European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Wallace of Tankerness Excerpts

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

I look forward with interest to seeing what amendments may be brought forward, but providing a veto for the devolved parliaments is certainly not the way to preserve the single market.

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness (LD)]

May I ask the noble Lord to cast his mind back to 26 January 2012, when I moved a Motion that the Scotland Bill be considered in Committee, and he moved an amendment that the House,

“declines to consider the Bill in Committee until Her Majesty’s Government have laid before Parliament a report on the results of the consultation they launched on 11 January on Scotland’s constitutional future and until the Scottish Parliament has passed a further Legislative Consent Motion in respect of the Bill”?—[Official Report, 26/1/12; col. 1161.]

He was going to deny a Committee stage on a Bill that contained measures supported in the Conservative, Liberal Democrat and Labour manifestos at the preceding general election. This amendment would still allow the Bill to go forward and become an Act. How does he describe his apparent lack of consistency?

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

I think I was behaving exactly like the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes. I was using the procedures of the House to make an argument against what I thought at the time was a very bad Bill—and which only this week has meant that people like me are now the highest taxpayers in the United Kingdom, as we predicted would happen. If I may say so to the noble and learned Lord, his point is completely irrelevant to the amendment before us.

The noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, talks about tensions being created in Edinburgh between this Parliament and the Scottish Parliament. There will always be tensions between this United Kingdom Parliament and the Scottish Parliament, as long as it is run by people who wish to destroy the United Kingdom. That is what they are about: using their powers to break the United Kingdom. The notion that we should move in a direction and get ourselves into a position where we need lots of legislative consent Motions simply provides more opportunities for everything to be turned into a constitutional crisis, which is the nature of the SNP. We will come to that later in our consideration of the Bill.

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The amendment gives the Government an opportunity to show in the Bill that they respect the devolved legislatures and, perhaps more importantly, to say how they will bring forward in due course their own amendments that will deal will this issue, which should never have boiled up to the level it is at now. It is the sort of thing that could have been resolved, but because of the lack of conversation and contact, it has become an issue that we are debating tonight.

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

My Lords, I note what the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, said in response to my intervention. On the occasion to which I referred, the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes of Cumnock, actually supported him in trying to stop the Bill going forward to Committee stage.

I think that what my noble friend Lord Thomas of Gresford said about the sheer frustration that lies behind the amendment—and what the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, said about the lack of conversation—is absolutely true. That has coloured the background to these discussions. It is worth reminding ourselves about the root of some of this frustration. I think it was in October 2016 when, in a plenary session chaired by the Prime Minister, the Joint Ministerial Committee established the Joint Ministerial Committee on EU Negotiations, with the following terms of reference:

“Working together in EU Negotiations … Through the JMC(EN) the governments will work collaboratively to: discuss each government’s requirements of the future relationship with the EU; seek to agree a UK approach to, and objectives for, Article 50 negotiations; and … provide oversight of negotiations with the EU, to ensure, as far as possible, that outcomes agreed by all four governments are secured from these negotiations; and, discuss issues stemming from the negotiation process which may impact upon or have consequences for the UK Government, the Scottish Government, the Welsh Government or the Northern Ireland Executive”.


The fact that, tomorrow, the Joint Ministerial Committee on EU Negotiations will meet for the second time in 12 months suggests that these terms of reference, agreed by the three devolved Administrations and the United Kingdom Government, have been more honoured in the breach than they have been in the actual implementation. That is at the source of much of the frustration that we have heard expressed. One hears it: when he was replying to the debate initiated on 25 January, the noble Lord, Lord Duncan of Springbank, said:

“The important thing is to stress that it is not for want of effort on our part”—


that is, the United Kingdom Government’s part—

“to secure a form of words that would allow the two devolved Administrations and the UK Government to reach a consensus on that point”.—[Official Report, 25/1/18; col. 1128.]

Yet, if you go to the devolved Administrations, they will say that they have had no communication. There is a lack of communication and there seems to be a complete mismatch with what has been said to us.

It would be interesting if the Minister could tell us yet whether the actual wording of any possible amendment to Clause 11—the Secretary of State for Scotland has accepted that Clause 11 has to be amended; he said that it would be done on Report in the House of Commons, but it was not—has been discussed at ministerial level between the United Kingdom Government and the devolved Administrations. If so, when was that discussed? When the Scottish and Welsh Governments addressed a briefing of Peers in late January they indicated that there had been no exchange of wording.

What is even more frustrating is that it does not seem that the parties are terribly far apart. In September last year, the Scottish Government acknowledged in their legislative consent memorandum that there were areas in which there would have to be common UK frameworks. The communiqué issued after the last Joint Ministerial Committee on EU Negotiations in October also set out the areas in which UK common frameworks were necessary and desirable. Both sides have agreed that that has to be done. Why in the world is more progress not being made, or at least why are we not able to see what progress, if any, is being made?

Perhaps the biggest problem here is the fact that it is done behind closed doors. If there were more transparency, we would see who was playing to the gallery and who was trying genuinely to seek a resolution to these matters. There are issues, such as agriculture, fisheries and the environment, where everybody acknowledges that there will have to be some kind of common framework. Let us identify what progress has been made.

We were told this week in newspaper reports that the United Kingdom Government have done a complete reversal. They now say that they will bring forward an amendment that will devolve everything back to the devolved Administrations, but, as it said in the Times report from yesterday,

“UK ministers are also adamant they would need to retain a veto over the use of some of these powers until ‘common frameworks’ are agreed”.

Again, in terms of public relations, it is like saying, “Here’s one hand; we’ll take away with the other”. What is the position? If we are to have to make decisions when we come to debate Clause 11, it is important that we know what the relationship is and what each side in these negotiations is saying.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

The noble and learned Lord is very clever and experienced at negotiations with different political parties in government. Perhaps I am too stupid, but I cannot think of a way—and I agree with a lot of what he said—to word an amendment that would deliver the result that he suggests is needed. Can he help me? What would an amendment actually say that ensured that there was the kind of continuing co-operation that is needed?

[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.

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[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

The Minister said there have been six meetings since the referendum. Given that at the first meeting of the Joint Ministerial Committee on EU Negotiations the communiqué said that they would meet on a monthly basis and that was in November 2016, by my calculation there have been several more months than six since then. Can the Minister tell us how many official meetings took place between February and October 2017?

[Lord Callanan]

I do not have information about how many official meetings have taken place. I understand that officials are meeting extensively. They are in regular contact. I am told by my officials that contact with officials in the Scottish and Welsh Governments and discussions are extremely positive. That is not the same as getting political agreement, but we are endeavouring to do that. Proposals have been tabled, after extensive discussion, for the meeting tomorrow. We hope there will be agreement. I obviously cannot guarantee that, but we hope there will be. We remain committed to obtaining legislative consent Motions if possible, and we will continue that dialogue in an effort to do that. That is the responsible way to proceed, but I totally understand the frustration expressed from all parts of the Committee that we do not yet have that agreement. We want to get that agreement. We are endeavouring to get that agreement. We will do our best to get it, but we will table amendments for this Committee to consider before we get to Clause 11.