Parliamentary Partnership Assembly

Oliver Heald Excerpts

Monday 6th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sir Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)]

I will just take my mask off, Madam Deputy Speaker. May I say how I delighted I am that we have reached this point and that it is possible to have this motion before the House tonight? As my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) said, the treaty—the trade and co-operation agreement—is permissive. We do not have to set up a parliamentary assembly, but I very much hope that we will.

As for my interest in this, I was asked by the powers that be, including the Leader of the House, to lead on discussions with the House of Lords and our counterparts in the European Parliament on taking the proposals forward. I place on the record my thanks to the noble Lord Kinnoull, who has been leading for the Lords on this matter, for all his help in the discussions. I am glad that we managed to reach agreement so easily across the two Houses about the overall composition of the delegation in terms of the party balance and numbers, including between the Houses, so that this is a parliamentary delegation—albeit with a Commons majority, as this place would expect.

I started work on this project some time ago with an expectation that we might even be able to hold an inaugural meeting of the assembly before the summer recess. Unfortunately, however, sitting patterns in the European Parliament and our own, and internal processes that have to be gone through with so many groups in the European Parliament and parties here, meant that it was only in October that the European Parliament decided that it would establish a delegation and published the names. This is still awaiting ratification, so passing this motion tonight, followed by the motion in the Lords, will allow us to move forward so that we are ready once the European Parliament has completed its processes, which I believe is likely to happen on 12 December.

In some ways, it is disappointing that this has taken us such a long time, but that has enabled me and Lord Kinnoull to have useful discussions with Select Committee Chairs, in particular—I have appeared at the European Scrutiny Committee and the Liaison Committee to discuss how we might take this forward. The good work done by those Committees can feed into the work of the UK delegation and the UK delegation can feed back to the House and Committees on proceedings in the PPA. I look forward to seeing that develop further.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) is in his place, I make it clear that neither the PPA nor the delegation to it will duplicate the work of any existing Committee of the House or existing delegations—for example, that to the Council of Europe. That is very much the view of the European Parliament’s Committees, too.

The role of the assembly is to exchange views on the partnership between the EU and the UK. It has powers to request information and to make recommendations to the partnership council, but it will meet probably twice a year, which is what happens with other similar bodies that the European Parliament has with other countries. It cannot be expected to do anything like the detailed scrutiny done by our specialised Committees here in Parliament.

I hope that Select Committee members will use the assembly as a platform to share their expertise more widely. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Stone that the European Scrutiny Committee has a lot of expertise to offer, although of course the exact composition of the delegation will be a matter for the usual channels.

[Mr Bone]

I am sorry to spring out of my seat once more, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I thought that this assembly was a parliamentary delegation, not one whose membership the Government Whips would decide. Surely that is not the way forward.

[Sir Oliver Heald]

As my hon. Friend may know, there are a number of assemblies—the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly, the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, the OSCE and so on—that follow a similar pattern whereby a written ministerial statement appoints the membership. However, I believe that the usual channels are very keen that the assembly should have geographical range and should take account of balance, equalities and so on. Personally, I think that if we wanted to go for something different, we would have to change the whole system that we operate in this Parliament for assemblies.

[Mr Goodwill]

Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that if we used the way that Select Committees select people, we could end up with no member from Northern Ireland, for example? That would not be acceptable, in my view.

[Sir Oliver Heald]

I certainly hope that our approach will mean that we have a very good range of geography, equalities and so on, which is difficult to achieve in any other way. The House may at some time decide to change how it sets up assemblies, but I think that that would take some time. I would like to see this assembly up and running.

The European Parliament’s other bilateral bodies normally meet over an afternoon and a morning, say, or possibly over a slightly longer period. It is customary for them to open with a state-of-play update from the co-chairs of the governance structure of the agreement in question, which in this case would mean the Partnership Council. I would expect that the assembly might hear from Vice-President Šefčovič and Lord Frost and then put questions to them; there might then be thematic debates on topical matters or discussions on emerging legislation from both sides, depending on what the delegations wanted. Plenaries often conclude with votes on resolutions, but that is not a template that has to be followed religiously.

If the House passes tonight’s motion, there will still be steps to take before the first full-scale meeting can take place. The delegation will have to be appointed, as the Leader of the House has explained and as my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough, my right hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Mr Goodwill) and I have just discussed. The plenary’s practical and procedural workings will also need to be arranged. There are templates for that in other bilateral bodies of the European Parliament and we have some ideas of our own, but we expect to have a pattern of perhaps two meetings a year and to be able to reach agreement on how the body will work.

