European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Lord Clarke of Nottingham and Chris Leslie

Ping Pong: House of Commons
Wednesday 20th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Kenneth Clarke]

I shall make the shortest speech here that I have made for very many years—[Hon. Members: “Ever!”]—and I shall take no interventions. [Interruption.] Well, the Government are restricting debate on this European issue as ferociously as they are trying to restrict votes and powers. I voted against both the previous timetable motions. With no explanation, we have been told that we have an hour and a half for this extremely important issue today. Presumably, it is to allow time for the interesting debate that follows, taking note on the subject of NATO, which could be tabled at any time over the next fortnight and has no urgency whatever. None of us are allowed to say very much about this matter.

The Government have been trying to minimise the parliamentary role throughout the process. That is only too obvious. I will try to avoid repeating anything that others have said, but the fact is that it started with an attempt to deny the House any vote on the invocation of article 50, and litigation was required to change that. A meaningful vote has been resisted since it was first proposed. The Government suffered a defeat in this House during the earlier stages of our proceedings before they would contemplate it, and then they assured us that they would not try to reverse that; there would be a meaningful vote. But actually, because that amendment needs amplification and the Bill needs to be made clearer, we now have this vital last stage of Lords amendments and the final attempt to spell out what meaningful votes and parliamentary influence are supposed to mean, and it is being resisted to the very last moment.

Last week, I thought that the Government would be defeated because of their resistance. I was not invited to the negotiations. I do not blame the Chief Whip for that in the slightest. I have not fallen out with him personally, but I think that he knew that I would take a rather firm line as I saw nothing wrong with Lord Hailsham’s amendment if nothing else were available. My right hon. and hon. Friends, including my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), actually believed that they had undertakings from the Prime Minister, and I believe that the Prime Minister gave those undertakings in good faith.

My right hon. and learned Friend for Beaconsfield negotiated with a very distinguished member of the Government acting on the Prime Minister’s behalf, and they reached a firm agreement. That agreement is substantially reflected in Lords amendment 19P and my right hon. and hon. Friends expected that it would be tabled by the Government. It was not. And now the Government are resisting the very issue upon which last week a very distinguished member of the Government reached a settlement—to use the legal terms—because the Government are not able to live up to their agreement. We are being asked to substitute, for a perfectly reasonable Lords amendment, a convoluted thing that would mean arguments about the Speaker’s powers if it ever had to be invoked.

[Mr Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)]

There are only two issues that come out of this debate. The first is about honour. The right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) tried to ensure that he got a deal from the Prime Minister. He went with other Members to negotiate with her and she made a promise to him about an amendment, but that promise was not necessarily fulfilled in the interpretation of the Members who heard her say it, so the House of Lords had to send this issue back to us today. This issue is definitely about honour. Other hon. Members have said that they believe that the House can pass resolutions and motions, and that they will be honoured, even if they are not necessarily binding. I believe that the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield is an honourable man, and he is again taking the Government at their word.

That brings me to the second issue, which is that this is also about Parliament. If the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield has achieved anything, it is that he has moved the Government from where the Prime Minister was on “The Andrew Marr Show” on Sunday, when she said that Parliament cannot tie the hands of Government. The right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield has managed to extract a statement from the Government, who are now saying that it is open for Members to table motions, that parliamentary time will be provided, and that it is open for this House, through Mr Speaker, to ensure that motions and decisions can be made. The right hon. and learned Gentleman believes that that is worth having and it is indeed true that it is a step forward. The difference that I have with him is that he believes that the Prime Minister and the Government should be given the benefit of the doubt yet again; I would suggest that he should not and could not necessarily trust their word. That is where we differ.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Lord Clarke of Nottingham and Chris Leslie

Committee: 8th sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 20th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Leslie]

Yes. That again gets to this question: are we accidentally bumbling our way through, where nobody has thought about doing an assessment, or, worse, is this work being done but then hidden, covered up and held back from Members of Parliament and from the public at large? I suspect that any serious analysis worth its salt will show that there are some damning consequences of exiting the single market and customs union, and I think that needs to be shared with the wider public.

