We have to respect these new relationships and new boundaries.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Monday 5th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Duncan of Springbank]

The noble Baroness will recognise that that is part of a discussion for another time. We have already touched on it on more than one occasion. If I may, I will focus primarily on the amendments before us today.

It is important that we recognise that the rights we have cannot be undone. That must be the fundamental guidance. For those who ask whether I can give a categorical assurance that there shall be no erosion of the working time directive, the answer is yes, I can give that assurance. We will not be eroding these rules as they come back or after they come back. It is critical that these rules become and remain functional as we begin to develop our own rulebook. It is right that we should be cognisant of the advances in the evolution of rights whether it be in the EU or elsewhere. We have heard this evening about a number of these rights which we have seen emanating from the UN. We should not be limited in that regard. Time and again we have found ourselves in the vanguard of particular rights. As we consider this suite of amendments, I do not think we should lose sight of the fact that in more than one area on more than one occasion we have pushed rights far further forward than had been the case of the median rights within the EU as a whole.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

The Minister just made an extremely significant statement. He will appreciate that part of the problem many of us have with the Bill is how far we trust the Government to have the very extensive delegated powers which are granted by the Bill and the chatter one hears, including from Ministers, about a desire to loosen EU regulations, in particular to loosen EU labour regulations. If the statement he has just made represents the Government’s considered view, that puts a number of minds at rest, although it may upset a number of people within his own party.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Committee: 5th sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Wednesday 7th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, my name is on some of these amendments. I will be extremely brief. We are now at the core of the Bill, and at the core of how the Government respond to it. I cannot recall reading two such critical reports from committees of this House as the two we have had on these clauses— for example the suggestion that Clause 9 is wholly unacceptable and the suggestion that Clause 7 leaves very considerable uncertainty, both of which are from the Delegated Powers Committee. I therefore ask the Minister to offer us the prospect that the Government will come back on Report with their own recognition of the strength of feeling in this House. Without question, the Government will lose heavily on this the first time it is tested, and quite possibly again after it has gone back to the other place if the Commons sustains it.

We are in a position at which we need from the Government some reassurance on these constitutional issues, as well as these issues of trust, as they put through a Bill with a huge range of flexibility. We need reassurance on the Government’s future intentions, as their future intentions on much of this are still not entirely clear. I simply ask the Minister to be generous and to stretch his freedom of action as far as he can in the way he responds.

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Lang, pointed out that we are a bit thin on the ground for such an important set of amendments, but the Minister should know that there is behind us an army. I have had more representations on Clause 7 than on any other part of the Bill—representations from national organisations, human rights organisations, advocacy organisations, legal organisations, professional organisations, and from individuals. There is very widespread civic concern over these clauses, and the Government should heed it and accept these amendments, which have such widespread support also in your Lordships’ House.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

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

[Baroness Goldie]

With the greatest respect to my noble friend, it is a matter for the negotiations. We cannot remain part of the European Medicines Agency unless that is agreed in the negotiations. The other aspects of the regulations, if they are subsequently enacted, will require us to adjust and adapt our UK law to be consistent with whatever the regulation provides.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, perhaps I may make what I hope is a helpful suggestion. This is not a unique regulation. There is a class of regulations and directives, some of which have now been agreed but not implemented and others that, as the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, and others have observed, are currently moving through the policy-making process and may or may not have been agreed by March 2019. The Government must have a list of all of these and must have a clear idea of which ones they think we automatically ought to accept, others that we would prefer not to accept and those about which they are not entirely decided. Since we are all concerned about giving business as much certainty as far ahead as possible, will the Government commit to publishing that list so that we can see where we are and come back on a more informed basis to discuss which of these directives and regulations that have been passed but not yet implemented automatically ought to go into British law and which of those going through are or are not thought to be in the national interest?

[Baroness Ludford]

Perhaps I may draw the noble Baroness’s attention to Clause 3(3)(a):

“For the purposes of this Act, any direct EU legislation is operative immediately before exit day if—


(a) in the case of anything which comes into force at a particular time”.

The regulation came into force in June 2014, 20 days after its publication in the Official Journal and is stated to apply from a later date—that is, 2020 when the EMA certifies that the portal and the database are ready,

“it is in force and applies immediately before exit day”.

This regulation is not only in force, but it applies before exit day according to the Government’s own proposed legislation. Have I misread Clause 3(3)(a)?

--- Later in debate ---

Upon exiting the EU, the UK could find itself in breach of the MFN principle, because, in some cases, the conversion of EU law into UK domestic law could preserve favourable treatment of goods or services from the EU as compared with other WTO members. Under the MFN principle, that sort of favourable treatment is not allowed unless an appropriate regional trade agreement is in place, such as, potentially, the agreement on the UK’s future relationship with the EU. Therefore, the power in Clause 8 of the Bill allows Ministers to deal with any breaches of the MFN principle and other WTO rules. It allows Ministers to take steps to remedy such a breach until two years after exit day. Of course, it is subject to the sunset clause. The Government have said that we are focused on getting a good outcome, one that works for the people and businesses of the UK and for those in the EU. In the light of our successful phase 1 agreement—

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

That is a very interesting point. Would that be remediable if we were to stay within the European Economic Area, which would classify us as part nevertheless of a regional economic arrangement? Is that one of the things that perhaps we and the Government should take into account in considering this transition?

[Lord Callanan]

If we were part of the European Economic Area, I assume that we would not need to do that. However, as we are not going to be part of the European Economic Area, it may perhaps be necessary. I hope that the noble Lord will listen to my next point.

In the light of our successful phase 1 agreement, we are increasingly confident that we will secure a deal with the EU and that the prospect of leaving negotiations with no deal has reduced significantly. It is in both the UK’s and the EU’s interests to secure a good deal for both sides. However, as a responsible Government, we have a duty to plan for the unlikely scenario in which no mutually satisfactory agreement can be reached. I hope noble Lords agree that that is common sense. If we do not have this power, and in exiting the EU we are unable to correct a breach of the MFN principle, another WTO member could bring a dispute against the UK in the WTO. That is a situation that we want to avoid, and which could result in a loss of trade for UK business through retaliatory measures by other WTO members or claims for compensation against the UK.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Callanan]

I assume that that was the noble Lord’s point.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, since we are discovering the enormous complexity of all this, on the previous amendment I asked the Government whether they would be willing to share with us their own calculations on the process of policy-making for directives and regulations, some of which are in force but not implemented, and others of which are about to come into force but will not be implemented until after March 2019. What view have the Government formed on those? That would be helpful to us and others in understanding how the Government are coping with this complex process.

[Lord Callanan]

The noble Lord makes a good point. I was speaking to my noble friend Lady Goldie about the matter when he asked her the question earlier. I will have a look at this for him. I think it is fair to say that most of our negotiating positions on the existing directives and regulations are already public. We share our positions, the issues that are being discussed are transparently available on both our website and the EU’s website, and many of the issues that will come to fruition over the next year or two are already in early formative phases. I therefore genuinely do not think that there is much about this process that is secretive, but I will certainly have a look at the issue for the noble Lord.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Committee: 7th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 14th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rooker]

The short answer to that is no. I will give the evidence as my final point. In 2013, the coalition Government set up the balance of competences review of 32 areas of government. At the time I chaired the Food Standards Agency, a non-ministerial department, so I was part of the coalition in a way. It was a bit of shock when I turned up to a Cabinet sub-committee one day. There was a separate review on animal health and food safety. We consulted and did a lot of research work. As I said, people thought that the EU does not do much and that they were not very secure. We consulted widely on food standards and safety. The balance of views from the Food Standards Agency and Defra—it was a joint report in the end—was that we were better off being in this system of regulations. I am a Brussels sceptic but I believe that, on balance, UK customers are better protected in terms of food and feed in this system. I have not spent much time on feed, but it is the Achilles heel of all this. But the short answer to my noble friend is no. The balance of competences review, which can be found in the Library, is there for everybody to read. We have been through all this before.

I will finish on this point. What happened to the 32 reports on the balance of competences? They were buried, because they all came out with roughly the same idea: by and large we are better off being in the EU arguing our case than being out. So we never heard any more about them until we had the barmy idea to have a referendum.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

I spent a lot of my time in government negotiating the 32 reports in the balance of competences review. I remind the Committee that it was a Conservative demand within the coalition agreement of 2010 that there should be an extensive examination of the balance of competences between the UK and the EU. In almost all the 32 reports, the answer was that stakeholders across the country were satisfied with the current balance and did not wish any repatriation of competences from the EU to the UK. The noble Lord is absolutely right: the No. 10 press office did its utmost to ensure that they were published the day after Parliament rose, either for the summer or for Christmas, to minimise the amount of publicity that the reports would get because the Conservatives were scared of the right wing in their own party, as they still are.

