Brexit: Legislating for the Withdrawal Agreement

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Tuesday 24th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan]

I go back to what I said earlier: this is an agreed part of the withdrawal Act. Article 50 states that there needs to be agreement on the withdrawal Act and on the future economic partnership. Both parts go together. If both are agreed, both are satisfactory and both are approved by this House, of course there will be no problem, but if there is no deal, nothing is agreed until everything is agreed. That applies as much to the financial settlement as it does to the future economic partnership.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, the White Paper makes it crystal clear that the one thing that will change in April 2019 is that we will no longer be present in any of the discussions on security, foreign policy, economics, rules and regulations or whatever, but apart from that, all EU rules and regulations will continue to apply to Britain. That seems to me to fit exactly Jacob Rees-Mogg’s definition of vassal status. Surely, the shorter the transition period the better and if, as now seems unavoidable, we are incapable of making much more progress in defining the future relationship after we leave before March 2019 because the Government are still divided on what they want, surely it would be preferable to delay leaving until we have a clearer sense of what our future relationship might be.

I ask a second question, about paragraph 10, which states:

“After the UK has left the EU, power will sit closer to the people of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland than ever before. The devolved institutions will see a significant increase in their decision making powers as a result of the UK’s exit”.


I tried extremely hard, but I could find no reference to the English regions in the document. As the Minister will know, Yorkshire, the north-west and the north-east stand to lose disproportionately more than the rest of England from Brexit, yet there appears to be no awareness that they will also need devolution and, perhaps, a new consultative mechanism. Are the Government considering that?

Lastly, I see that EU citizens will be treated under the Immigration Act 1971 as they move towards settled status. We are well aware that the Home Office charges considerably for moving towards settled status and UK citizenship. Can we be assured that the Home Office will not impose substantial charges as EU citizens in this country go through that process?

[Lord Callanan]

There are a number of questions there and I will try to answer them as quickly as possible. I agree that the shorter the transition period, the better. We will not take up the noble Lord’s option of delaying leaving. As I am tired of repeating, we are leaving on 29 March 2019. To delay leaving presents the fundamental problem that the EU is legally prohibited from agreeing a future trade deal as long as we are still a member state, so that would just delay the period when we could formally have negotiations and legally agree a trade deal. I certainly agree that the shorter the period, the better.

With regard to the regions and finance, the noble Lord will be aware that the Treasury is currently considering a shared prosperity fund to replace some elements of EU regional finance. With regard to future regional devolution, I fear that those are not matters for me. He will have to ask colleagues in government about that. With regard to EU citizens, the settled status fee is fixed at £65. I am not aware of what charges the Home Office is likely to impose for any other form of citizenship, but I am sure we can find out and write to him.