Lord Kinnoull and I have already had discussions with the devolved legislatures to ensure that they are kept up to speed, ahead of the bureau that will be deciding the agendas, and that they can have input into the process so that their views are known. It has been suggested that the interparliamentary forum used for Brexit might be reconstituted for that purpose so that the three legislatures could come together and talk to us ahead of the bureau. I would like the three legislatures to have observer status so that they could be at our meetings and have informal discussions—which are as important as the formal ones—about how the plenary works, but that is something that would need to be agreed with the European Parliament.

I hope that the House will agree that today’s motion is a positive step towards building a new relationship between this Parliament and the European Parliament, following Brexit. I look forward to the UK delegation being established and beginning its work.

[Dr Philippa Whitford (Central Ayrshire) (SNP)]

I welcome the news that the Parliamentary Partnership Assembly will, hopefully, heave into view in the next few months. The aim is to create a working relationship between the United Kingdom and the European Parliament, to look at the impact of the trade and co-operation agreement, and to be able to make representations and recommendations to the Partnership Council to improve its implementation. That means that the make-up of the assembly will be critical in recognising and, indeed, trying to tackle the differentiated impact of Brexit across the four nations of the UK.

Will the Government not therefore accept the need to consider including representatives of the devolved Parliaments? We have already heard a discussion about how to secure the representation of not just one view but all the views from Northern Ireland. However, Scotland and Wales are also massively impacted by Brexit, and I welcomed the speech of the right hon. and learned Member for North East Hertfordshire (Sir Oliver Heald), who did at least consider how that inclusion could be achieved.

[Sir Oliver Heald]

I certainly feel that there should be an inclusive approach, but the agreement refers to the membership of the assembly being from this Parliament and the European Parliament, so I think we would be talking about observer status.

[Dr Whitford]

Perhaps when the Leader of the House sums up the debate, he will explain to us what consultation has been carried out with the devolved Parliaments— particularly Northern Ireland, obviously, but, as I have said, Scotland and Wales have also been massively impacted by Brexit, and the impacts differ according to local economies, cultures and demographics. It is important that all those voices are gathered and represented.

The chair of the delegation will obviously be a very important figure, and, according to the documents, should be elected at the first meeting. It is vital that this is not a Government anointment of the kind that we have seen in some of the important Select Committees. We are talking about a parliamentary delegation, not an intergovernmental delegation.

A key role of the assembly will be trying to repair the relationship with our European neighbours, which is at rock bottom. The brinkmanship that we have seen over the last year, and repeated threats to the Northern Ireland protocol—a deal that the Prime Minister was quite happy to claim as his own personal breakthrough in the run-up to the 2019 election—have undermined trust. We often hear that with trust, many of the issues surrounding the protocol could be eased, but—with a German husband, and having watched German media and heard the views of Germans about what has happened here—I know that trust is now utterly absent when it comes to whether the UK will keep its word on anything in the future, which makes it likely that moving forward through the challenges of the next few years will be very difficult.

Unfortunately—particularly if meetings are only going to be six-monthly—what the assembly simply cannot replace are the myriad interactions, formal and informal, between officials, between experts, between Ministers and between Heads of State that used to happen when the UK was a member of the EU. They were able not just to influence policy but, often, to defuse tensions. It should not be forgotten that the interactions on neutral ground between John Major and Albert Reynolds made possible a relationship, indeed a warm friendship, that allowed the UK and Ireland to work together and reset the British-Irish relationship in the early 1990s.

As a Scottish MP, I will obviously be speaking up about the impact of Brexit in Scotland, which I see in my own constituency and my colleagues see throughout Scotland in all our sectors: in fishing, in farming, in the NHS, in social care and in tourism. It is important that we speak up for the majority of voters in Scotland, who frankly did not want Brexit and still do not want it. I look forward to a time when Scotland will return to the EU as a modern, independent country in its own right.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Bone]

My right hon. Friend makes a vital point, but I would take things down a slightly different path. I would re-establish the Committee on the Future Relationship with the European Union, which was a Committee of this House and could scrutinise our relationship with the European Union. It would have no MEPs on it and would be a Committee of this House. I think Lord Frost is doing a tremendous job, but it is right that a Committee in this House should scrutinise that job, not a committee made up with Members of the European Parliament.

[Sir Oliver Heald]

Of course, the European Parliament has set up a number of bilateral organisations with other countries. Some of them have arrangements whereby both delegations have to agree before a resolution can be passed. There is a vote of the whole body, but equally the support of both delegations is required; would my hon. Friend perhaps find that a helpful mitigation?

[Mr Bone]

That would be a most helpful mitigation but, of course, if we do not have the assembly in the first place, we do not have to worry about that sort of thing.

Let me move away slightly from the principle and go back to the motion—