[Lord Rooker]

My Lords, I rest my case.

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[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, I move Amendment 150, which also appears in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, Lord Hannay, and Lord Patten, and shall speak more broadly about the objective which, in the mix, these various amendments seek to achieve.

Amendment 150 is perhaps the most modest in the group. It would put into statute the Prime Minister’s promise that the withdrawal agreement would be voted on in both Houses, before a similar—albeit more serious—vote in the European Parliament. Why “more serious”? It is because the European Parliament has to agree the deal or it can go no further. MEPs have a veto, whereas a mere Motion in either or both Houses this side of the water would have no statutory force.

In theory—in law, if not in politics—either or both Houses could say “nay” and the Prime Minister could still say “yea” and sign up. Or the Prime Minister could even, for whatever reason, fail to table a Motion in either or both Houses. We should at the very least write this into law. But the truth is that we must go further than this, along the lines suggested in other amendments, such as that in the name of my noble friend Lord Liddle.

Our amendments cover three specific areas: first, approval by Parliament of the draft withdrawal Bill, prior to the European Parliament vote, plus a procedure for the Commons deciding what to do should our Parliament decline to approve; secondly, approval by Parliament of the final agreement, including the framework for our future relationship and the transition arrangements, plus a procedure for the Commons to decide what to do if Parliament declines approval; and finally, preventing the Government walking away from the talks with no deal without the consent of Parliament and enabling the Commons to decide what should happen if MPs disagree with the Government.

In case anyone thinks that the no-deal scenario has gone away, just last week the Foreign Secretary was still saying that leaving without a deal holds no terrors and that the UK would do very well on World Trade Organisation terms, despite everything we hear from manufacturers and exporters about duties and red tape, the possibility of border posts in Ireland, and of Calais facing 30-mile tailbacks with potential food shortages if we end up with mandatory customs and sanitary checks at the French ferry terminal. Parliament must keep the Government’s feet to the fire and ensure more sensible judgments than Mr Johnson’s guide to negotiations.

It is not just this side of the Committee, nor the various noble Lords who have put their names to the amendments in this group, who want the outcome of the Government’s negotiations to be put to Parliament for endorsement. John Major, who knows a thing or two about negotiating treaties as well as about Parliament, has said that there,

“must be a decisive vote, in which Parliament can accept or reject the final outcome or send the negotiators back to seek improvements, or order a referendum … That is what parliamentary sovereignty means ... No one can truly know what ‘the will of the people’ may then be. So, let parliament decide”.

I might not quite share his view about a referendum, but I do share his view that it is for Parliament, not the Government, to decide on the outcome of the negotiations. That is what the sovereignty of Parliament is all about and it is vital on this issue because of its long-term implications. We need to ensure that the Government, at every stage of the way, remain very aware that it is not just the divided views in the Cabinet that must be satisfied, but Parliament on behalf of the people.

During the Article 50 Bill, this House voted overwhelmingly for a “meaningful vote” for Parliament. We will ensure that this demand is put into this Bill. I hope the Minister will give an undertaking that the Government will accept an amendment on Report to make that demand a reality. I beg to move.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, my name is to this amendment. I think most of us would agree that Clause 9 as it stands is simply not fit for purpose or constitutionally acceptable. It leaves it to Ministers to decide and implement whatever our divided and chaotic Government have by then asked for and managed to negotiate with the rest of the EU. I find it astonishing that the Government have failed to set out their negotiating preferences 18 months after the referendum and 12 months before the proposed exit day.

In six days in Committee we have had a process of discovery about the number of issues on which the Government do not have a coherent view. The noble Lord, Lord Callanan, has argued that the Government are protecting their negotiating position. It seems to me they are rather protecting their nakedness on much of it as they do not have a coherent position. In the speech he just made he said that they do not want to have their negotiating position constrained. The Government have themselves produced a number of red lines that constrain their negotiating position. Parliament must be allowed to constrain their negotiating position in other ways. Every day in Committee and on almost every subject we discover more issues that are important to Britain’s prosperity and security on which the Government remain confused and unclear about what their preferences are.

The Prime Minister’s speech the other week was a major step forward. She moved to recognise that we need to maintain in a number of areas that she specified—but only a few—close relations with the European Union. The Luxembourg Prime Minister’s comment on her speech was entirely appropriate: the United Kingdom now intends to move from a position where it is inside the EU with a number of opt-outs to one in which it is outside the EU with a large number of opt-ins. Parliament would wish to have a view on that. What we heard in the first debate this morning was: how many of these opt-ins do the Government wish to have? They must have a view on that and they ought to share it with Parliament. They need to share it with their European Union partners. It is not a negotiating position on which we wish to maintain flexibility.

Given all of that, it is all the more important for Parliament to have a meaningful and coherent vote on a package—or the absence of one—well before the prescribed exit date is reached. That is what Amendment 150 and the others in this group talk about, in one way or another. The Government seem to be more concerned about negotiations within the Conservative Party than with the long-term national interest of the country. We parliamentarians, in both Houses, therefore have to be the guardians of the national interest, and that requires substantial changes to Clause 9.

[Lord Cormack]

My name is on the second amendment in this group, Amendment 151. I am most grateful to my noble friends Lord Balfe and Lady Verma and the noble Lord, Lord Reid, for adding their names to it.

I have become increasingly depressed and disturbed with every day that we are facing this Bill, particularly because my noble friend—whom I totally respect—is so fervently on the Brexit side that he does not seem to be able to grasp the importance of the points that are being made about the sovereignty of Parliament. In the Lord Speaker’s corridor, on the wall opposite what the Americans euphemistically call a comfort station, is a row of cartoons. One of them concerns Queen Caroline. Most noble Lords will know that she had a somewhat unfortunate relationship with her husband, George IV, and was locked out of the abbey for the coronation, but she was the idol and darling of the people. The cartoon refers to her as “Britain’s best hope”, and “England’s sheet anchor”. That sums up, in a phrase, the attitude of many of those who have embraced the Brexit cause.

But where are the details? Where is the substance? The important point of this amendment, as of the one previously moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, is that it wants to give Parliament centrality. Indeed, it is building, constructively, upon the one amendment that was carried in another place and was most eloquently moved by my right honourable friend Dominic Grieve. I think he would accept, as would most of your Lordships, that that put down a marker but did not guarantee a position. This amendment, similar to the one eloquently moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, would build on that and rectify the position. It calls for Parliament to approve the final terms, by statute, before they are referred to the European Parliament and would guarantee Parliament a meaningful say on the withdrawal agreement at a meaningful, realistic, sensible time. There is no point in merely going through the motions if Parliament is not going to have a proper opportunity to deliver a verdict at a time when something can be done about it. It builds on Amendment 7—as my right honourable friend Dominic Grieve’s amendment was numbered in the other place—to ensure that Parliament has ample time for consideration of whatever agreement is reached. At the moment, there is not a sufficient guarantee that Parliament will have that time to examine the agreement before the European Parliament does so. In effect, we are also building on the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Monks, earlier today.

I want to be brief, because we had a long debate on the first group of amendments. I am delighted that my second amendment, Amendment 199, is a wholly Conservative amendment, because the other signatories are my noble friends Lord Balfe, Lady Verma again and Lord Deben. In this amendment, we are saying, as Conservatives who believe fundamentally that the nation is making a mistake but who want to rescue as much as we can, that a no-deal outcome is not acceptable. It aims to ensure that if Parliament fails to endorse the proposed agreement, the UK will continue with the existing arrangements and relationship with the European Union, and it will require the Government to seek an extension of Article 50 so that negotiations can continue.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Liddle]

If the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, thinks there is a danger, we will have to look at it again because I so respect his judgment. I certainly do not want to create a legal vacuum; I want to see the possibility of an extension of Article 50 as one thing that Parliament might do if it decided to reject the Motion on the withdrawal agreement. I also think that it would be appropriate for the Commons to decide on any other course—and certainly I agree with the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, that a referendum would be a possibility in those circumstances. How can we possibly judge at this stage what those circumstances will be? We have to have in our amendment—while maintaining legal certainty—the possibility of the Commons being able to decide on a number of different things.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

One of the benefits of the Grieve amendment, as inserted, is that it refers to approving the “final” terms of withdrawal. Part of the problem we now face with an exit day in March 2019 is that the prospects of reaching a final and detailed agreement before then are receding day by day. So it appears to me—I read the Daily Mail every day and follow, as far as I can, what Jacob Rees-Mogg is saying—that the hard Brexiteers want to get us out with the vaguest possible interim agreement and do not mind about it. Parliament has not to allow that. Therefore, it is important to talk about the final and detailed terms of the agreement to be presented to Parliament before we leave, and it is something that we all need to ensure we have in this Bill.

