European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Tugendhat

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

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

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

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

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

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

[Lord Tugendhat (Con)]

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

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

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

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