European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill

Lord Wilson of Dinton Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard continued) & Committee stage & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard continued): House of Lords
Wednesday 15th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wilson of Dinton (CB)]

My Lords, I am pleased to follow my noble friend Lord Kerr.

This is all about power. The Government are in powerful position at the moment. I say “at the moment”, because it will not last. We know that the pendulum swings, and that power is fluid and leaks away. The arguments for the amendment are good, but I am more concerned about good government. My experience is that Governments, when they are at their most powerful, are in a kind of vacuum, and this is a time when mistakes are made. This is the year when the Government will plant the seeds of their own failure, and I am in awe of their task over the next year.

I date back from the time when we did trade negotiations ourselves. I was a gofer in the Board of Trade on the Kennedy Round. I was in charge of knitting needles, aspirin and canned fruit at various times. I was also Private Secretary to the then Minister for Trade, the late Lord Brown of Machrihanish. I am familiar with trade negotiations from that earlier period, and I can confirm that the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, is right: trade negotiations do not bring out the nice side of other people; they bring out the tough, rigorous side.

Although the Government are powerful in this House, and in politics, they are not necessarily going to be strong in the negotiating room. They need the support of Parliament, and they need friends. They will have more friends if they consult and if they are open, because the analysis needed for trade negotiations —on services and the other areas that are so important to this country—will involve groups of people, Scotland and Wales, and sectors. The Government need to be open and use their power with maturity. They need experience, they need to be open, they need to recruit friends and heal. The trouble is that the bruises are too recent, which colours some of these exchanges.

The Government must work with Parliament, with noble Lords, and be open to understanding the hugely different currents and flows that will underlie these negotiations. If they think they know all the answers and can ignore the sovereignty of the Queen in Parliament, and just be the Crown, they will make some awful mistakes and the country will suffer for them. I urge the Minister to take these amendments, and the arguments that lie behind them, seriously.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

Is the noble Lord arguing that there will be no reporting by the Government to Parliament on the negotiations if this is not in the Bill?

[Lord Wilson of Dinton]

I am not arguing that. I am worried that the Government’s powerful position, and their glee and joy, which is understandable, will lead them to a certain arrogance and to ignore the role which Parliament can properly play. These amendments are a good reminder of the role that Parliament must play. I urge the Government to work with Parliament, with noble Lords and with influences that can be brought to bear behind the scenes, to listen and not to think that they know all the answers and can just go in and negotiate, because they cannot.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, I should like to briefly follow that very powerful speech by my noble friend Lord Wilson of Dinton. The spirit of the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, is about consultation. It is about making sure that people behind the scenes know what is happening and can understand if they have to give something up rather than it being delivered on them.

The Senedd, the National Assembly of Wales, has responsibility for a set of devolved competences. When negotiations become difficult and tough, it is almost inevitable that at times people will have to give things up. If people in Wales, behind the scenes, know what is happening and understand why, they can support it. If something is just delivered on them as a fait accompli afterwards, trust is lost. There is a Chinese saying that I think we should remember: trust arrives on foot and leaves on horseback—and it is trustworthiness in behaviour that wins trust.

The Joint Ministerial Committee on EU Negotiations was set up with promises by the Government to seek consensus over approaches behind the scenes—yet, sadly, I understand that sometimes the committee had no more information than could be found in the previous day’s newspapers. Sometimes those attending were told that they could not be told more because it was not in the public domain. If there is a small group of people whom you are taking into your confidence and you trust them to observe that confidence, it is not helpful for them to be told, “You can’t be told what’s going on because it isn’t in the public domain”—because the role of that group is to share that confidential information and thinking before the next round of negotiations.

The spirit of the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, completely encapsulates a need: where devolved competences are at stake and will be deeply constitutionally affected, it is only right that the devolved Administrations are involved and that their thinking is sought early on, so that they can explain it both to their own legislatures and to the people who voted them into office.