[Lord Liddle]

I agree very much with what the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, is saying. That is why I think that the possibility of extending Article 50 is realistic, before one contemplates the possibility of a further referendum. The risk that we face at the moment is that the Government will seek to take us out of the European Union finally on the basis of a political declaration that will, frankly, contain mushy words that mean one thing to one set of people and another thing to another set of people.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Committee: 8th sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Monday 19th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, perhaps I may follow the noble Lord, Lord Porter. When I was a small boy singing in the choir of Spalding parish church, after services we used to look for the graves of the Dutch engineers who had dug out the Fens and drained them—which of course is why the area is known as South Holland. I also remember that when the current Government Chief Whip came to this House, I formed an early bond with him in part because I think I was almost the only person in the Chamber who knew where Holbeach was.

I strongly support the amendment. One of the things that I became increasingly irritated by when I was in government was going to meetings where one would hear the Scots, the Welsh and the Northern Irish perspective on a subject, and then we would move on. The population of England is extremely diverse and there is, as my noble friend said, a great deal of inequality between regions—and yet we did not discuss the north-eastern or the north-western perspective, or the Yorkshire perspective because there is no mechanism for consultation and for giving the English regions a voice. This is a particular problem in Yorkshire, as the noble Lord will know. We do not yet have an agreed strategy with the Government for the one-Yorkshire solution that we are now all agreed on, so that while the city mayors whom Government officials meet represent bits of urban England, they leave an awful lot of English local authorities outside.

I do worry that, if we leave the European Union and the economy goes down further, there will be a real backlash in some of the areas of the north that have been left behind. They voted strongly to leave because they feel ignored, underpaid and undertrained. They expected to get lots of goodies when we left the EU. Well, new apprenticeships, which are desperately needed in the white working class communities of West Yorkshire, have halved in the past year. Spending on schools and children’s social care has been going down. As my noble friend said, we are about to lose the European social and structural funds, so the outcome could be bad.

It is in the interests of all parties that we make sure that the voices of the poorer regions of England are seen to be represented in this process. That is because an outcome which leaves Yorkshire and the north-east, which are most dependent on trade with the EU and are also heavily dependent on EU funds, distinctly worse off will create the sort of popular discontent that could revive UKIP or worse in our country. So I hope that the Minister will be able to reassure us that some visible and public form of consultation will be established and that the Government will actively pursue the reassurance and the funding that is needed by those who have grown increasingly cynical about the northern powerhouse and the various other promises that have been made but which do not actually seem to add up to very much.

[Lord Tope (LD)]

My Lords, I, too, should begin by declaring the usual interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association—but rather more relevant to this debate is a former interest. I was appointed to the EU Committee of the Regions when it was first formed in 1994, and indeed as I look across the Chamber to the noble Lord, Lord Empey, I think that he was among the same number—as indeed was the noble Lord, Lord Bowness, and the noble Baroness, Lady Farrington. We were all elected to this new body that had been created.

I could go on for the rest of the evening about this, but I will not. Suffice to say that with each European treaty, from Amsterdam through to Lisbon, the Committee of the Regions was given more powers. There were probably a number of reasons for that, one of which was that we were finding our way. Maastricht was the first treaty that recognised any form of government below member state level, and it was certainly the first time that what I choose to call sub-state government—local and regional government—was represented. That became recognised as increasingly useful.

My purpose in this debate is to wonder why and to say what is important. It was not simply a process of turning up every so often and consulting local or regional government on what we were going to do anyway. It was eventually recognised that local and regional government in the EU was in fact responsible for implementing what someone calculated was around 70%—the figure might have varied between the member states—of EU legislation. It was good common sense to talk with the people who had responsibility for implementing rules, regulations and laws and discuss with them how that could best work before getting to the legislating stage.

In my 20 years on the Committee of the Regions, that was often the very best way to do it: not necessarily—in fact, not usually—in the formal, awful plenary sessions with 300-plus people present, but much more in meaningful dialogue and discussion with the Commission and with commissioners. As my noble friend Lord Shipley said about the experience of city mayors in this country, we found it much easier to access the Commission and commissioners than it ever was to access Ministers and civil servants in this country. When we did, we had a meaningful dialogue and discussion before decisions were made. That worked very well. I am not surprised—indeed, I am pleased—to hear that nobody is suggesting that we try to replicate in some way the Committee of the Regions for the United Kingdom. The thought of trying to replicate something that already struggles with 28 member states is somewhat horrifying.

The point has already been made about the recognised need for the English regions, but nobody has yet devised a way of meeting it. We should remember, too, that the Scottish Parliament and Executive, the Welsh Assembly and Government and the Northern Ireland Assembly and Executive were all members of the Committee of the Regions, as was English, Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish local government. It worked remarkably well—the noble Lord, Lord Empey, would recognise that, although he was not there quite as long as 20 years—and the UK delegation was, and is, one of the most effective delegations in the Committee of the Regions. If Brexit happens, that will of course come to an end. The other day, I was surprised to be asked by a colleague, “Will we still be members of the Committee of the Regions if we leave the European Union?” He was a little surprised to be given the very obvious answer, “No”. He said, “Well then, we need something else”. This is the opportunity for the Government and the Minister to tell us what else we will have and how it will be effective, not simply in a consultation process but in the policy formation process and the decision-making process.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Warner]

I did not want to remind the Government Front Bench of the slaughter of the innocents over clinical trials last week, but I have no doubt the Minister will read that debate in Hansard and form his own judgment. I am pleased the noble Baroness has written to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, about this. It opens up the possibility of securing more protection in the Bill for some British industries, and we should not be afraid to take that opportunity in this House.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I would say to the noble Lord, Lord Deben, that we are really shooting ourselves in the knee. It is a matter of active interest to a significant minority of Members in the House, because replacement knees and hips are among the medical devices which are most common among us.

[Lord Deben]

I was going to suggest that there is probably not a Member of the House who should not declare an interest in this debate, because there are few of us who have not had some device or other implanted. Are we not lucky that they were made and regulated in this country?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

Shortly after the referendum, I was sitting in the orthopaedic surgeon’s office with my wife, who was about to have a new hip, and he explained to us how leaving the European Union would cost the NHS more and would make it more difficult for him to procure what, in his opinion, was the best artificial hip available for the occasion. It was made by a multinational company in southern Ireland with bits—as noble Lords will know, these are complicated devices—coming from across the border and various other places. This undoubtedly would be more expensive, take longer and cost the NHS more. It is yet another example of where, despite the false promises of how much money would flow into the NHS, it will actually be completely the other way round. We will be creating artificial obstacles of one sort or another for these artificial devices, which will affect us all extremely closely. Those of your Lordships who have not yet got one will probably get one within the next 10 years. As the noble Lord says, we are absolutely shooting ourselves in various different embarrassing places by accepting that, in leaving the European Union, we are making these possibilities more difficult and more expensive.

[Baroness Chalker of Wallasey (Con)]

My Lords, I hesitate to join in, as I have to declare a double interest. As many of your Lordships will remember, I witnessed Second Reading sitting just in front of the Throne in my surgical socks.

I have every sympathy with the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Empey, and particularly with the speech of my noble friend Lord Deben. There is absolutely no doubt that the pioneering spirit, particularly in orthopaedics, in this country has been of immense value. It is not that other countries within the EU do not have their experts—of course they do—but there has been, as I will say in a later debate, a very special dedication in this country to improving health, not only for this nation but for our partners in the EU and partners far more widely across the world. It therefore behoves us to make sure that we have, in any arrangements, the opportunity for those British companies that have been such pioneers and indeed such income earners for Britain not only to pursue their existing research but to collaborate with the partners that they have engendered and encouraged in many other parts of the world.

I hope when my noble friend replies that he realises that this is far wider than just your Lordships’ personal interests. It goes right across the world, and what is done here can be replicated for the benefit of Britain, in or out of the EU. But we must be able to continue to give that information freely and for it to be accepted within the EU. That is the concern that many people have: that, if and when we leave the EU, much of that brilliant innovation will be lost to other partners and other parts of the world.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Duncan of Springbank]

I am sorry if I have misled noble Lords. I am unable to answer the question. That will be a matter for the negotiations and I cannot comment upon them. This is the point made earlier by the noble Lord, Lord Deben. I wish I could, but I cannot. I am sorry if my response misled the noble Lord as well. Determining exactly how that mutual recognition will work in practice will be a matter for the ongoing negotiations. I hope that it will work on both sides in a common-sense way which recognises that, at the heart, we are talking about the health and well-being of individuals. We are not talking about constitutional matters or anything other than ensuring the best health for the people of the continent of Europe that we can achieve.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the Government have talked about completing the negotiations by October 2018. Is this one element that they hope to have completed negotiations on by then, or will it have to be put off into the transitional period?

