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.

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[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.