[Lord Duncan of Springbank]

It is the Government’s intention to complete all negotiations by that point.

I think that all noble Lords agree that UK notified bodies have a strong reputation in the EU. We have heard it more than once this evening. The notified bodies assess a disproportionate number of medical devices. According to a recent independent assessment of the market, UK notified bodies make up the first, third and fourth largest share of assessors. Furthermore, we estimate that UK notified bodies oversee between 50% and 60% of all the highest-risk devices on the EU market.

As I stated earlier, the UK has played a leading role in the negotiations of new regulations for medical devices in general and, specifically, for in vitro diagnostic medical devices. I believe that these innovations will make a significant difference. As the Government have made clear, whatever the outcome of negotiations, the principles which underpin our approach remain: that patients should not be disadvantaged; innovators should be able to access the UK market as quickly and simply as possible; and the UK will continue to play a leading role in both Europe and the world in promoting public health.

At the heart of much of this is the notion stressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay. Inside the EU, there are a number of means by which research is supported, not least of which is the Horizon 2020 fund. We have been blessed by punching above our weight in securing funds from this resource. I believe that in future it will be an asset for the entire EU and this will be negotiated in the next few years. It has yet to be made clear exactly how it will be determined. I remind noble Lords that the last time this was negotiated the EU top-sliced a substantial amount of money away from the fund, to the detriment of the overall Horizon 2020 reach.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

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

[Baroness Wheatcroft (Con)]

My Lords, I support this group of amendments, particularly Amendment 345 in my name.

My noble friend Lord Bridges, who I am glad to see in his place, told the House, when he was no longer the Minister for exiting the European Union, that entering a transition period could risk stepping off the “gangplank into thin air”. He is right. To reach 11 pm on 29 March next year and exit the EU without being fully aware of where we are going is foolhardy in the extreme. Advocates of the transition period—I guess we have to believe that “transition period” means transition period—claim that it gives business the certainty it craves, but the exact opposite is the case. Businesses would be left hovering in the thin air to which my noble friend referred, without any idea of where to go afterwards. The status quo would be preserved for a few months longer, near enough, but what would come next? Therefore, I support these amendments with their option of extending the Article 50 period while negotiations continue. That way, once the final terms of exit are clear, the country would not be forced off that gangplank come what may, as others have already said. Parliament would have the choice whether to take that course of action or not. It could simply revoke the Article 50 notice. These amendments are about Parliament taking back control of the Brexit process. That has to be desirable. We should not endorse the Government slamming the stable door before the horse has even entered.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I very strongly support these amendments. I stress that we are locking ourselves into leaving the European Union on a specific timetable which is coming up very soon, given that nothing much will happen in the summer and that it will take some time to get ratified whatever interim withdrawal agreement is agreed by this October. We are up against a very short deadline. The reasons why this is a mistake include that the Government lost a great deal of time unnecessarily in negotiations within government and the Cabinet, and with their own right wing, before they got down to the detail of the negotiations to which they are now committed.

As the Government negotiate, we are discovering a substantial shift of tone. The Prime Minister’s Mansion House speech made it clear that she wants to stay associated with a very large number of European Union agencies. There is talk of a large and ambitious new security treaty between the UK and the European Union, and Commons committees and committees of this House have said that it is absolutely in Britain’s interests that we remain associated with Europol, data sharing and a whole host of other things which only EU membership gives us.

[Lord Dykes]

Is the situation not actually worse than that? The noble Lord referred to the Government’s position after the election but, of course, I am sure he would agree that the Government completely lost their mandate to pursue these negotiations anyway in that election result, due to the effect of the result coupled with a dodgy alliance with the DUP. Does he agree?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I am not sure I would say that the Government completely lost their mandate. They emerged from the election a good deal weaker than they were before. Unfortunately, I am not sure that anyone else had a mandate at the end of it, either. I give way to my noble friend, I should say.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, one of the questions asked earlier was: what would happen if the European Parliament refused to give its consent? I have a note here from the European Parliament—it advises me that it is not legal advice and is not binding—which certainly says:

“if Parliament”—

that is, the European Parliament—

“refused to give its consent to a draft agreement negotiated by the European Commission, the Council would not be able to conclude the agreement with the withdrawing state”.

That is quite a serious thing to be reminded of.

Someone said earlier that there have been strong views across the Committee on this issue. As the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, said, it would be a grave mistake to put the date in statute. However, I disagree with him that the purpose of the amendment—certainly from our point of view—is to halt or up-end everything that is going on. Its purpose is to help the Government to get a better deal. The noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, put it very pragmatically: he said that we may not be ready for this yet. He also said that we might not yet have got through what I call the “Withdrawal (No. 2) Bill”. However, we have not yet had the immigration Bill, the fishing Bill, the agricultural Bill, the customs Bill or the trade Bill—and there may be a VAT Bill as well. We may find ourselves in a position where we are not ready as a Parliament by the date written into the Bill. That is not a sensible way forward.

The noble Lord, Lord Wallace, said that we should not leave until a worthwhile arrangement has been agreed. This is all about giving us time to do that—and that is certainly what we have been looking to do.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I reinforce what the noble Baroness has said. We may well face a legislative logjam in both Houses in the autumn of this year. Given the number of Bills that are waiting to come into this House and the possible complexity of an implementation Bill, one of the problems we may face is a simple lack of parliamentary time. Perhaps the Leader of the House might, at some point in the near future, give a preliminary statement on how she thinks we will manage the number of Bills on which we still have to provide scrutiny.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Committee: 11th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 28th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Hailsham]

My Lords, I have a brief observation on Amendment 355. I agree entirely with the points of principle that have been articulated by my noble friend Lord Cormack, by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, and by the noble Lord, Lord Tyler. Let me make a practical point. If the Minister makes an exception and gets it wrong, people dealing with the European Union may find themselves non-compliant with regulations that are in force and thereby exposed to some form of penalty or disadvantage. The advantage of the amendment is that it would reduce that possibility by a small degree. It is worth guarding against the risk if we can.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister remarked that the previous amendment was slightly nerdish and that we were dealing with technical issues. That is absolutely the role of this House. We are intended to deal with the details of Bills. We have already spent more time on the Bill, before we have reached the end of the Committee stage, than the House of Commons spent on all stages. That is appropriate—and necessary.

We should not underestimate how far these technical, constitutional, nerdish issues have resonance outside. I have seen the term “Henry VIII powers” in the columns of the Yorkshire Post. I should tell the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, that I found myself last Saturday addressing several thousand people in Leeds on a Stop Brexit march. In a short speech, I mentioned in passing that the House of Lords had just defeated the Government on a question relating to Euratom. A great cheer went up from the crowd. Until that point, I would have thought that there were at most 200 people in Yorkshire who understood what Euratom was—most of them medical doctors of one sort or another. If several thousand people think that the question of Euratom is important, we should not underestimate the public and those who care about detailed issues in the Bill, in particular executive control versus parliamentary sovereignty and the extent to which the Government may be taking powers in the Bill that a future Government of a different complexion might use and abuse. These are not entirely nerdish and technical matters; they are actually rather important politically.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Goldie]

I disagree with the noble Lord. I was using “impractical”—if I did use it, and it is so long ago that I started my speech that I cannot remember what I said—in the context of what is reasonable and proportionate in all the circumstances.

I turn to Amendment 355ZZA—sounds a bit like a pop group—in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles. If I have understood the amendment correctly, the noble Baroness is concerned about regulations being used to diminish the evidential value of certain matters or documents. I agree that this is an important area which we want to get right. Part 2 of Schedule 5 ensures that the rules of evidence, currently in Section 3 of the 1972 Act, can be replaced and properly reflect the legal landscape post exit. The power in Part 2 of Schedule 5 enables a Minister to make provision about judicial notice and the admissibility of specified evidence of certain matters. For clarity, judicial notice covers matters which are to be treated as already within the knowledge of the court and so are not required to be “proved” in the usual way.

The power in part 2 of the Schedule covers a limited and technical, though important, area, and subparagraphs (2) to (5) of paragraph 4 set out the scope and limits of that power. While I understand the noble Baroness’s concern, and share her desire to ensure that the effective administration of court proceedings continues after exit, I hope I have reassured her that the regulation-making power is designed to do exactly that. In addition, regulations made under this power are subject to the affirmative procedure, as provided for in paragraph 9 of Schedule 7, so there will be a debate and a vote in this House before any new rules are provided for. On that basis, I would ask the noble Baroness not to press her amendment.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I query the comparison with war time. This is a very sensitive issue in the debate on leaving the European Union. After all, the leave campaign depicted the European Union as a continental—or German—tyranny, from which we would be escaping. Yesterday, Jacob Rees-Mogg talked about remainers as being like Japanese soldiers who had not yet realised that they had been defeated and liberated by the Americans. The Prime Minister’s Mansion House speech takes us in a very different direction. She talked about leaving, but recognising that our values and interests remain the same as those of the European Union; that we will remain closely associated with the Union. That is not something which one can compare with war time. It is a complicated disengagement process in which we are not entirely disengaging. It is not helpful to the public, or to the continuing debate, to make these comparisons.

[Baroness Goldie]

I hear the noble Lord. I did not in any way wish to draw a specific comparison between the two. I was simply describing the magnitude of constitutional challenge which is confronting the country. I had no wish to conflate the two situations in any way. The noble Lord is quite right that there are profound differences. If it caused concern, I apologise.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Committee: 11th sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Wednesday 28th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Keen of Elie]

There is no betrayal and no perfidy, but I feel misrepresented by the noble Lord because he said “knowing that there will be an agreement”. We do not know for certain that there will be an agreement. Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed. Of course, we have an aspiration; we seek to secure the implementation period, and when we do we will then legislate for that in the withdrawal agreement and implementation Bill. Meanwhile, this Bill is designed and intended to accommodate the situation in which there may not be such an agreement.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

I hate to add to the surreal nature of this, but the formula “Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed” seems incompatible with negotiating a transitional agreement during which we recognise we will agree only a small number of things and carry on negotiating. It seems to me that the Government should now drop the mantra that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed, because we are actively pursuing, if I understand the Government’s case, a transitional partial agreement, during which a number of commitments will be made but a number of the fundamental issues of our future relationship with the European Union will remain entirely unclear and will be negotiated in the two or perhaps three or more years afterwards.

[Lord Keen of Elie]

My Lords, we are engaged in a bilateral negotiation; it has not yet concluded. This Bill is designed to accommodate the situation in which there may not be a conclusion to that negotiation, as well as a situation in which there may be. In the event of the latter case, the withdrawal agreement and implementation Bill will bring the legislation into line with the statute book.

--- Later in debate ---

I know that there is concern about the use of Henry VIII powers—but, again, those have to be available for allowing the modification of regulations and directives that come into retained EU law. Perhaps in this context they are more aptly termed Charles V powers, as he was the equivalent Renaissance continental monarch at the time.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, since we have returned to the subject of Henry VIII powers, I would like to inform the Minister that, after this morning’s discussion on the Statute of Proclamations, I looked up the Wikipedia entry—my historical memory of this being relatively limited—and discovered that Thomas Cromwell’s original proposals for the Statute of Proclamations passed through the House of Commons unamended, but they were amended in the House of Lords. Does the Minister think that is a relevant precedent?

[Lord Keen of Elie]

Of course, our constitutional position has altered over the last few years—say, the last 500—and, at the end of the day, we see ourselves as, essentially, an amending House. I understand the noble Lord’s point but, in that context, we also understand the precedence of the other place with regard to the final passage of legislation. Therefore, our primary tasks in this context are scrutiny and comment.

The Government have always said that this Bill is not the place for radical policy change. Essentially, what we want to do at this stage is preserve the existing domestic powers to amend legislation pursuant to paragraph 3 of Schedule 8, in order that we can address issues with regard to retained EU law. But the manner in which those powers will ultimately be deployed will depend on the outcome of our consideration of the question of what status we confer on retained EU law. Given that that is an ongoing issue, I invite the noble Lord at this stage to withdraw his amendment. He may, of course, choose to return to it once he has seen our proposals with regard to retained EU law, but it appears to me that the two issues are inextricably linked.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

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

Moved by

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

29: After Clause 6, insert the following new Clause—
“Co-ordination of foreign and security policy
The Secretary of State must ensure that before exit day all necessary action has been taken to continue co-ordination of foreign and security policy with the EU, including association with the EU’s military staff and the European Defence Agency, and to integrate all relevant EU law and regulations into UK legislation.”

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, in moving this amendment I stress that the EU’s useful and largely intergovernmental structures for the co-ordination of foreign policy, international security and defence have not been imposed on the UK by a hostile, imperially minded Brussels—what Dominic Lawson describes in today’s Daily Mail as “the vengeful EU”, the threatening continent from which we must escape. British Governments, British Prime Ministers and British Foreign and Defence Secretaries have played a central part in developing the framework, from James Callaghan and the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, to Geoffrey Howe and, yes, Margaret Thatcher. When our current Prime Minister repeats, as she often has, that, “We are leaving the European Union, but we are not leaving Europe”—a phrase I am sure we all understand in detail—we have to assume that she intends somehow to maintain close co-operation with those structures after Brexit.

In her Mansion House speech last month, the Prime Minister noted that the outcome of the referendum,

“was not a vote for a distant relationship with our neighbours”.

She went on to promise that, after we leave, her Government would work to build,

“a new beginning for the United Kingdom and our relationship with our European allies”.

This amendment would require the Government to tell us what that new beginning might look like and what the Government want to build. We cannot expect our neighbours to build an entirely new structure just to suit the British alongside the main multilateral framework that has now been created, within which European states now consult on international issues, work together to manage crises in Africa and the Middle East, and deploy military and civilian resources to those regions and the seas around them. What arrangements for continued association do the Government propose?

Our amendment does not explicitly extend to international development, the focus of the amendment tabled by the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, and others which the House considered last Wednesday, but the same principles and questions apply to that additional aspect of Britain’s role in the world. The history of European co-operation and development policy has also been shaped by British participation and influence.

Dominic Lawson and those who think like him would be happy for the UK to follow Switzerland’s example, as again he said this morning, back to proud independence and minimal global influence, but our Prime Minister and our current Foreign Secretary want Brexit to mark a renaissance in Britain’s foreign policy—a global Britain striding the world diplomatically and militarily. The Foreign Secretary gives the impression that his image of global Britain excludes Europe, that we will walk tall alongside the Americans, China and India—and, of course, the rest of the Commonwealth—and leave a declining Europe behind, but our Prime Minister knows that this is nonsense, that British foreign policy has always started from managing relations with France, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands and Denmark and that this remains the bedrock for any global role for Britain today.

The most recent European Council, with its solidarity with the UK in the face of Russian invasion of British sovereignty, was a demonstration of the value to Britain of this multilateral framework. However, in less than 12 months we will be leaving the European Council, the Foreign Affairs Council, the 40 to 50 working groups within which officials consult on and prepare common positions, the EU military staff and the European Defence Agency. Parliament is therefore entitled to ask the Government how they propose to manage when we are no longer within those networks and what future relationship they would like to negotiate with them. We are entitled, too, to ask them to give us an answer soon.

We all know why the Government have not yet spelled out their objectives here. It is because they are divided between those within the Government and on the Back Benches in the Commons who want nothing more to do with those nasty continentals and those who accept what the Prime Minister in her Mansion House speech described as the hard realities: that we need continued close co-operation in these vital areas. It would be an act of national self-mutilation in foreign policy to cut ourselves adrift from the networks that we have done so much to build up and to retreat into a new form of splendid isolation in pursuit of an entirely independent foreign policy.

The Prime Minister, in her speech to the Munich Security Conference in February, indicated that she would like to agree a new framework now. She said that she endorsed,

“distinct arrangements for our foreign and defence policy cooperation in the time-limited implementation period, as the Commission has proposed. This would mean that key aspects of our future partnership in this area would already be effective from 2019. We shouldn’t wait where we don’t need to”.

She went on:

“But where we can both be most effective by the UK deploying its significant capabilities and resources with and indeed through EU mechanisms—we should both be open to that. On defence, if the UK and EU’s interests can best be furthered by the UK continuing to contributing to an EU operation or mission as we do now, then we should both be open to that. And similarly, while the UK will decide how we spend the entirety of our foreign aid in the future, if a UK contribution to EU development programmes and instruments can best deliver our mutual interests, we should both be open to that”.


She called specifically for a close association after Brexit with the European Defence Fund and the European Defence Agency. She did not go so far as to propose a separate new treaty in this field, as she did on co-operation on internal security, but the implication from her speech is clear that that is what is needed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Goldie]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, for bringing attention to this important issue in his Amendment 29 and I welcome the opportunity to set out the Government’s position in this vital area.

I begin by emphasising that the UK is unconditionally committed to European security. We want to continue working closely with our European partners to keep all—all—of our citizens safe. There is mutual benefit in such proximity of relationship; frankly, to think otherwise would be plain daft.

As the Prime Minister underlined in her Munich speech, this is not a time to inhibit our co-operation or jeopardise the security of our citizens. We want to find practical ways to continue working with the EU to protect our citizens and safeguard our shared values and interests. That speech, as the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, suggested, set out the new deep and special security partnership we want to develop with the EU, including our ambition to retain the co-operation we already enjoy with member states and to go further to meet new threats.

The Government are clear that we must do whatever is most practical and pragmatic to tackle real-world challenges. I must thank the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, who acknowledged the importance of what the Prime Minister was saying in her speech. As an example of our ambitions, the UK aims to continue to develop capabilities to meet future threats. On defence, that means agreeing a relationship between the UK and the European defence fund and the European Defence Agency.

It is important to observe that our security interests do not stop at the edge of our continent. As a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, a leading contributor to NATO and the United States’ closest partner, we have never defined our approach to external security primarily through our membership of the EU. On leaving the EU, it is right that the UK will pursue an independent foreign policy, but the interests which we will seek to project will continue to be based on shared values.

Amendment 29 seeks to do something else: to ensure that the Government endeavour to secure future co-operation in the field of foreign and security policy. As I have set out, this is a top priority for the Government. The amendment also seeks to ensure that relevant EU law and regulations are integrated into UK legislation. I suggest to the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, that this is unnecessary in the face of the Bill’s explicit provisions. The Bill will incorporate EU regulations and decisions applying in relation to the UK, and any directly effective rights, obligations, powers, liabilities, remedies, restrictions and procedures arising under treaty articles at exit day. Our approach is one of maximum continuity. No further provision is needed to ensure that the Bill can fulfil this vital aim.

It is for those two reasons that this amendment, I would argue, is unnecessary. I therefore ask the noble Lord to withdraw it. I clarify that this is not a matter to which the Government propose to return at Third Reading.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I regret that that is an extremely unsatisfactory answer. To say that shared values will continue to link us to the European Union after we pursue our independent foreign policy means nothing, more or less. Shared meetings and shared intelligence are what we need. We have close co-operation with France, which we have had since 1998—reinforced in 2010—and a defence treaty for collaboration; we have co-operated with the Netherlands and others; and we are currently in command of one of the military operations at Northwood, Operation Atalanta. All of that is going into thin air, but apparently we will continue to share values, and that will do. It will not do, and I suggest strongly to the Government that this issue will not go away. It will become more embarrassing as the months go by if the Government do not begin to clarify what they have in mind, particularly given that Ministers cannot agree among themselves what they want to do.

The noble Lord, Lord Kerr, is absolutely right that we need to make some proposals. We would gain enormously in terms of the trust of those with whom we are negotiating if we made some proposals. The Prime Minister’s Munich speech implied that we would be making some proposals. The noble Baroness, Lady Smith, was right, and I was wrong to suggest that there is a plan: no such plan exists.

When I was studying history, I used to think that the Conservative Party was about strong foreign policy and strong defence. However, on this fundamental issue, the Conservative Party appears to be about holding itself together, not about strong defence, which these days necessarily means working closely with others. We cannot afford to be an independent military power any longer. We are in a much darker international environment than we were in 2016 when the referendum was fought. We need our friends and partners, and we need to work closely with them.

This is an issue that will not go away. I do not intend to ask to divide the House at this late hour, but the resonance of this issue will grow rather than shrink. It will embarrass the Government and the Conservative Party more and more as we slide towards March 2019 without any clear idea. I regret that on this occasion, unlike when we discussed this issue in Committee, the Foreign Secretary has not been able to join us at the Bar. Never mind—I trust a report will go back to him. I did not recognise he was there at that time.

I will therefore withdraw the amendment, but the Government have to think a great deal more carefully about what they want in the area covered by the Treaty on European Union, rather than by the treaty on the implementation of the European Union. I disagree with the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, when she suggests that the withdrawal Bill is only about the treaty and therefore does not cover that issue. Look at Article 49 of the Treaty on European Union and the various things which cover foreign policy and defence co-operation. If we are going to have close co-operation, including on intelligence and military deployment, there have to be formal structures and agreements. So I wish to withdraw this amendment, but we and others will have to return to this issue with increasing urgency if the half-promises made by the Prime Minister in her Munich speech turn out to be half-promises and nothing more.

Amendment 29 withdrawn.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

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

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords, this amendment also bears my name and the names of other noble Lords. I will focus my brief remarks on the eventuality of the United Kingdom facing the prospect of leaving the EU in March 2019 without any deal having been reached between the EU and the UK on the terms of a withdrawal treaty, or on the framework for a new relationship between them. I will, too, set out a pretty compelling case for this eventuality to be covered if a parliamentary approval process is to be genuinely meaningful.

This House is no stranger to debate on the no-deal situation. When we considered the Bill authorising the Government to trigger Article 50 before the end of March 2017, we voted by a substantial majority for a meaningful process that covered the no-deal eventuality. The other House, where at that time the Government had a single-party majority, rejected that amendment, and we did not insist. We must, however, face the fact that this Government have never made any commitment to give Parliament any say on a no-deal outcome, although they have committed themselves—rather inadequately—to giving Parliament a say if a deal is struck. The rest of this amendment deals with those circumstances. In the no-deal scenario, there is a void—a vacuum. That is not really tolerable for such an eventuality.

I do not intend to speculate about what circumstances might give rise to this eventuality—that would be a bit of a mug’s game six months before the end of a negotiation. The Government seem to have put away their rather foolish mantra that no deal is better than a bad deal, which I welcome. Suffice it to say that until the final moment of the Brexit negotiations, no deal remains a possibility and needs to be provided for in any meaningful process of parliamentary approval.

On the substance of no deal, I say only that there is now a much wider understanding of the fact that it would be seriously damaging to our economy, as we fell back on WTO terms. The Business Committee of another place brought that out very cogently as recently as last week. There are plenty of other disadvantages outside the trade field if we were to find ourselves going over a cliff edge in March 2019, but this is not the occasion nor the time to have that debate about what the consequences of no deal would be. What needs to be debated today, and I hope decided, is to set out the fact, as subsection (8) of the proposed new clause provides, that Parliament and not the Executive needs to be the ultimate arbiter in such circumstances. I hope that we will establish that in this House at the end of this debate.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, my name is also on this amendment, and I wish to speak briefly on the role that this Chamber needs to play. We are a revising Chamber and we have spent some time looking at the detail of this extremely complex and important proposal to leave the European Union. We also have to be concerned with constitutional propriety, and we are rightly concerned that a referendum which was partly won on an argument to restore parliamentary sovereignty should not be allowed to lead to greater executive power.

As the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, said, the Prime Minister has promised that Parliament would be allowed a meaningful vote on negotiations once they are completed. The Secretary of State for DExEU has promised that the resolution presented to Parliament will cover both the withdrawal agreement and the terms for our future relationship with the EU. That should provide some reassurance against fears that most difficult issues are likely to be left for further discussion after the UK has formally the EU.

This amendment puts those promises into legislative form. It spells out the deadlines required to ensure that Parliament is permitted to scrutinise whatever is agreed in good time before the end of March next year. The amendment requires Commons approval by November 30 and Royal Assent by 31 January, and provides a backstop for ensuring parliamentary sovereignty if no agreement is reached by the Government by the end of February. The noble Lord, Lord Callanan, is quoted in today’s Daily Mail as saying that these are “false deadlines”. I hope that in replying as the Minister he will tell us, if these deadlines are to be disregarded, how the UK will get through the constitutional requirements for leaving the EU by the end of March 2019 and what deadlines he might propose instead.

We are acutely aware of divisions within the Cabinet and the Conservative Party about what form of customs arrangements ought to be acceptable. That is a fundamental issue which is not yet decided but which the Government ought to have resolved, at the latest, by the time that they triggered Article 50 some 18 months ago. In her Mansion House speech two months ago, our Prime Minister admitted that it is in Britain’s national interests to remain associated with many of the EU agencies that hard-line Brexiteers wanted to break away from. She promised in that speech a new security treaty with the EU, to ensure continuing co-operation in combating organised crime and counterterrorism, and a close partnership in foreign policy and defence. But we have been told almost nothing more since then about such important issues or about the compromises of sovereignty in the national interest which they would require. We risk a backlash from all sides when the terms for leaving are sprung at the last minute on an uninformed country.

Ministers have repeatedly assured us that negotiations are well on track, even though they will not tell us what they are doing, and that an agreement can be reached by October—in less than five months’ time. If that is true, this amendment offers no difficulties for the Government; if it is not true and the likelihood is that all that will be agreed by October is a loose statement of principles, with the hard details of our future relationship kicked down the track to be sorted out in the implementation period—as the Government like to call it—after we have left the EU, then Parliament needs to intervene. Leaving the European Union without a clear and detailed agreement on the future relationship would be a disaster for our economy, our foreign policy, our relationship with Ireland and our internal and external security. This amendment guards against that unfortunate outcome.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Callanan]

I was a Member of the European Parliament, but I also know that the vote of the European Parliament is in effect a take-it-or-leave-it vote. They do not seek to bind the hands of the Commission negotiators either.

I also question the implications of this amendment on the public’s confidence in our democratic institutions. The scope of proposed new subsection (5) is extremely broad, giving Parliament the power to direct the Government on anything in relation to negotiations: casting back to last week’s debate, it does not even add an “appropriate” or “necessary” restriction. That means directions do not have to be just about negotiating tactics or objectives but could feasibly encompass delaying or thwarting our exit completely, which I believe is the motivation of many of the supporters of this amendment. We should think very carefully about how that could be perceived by the electorate. Such a situation would not be compatible with either the result of the referendum nor the commitments given by many parliamentarians to respect the result. I agree with my noble friend Lord Lamont that this amendment would set a range of arbitrary deadlines and milestones after which Parliament may give binding directions to the Government, up to and including an attempt to overturn the referendum result itself.

Does this give the Government the strongest possible hand in negotiating a good deal? I am afraid that it does not—in fact, the opposite: it would create a perverse negotiating incentive for the EU to string out the negotiations for as long as possible. It is not in the UK’s interest to hand the EU negotiators a ticking clock and the hope that the more they delay, the more they can undermine the position of the UK Government and create damaging uncertainty and confusion. I agree with my noble friends Lord Blackwell and Lord King, who made precisely this point. The amendment would bolster those who wish not to secure the best deal with the EU but rather to frustrate Brexit altogether—a point that was well made by my noble friend Lord Howard.

However, I do not wish my response to be misinterpreted. I do not make these arguments because I think that the Government are somehow not accountable to Parliament. Of course we are. We have made a number of assurances on this matter. For example, there are some who have argued that this amendment is necessary to ensure that there is a vote on the final deal after the negotiations have concluded. I disagree. As my noble friend Lord Dobbs observed, our commitment to that is very clear and is in the best traditions of Parliament. It was made at the Dispatch Box and confirmed in a Written Ministerial Statement and has been repeated many times since.

I will make that commitment once again: the Government will bring forward a Motion in both Houses of Parliament on the withdrawal agreement and the terms of our future relationship as soon as possible after the negotiations have concluded. In reply to the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, this vote will cover both the withdrawal agreement and the terms of our future relationship, but we have not settled on the precise wording.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

Will the Government confirm also that that Motion will be amendable in both Houses?

[Lord Callanan]

I am not going to dictate what Parliament might want to do with that Motion or any other. Members will be free to table amendments to the withdrawal agreement and implementation Bill.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

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

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

Michel Barnier is negotiating for the other 27 member Governments. It is not a question of listening to the Northern Irish Catholic community but it is part of his job as negotiator to listen to the Irish Government, who are, after all, one of the 27 member Governments with whom we are negotiating. It is the Irish Government who—perhaps to the Minister—present the problem. We have to deal with the Irish Government, not just the two communities.

[Lord Duncan of Springbank]

If the negotiator Michel Barnier does not hear the people of Northern Ireland, he will be derelict in his responsibilities. He must hear both communities. He cannot listen only to one. It is for that reason that I say again to Michel Barnier: listen to both communities.

It is important to recognise where this journey began. I hope the noble Lord, Lord Patten, will forgive me for not beginning by thanking him for bringing this issue before us today. This is what the Government intend to do, as I am sure he will agree. Many of the elements of the amendment are exact statements of government policy, but the issue is very unusual and it needs to be iterated here. When we look at the lower elements of the amendment, the language is that of political statements, not legislative statements; they are not in the language of legislation. It is on those points that a number of noble Lords have been very clear that they leave a conspicuous ambiguity. It is important to recognise that it is the intention of the Government to return not with ambiguous statements which may or may not be subject to misinterpretation but to return in the appropriate Bill with the exact, detailed language which will give the absolute confidence that we must have in this law. That is why we are unable to support the amendment that the noble Lord, Lord Patten, moved so eloquently and passionately. Indeed, all the speakers today have spoken with that passion. Of that I have no doubt.

I was drawn in particular to the words of the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice. He was very clear in his assessment of those parts of the amendment I have spoken of. I know that a number of noble Lords have sought to correct him, but I do not believe that he needs correcting. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Bew, said simply that it has a flavour of a joint approach. However you want to look at it, if individuals who live in Northern Ireland are looking at the amendment and expressing their deep unease with it, I would hope that noble Lords would recognise what message that is sending. That is why we must be cautious in the messaging that we send.

In truth, there are two elements to the Bill: the optics and the mechanics. The mechanics of the Bill mean that the Bill must function and give absolute legal certainty. That is its job. The optics of the amendment are wholly commendable in many respects. They are an affirmation and a recitation of the Government’s intention, proposals and policy. But, again, this is not the place for them to sit sensibly and with legal certainty. That is one reason why we have a great problem with the amendment. As a number of noble Lords have asserted, as they begin to look in detail at those elements they are uneasy.

Talking once again of the optics, if the noble Lords in here who have looked at those self-same provisions feel uneasy, imagine then what the message will be on the front page of the Belfast Telegraph when these particular elements are looked at if they are presented in such a fashion that they could be misunderstood or misinterpreted. That is why we are seeking, as we have always sought, absolute and utter legal certainty. My right honourable friend the Prime Minister has been clear in all her utterances that we will deliver a borderless aspect on the island of Ireland but the point about this, and the reason why I emphasise it, is that this Bill is not where that will or can be delivered. I am almost channelling my inner Callanan when I say this but, in truth, this is not the right place to be doing that. There will be an opportunity to pick that up.

I shall return to some of the specific points raised. Once again the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, has raised a point which I will be happy to respond to in writing. I will make sure that that is absolutely delivered. I hope that I have been able to give words of respect and comfort to the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Eames, so that he can take them away and be able to say to people that this is not a place where we can trim—where we can simply take out, manoeuvre or dispense with it.

I listened again to the noble Lord, Lord Hain, whose wisdom is welcome in this debate. He rightly described the fragility of the peace process, echoing the words of the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Eames. It is in its infancy and we need to make sure that nothing whatever can interfere with that. However, I do not wish to see the two aspects here become entangled. That is why many noble Lords have spoken today about the impact these words can have when they are misunderstood—indeed, when they become weaponised in one fashion or another, so that where they land they cause destruction upon receipt. We cannot have that, for that in itself is ultimately destructive.

As I listen to the noble Lord, Lord Trimble, I am aware that there speaks an individual who helped to craft the Belfast agreement itself, as did a number of noble Lords who have spoken this afternoon. Each of them who spoke has echoed the same sentiment. That is worthy of pause and reflection because there is an element, in truth, in what all the Peers from Northern Ireland who have spoken today said: they are uneasy with this amendment. Whatever its optics or its intention, they are uneasy with its component parts.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

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

[Lord Whitty]

In terms of the Government’s intention in the negotiations, it is required. But to counter, to a degree, the otherwise helpful contribution from the noble Lord, Lord Baker, the EU have to agree it. If we do not have this as a positive point in our negotiations, and if we do not co-ordinate the role of British industry, sectors and professions with those of their European counterparts, there will be an end to that co-operation. I have had cause to remind the Minister that the EU’s current guidelines in negotiations say that we will no longer participate in these agencies from March next year. If so, that is seriously disruptive. It is therefore important that this House gives an indication to the other place and to the Government that we must continue to participate. I hope the Minister does not repeat his and his colleagues’ previous disdain in dismissing the need to make this clear. I hope the Prime Minister’s intention is wider than the few specific agencies to which she referred in her Mansion House speech.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I strongly support the amendment, partly to give our support to the Prime Minister against those within her divided Government who do not believe that it is important to stay closely associated with these agencies.

Perhaps I may give a little of their history. I was on the staff of Chatham House in the early 1980s when the British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, first proposed the single market and made it clear that what was in Britain’s interests—as well as, she argued, in enlightened European interest—was to replace a tangle of different national regulations with single regulations in a single market. She did not assume that we would get rid of all these regulations but that we would agree on common regulations. Many of the agencies then grew up to make sure that these regulations were observed and enforced, and altered and developed as technology, pharmaceutical research and other things changed. That was why they were clearly in Britain’s interests. There were always some in the Conservative Party who did not believe in that—they believed in deregulation—and thus were dubious about the single market because it was replacing national regulations with common European regulations.

One of the most interesting pieces of research carried out for Chatham House in that period was by an American trade lawyer who wrote about the extraterritorial jurisdiction of US regulations over the United Kingdom until the single market was formed. Very often business, engineering, the chemical industry and the pharmaceutical industry in Britain simply followed American regulation. The idea that we had sovereign regulation on our own did not exist. As the single market developed, so European regulations, over which we had considerable influence, replaced the British adoption of regulations designed for American purposes, which we felt we had no choice but to accept.

That is these agencies’ historical origins and they clearly still serve British national interests. It is therefore important that if and when we leave the European Union we remain associated with them. Technology and research have continued to develop and these agencies therefore serve an increasingly important role. I therefore hope that the Minister in replying will reinforce what the Prime Minister said in her Mansion House speech and make it clear that a major objective of the Government is to remain as closely associated with these agencies as possible, even if Boris Johnson may then denounce it in the Daily Mail.

[Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood (CB)]

My Lords, I share in full measure the hopes and concerns articulated today by so many of your Lordships. That said, if the amendment is put to the vote, I shall not feel able to support it. My approach to this amendment, as to earlier amendments to the Bill, has been essentially that it is fine to tell the Government what they must do once they have achieved what they regard as the best available deal, but it is not fine to seek to impose on the Government requirements as to precisely what that deal must be or how to achieve it. In other words, we can tell the Government what rights Parliament or, as I promoted, the public should have on a further referendum as to what we can do and should do, by way of approving or rejecting the proposed final deal—or, indeed, a decision to exit with no deal—but we should not seek to bind or inhibit the Government in reaching a deal and so risk weakening their negotiating position.

The Bill is not for that purpose but to keep our statute book intact. I urge your Lordships, rather than indulge all our hopes and wishes in this area, to think about whether we ought to put these explicit requirements into this legislation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, before the noble Lords, Lord Howarth and Lord Forsyth, tell us that we are frustrating the will of the people, it may be appropriate to remind them of the arguments that the leave campaign made before the referendum for leaving the customs union and the single market. We had to leave the customs union because, if we stayed in, we could not negotiate those different free trade agreements that we would make independently with India, China, the United States and many others, which would give us better conditions than we had had, constrained as we were by being a member of the European Union. They said that we had to leave the single market because we had to get rid of so many of these constricting regulations that bound the British economy and which we could be free of when we left. I wish to suggest that neither of those arguments now holds.

The Government have so far spent well over half a billion pounds on the Department for International Trade, and the Treasury, as the newspapers reported this morning, has decided that that is getting to be too expensive for the value that is being produced, which, after all, is very low. Liam Fox has travelled the world several times—someone told me the other day that he has travelled half the distance between here and the moon so far—and has achieved remarkably little. A number of countries have made it quite clear that they are not prepared to offer us anything better than we would get as a member of the European Union. Our hopes that we have a wonderful free trade partner in the United States do not appear to be assisted by President Trump’s present approach to foreign economic relations. Those who still support a hard leave, such as Jacob Rees-Mogg, are reduced to attacking business as being part of Project Fear when business says that its interests are about to be damaged so badly.

On deregulation, we have heard increasingly from members and supporters of the Government, including those on the Front Bench at present, that we do not want to deregulate—that we want to maintain the high standards of regulation. I have not even heard anyone suggest recently that we should get rid of the working time directive. If that is the case, the reason why we want to leave the single market has also evaporated. The Minister earlier this afternoon suggested that, as an independent country, we could mirror EU regulations by passing, on our own, the same regulations the European Union has just passed. That is wonderful parliamentary sovereignty, isn’t it—jumping in behind, taking the rules and saying, “Gosh, look, we’re doing it on our own”? Geoffrey Howe, a far greater Foreign Secretary than the present incumbent, used to talk about the gains to Britain of the single market: that we would be sharing sovereignty and taking part in decisions about common regulations. Outside the single market we will be taking the rules others have given us and pretending that we are a sovereign country.

The Minister suggested earlier this afternoon that the amendments in question would introduce confusion and uncertainty. I suggest to the Minister that most of us think that that describes the Government’s current position. Indeed, I took part in a radio discussion on Sunday morning with someone whom I imagine is quite a good friend of his—Nigel Farage—who agreed with me that the Government’s current negotiations with the European Union are a total mess. That is the relatively widespread set of opinions from a range of different views around the world. Then, we are faced with the Daily Mail this morning, in which the Foreign Secretary is rubbishing the Prime Minister’s views. If that had ever happened during the coalition Government —if a Liberal Democrat Cabinet member had rubbished the Prime Minister—there would have been a government crisis. But we apparently have such a weak and unstable Government that they totter along from one thing to another, unable to decide what they are doing.

My question to the Minister and to noble Lords who are about to speak is: given that the arguments the leave campaign made in that hard-fought and narrowly won referendum have now evaporated, what are the arguments for staying out of the customs union and single market?

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 16th May 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan]

My Lords, it is, frankly, disappointing that this amendment has been tabled today. We have debated the important topic of environmental protections on numerous occasions in your Lordships’ House, and the Government have taken clear action in response to many of the points raised. There was support across the House for the Government’s amendments removing the powers in this Bill to create new public authorities and our commitment to do so only in primary legislation.

Indeed, the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, said on Report:

“the very way that we set up quangos—how they are appointed, funded and run, and particularly their reporting structures and independence from both government and any other organisation they happen to be regulating—is key to how they work, hence the need for primary legislation so that we can interrogate all these things”.—[Official Report, 25/4/18; cols. 1585-86].

I agree with her. The Government have committed to do precisely that—to bring forward primary legislation so that Parliament can fully scrutinise, indeed interrogate, the powers of a new environmental watchdog. Yet here we have an amendment designed to use this Bill to set the parameters of such a body without the benefit of the consultation that we are now undertaking and without the scrutiny that would come from considering a Bill that is specifically introduced for that purpose.

We have endeavoured to provide as much transparency as possible to our plan for ensuring environmental protections are enhanced and strengthened, not weakened, as we leave the European Union. In November, the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs gave a commitment on the Floor of the other place to create a new comprehensive policy statement setting out environmental principles, recognising that the principles currently recognised in UK law are not held in one place. At that time, the Secretary of State also announced our intention to consult on a new, independent and statutory body to advise and challenge the Government and potentially other public bodies on environmental legislation, stepping in when needed to hold these bodies to account and being a champion for the environment.

In direct response to the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, we welcome all consultees’ views on how this is best achieved, and that includes on the range of enforcement measures that might be required. On Report, I gave a firm undertaking that this consultation would be published ahead of Third Reading, and we did just that on 10 May. The consultation includes proposals on a new, independent statutory body to hold government to account on environmental standards once we have left the European Union and a new policy statement on environmental principles to apply post EU exit. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, that this is a consultation: we want to hear all views and we have, as yet, made no decisions on how these bodies might operate.

On the subject of timing, I am afraid that the noble Baronesses, Lady Jones and Lady Bakewell, are simply wrong. The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs announced that we will bring forward a new, ambitious environmental principles and governance Bill in draft in the autumn of this year, with introduction early in the second Session of this Parliament, to deliver these proposals in advance of the end of the agreed implementation period.

Put simply, Amendment 1 risks compromising the timely and full consideration of many important issues. It requires consultation with stakeholders—a point well made by my noble friend Lord Ridley—and yet mandates a set way forward in primary legislation. This is neither helpful nor necessary, as the issues it seeks to bind the Government to commit to are those we will explore in the consultation. In short, the amendment is premature and it prejudges the views of important stakeholders.

There are good reasons for gathering and properly reflecting on views ahead of taking action. Indeed, if we did not do so, I suspect that we would be criticised by the very people moving this amendment. For example, a significant proportion of environmental policy and legislation is devolved. We need to take account of the different government and legal systems in the home nations, as well as the different circumstances in the different parts of the United Kingdom. Amendment 1 risks compromising consideration of these important issues, as well as the wider devolution settlement, by requiring the UK Government to take UK-wide action, including to publish proposals for UK-wide primary legislation on governance and principles.

The government consultation is concerned with England and reserved matters throughout the United Kingdom, for which responsibility sits in Westminster. However, we are exploring with the devolved Administrations whether they wish to take a similar approach, and would welcome the opportunity to co-design proposals to ensure that they work well across the whole of the United Kingdom. We would also welcome views from a wide range of stakeholders, including environmental groups, farmers, businesses, local authorities and the legal profession. I welcome the comments of my noble friend Lady Byford, who made some excellent points worthy of our consideration.

Turning to the issue of environmental principles, the published consultation outlines our proposal to require Ministers to enshrine these principles in a comprehensive statutory public policy statement setting out their interpretation and application. As we have said many times before, the core purpose of this Bill is to provide for continuity in our framework of laws and rules before and after exit: no more and no less. The Bill takes a comprehensive—

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, will the noble Lord clarify one thing? He suggested, I think, that we are going to continue with the European regime until the end of the implementation period, which would give time for consultation. Or will we move away from the European Union arrangements in March 2019? That is important. If we are to continue to maintain all European environmental regulations, as now, up to the end of 2020, then we are in a slightly different position.

[Lord Callanan]

Yes, I am absolutely confirming that: the principles will continue until the end of the implementation period.

Changes to the law should be taken forward by proper processes allowing for them to receive full consideration by those affected. The Government have acted—