[Mr Kenneth Clarke (Rushcliffe) (Con)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the Brexit Secretary was rather lucky when he appeared before the Select Committee, because having agreed to produce papers, he got out of it by sticking to a narrow definition of “impact assessment”? It was semantics that enabled him to get away with just producing the new documents, which he had hastily produced in the past few weeks, containing bland descriptions of where we are. As the originals are important documents, as these questions have been looked at and as we were told a summary had been sent to the Prime Minister, does the hon. Gentleman agree that the House’s motion meant that whatever documents the Government had that bore on the subject, they should have been produced? The Brexit Secretary should not have been allowed to get away with saying, “Strictly speaking, they’re not impact assessments.”

[Mr Leslie]

I do agree with that. We should not just skim over this question. These are some of the most profound decisions that Parliament will make for a generation and, if we are going to do our jobs correctly as Members of Parliament, having the right facts, getting the evidence, assembling the analysis, making sure we can weigh up the pros and cons of all these matters, and getting readily understandable, plain English explanatory statements of what is actually being proposed are prerequisites. They should be there to make us do our jobs properly.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Kenneth Clarke]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that when he and I tabled new clause 54, we did so consciously trying to replicate Government policy as stated in the Florence speech? If the Minister would fairly promptly acknowledge and accept that, we should be able to save some time for the other important matters to be discussed in relation to this group.

[Mr Leslie]

That is an excellent suggestion. We could almost add new clause 54 to the copy-and-paste process, given that it is based on the Prime Minister’s own words. Obviously, I personally would like to go further, but the right hon. and learned Gentleman and I tabled the new clause in the spirit of compromise.

New clause 48 serves to highlight the important but often overlooked question of mutual recognition agreements. MRAs are another series of international obligations between countries. The UK has obtained rights for notified bodies to undertake conformity assessments to make sure that standards across the EU are complied with and that UK firms can certify assessments of conformity across that market of 500 million people by virtue of the process that they undertake in the UK. If we lose that MRA process, it could cause immense disruption to many businesses and sectors in the UK.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Lord Clarke of Nottingham and Chris Leslie

Committee: 3rd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 21st November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Leslie]

Indeed. My right hon. Friend has stolen the punchline that I was building up to, because that is the one example that I thought would surely clinch the argument. Of all the people who really should value the charter of fundamental rights, surely it is the Secretary of State.

[Mr Kenneth Clarke (Rushcliffe) (Con)]

Given that the charter has been part of British law for some years now, the case for repealing it must be based on some harm that it has done. I have never heard anyone describe any harm that the charter is supposed to have done to any public interest in this country, so presumably the hon. Gentleman, like me, awaits some examples to justify the proposed change.

[Mr Leslie]

Absolutely. We might hear a different argument from Ministers, but traditionally the Government’s argument has been, “Don’t worry about the charter of fundamental rights; it doesn’t have any effect, it isn’t necessary and we can do without it because it is already there in British law.” It is rather like what the right hon. Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) said in his intervention. Of course, if that is the case, why are the Government deliberately excising it from UK law, and why would they resist new clause 16? The new clause does not even require the charter to be retained—I happen to think that it should be retained—but simply states that Her Majesty’s Government should lay before Parliament within one month of Royal Assent a review of the implications of removing it.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Lord Clarke of Nottingham and Chris Leslie

Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 14th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Leslie]

Let us imagine the circumstances where exit day falls at that fateful 11 pm on 29 March 2019 and there is no legislative architecture in place for the transitional period from 11.1 pm and thereafter. At present, there is no guarantee from the Government—I will give way to them if they will guarantee it—that that legislation will be put in place, published and consulted on and that businesses will know what the transitional legal framework will be from 11.1 pm on 29 March 2019 onwards. The Government have said that we might not get the latest offer of an Act of Parliament until not only after a withdrawal treaty has been signed and sealed by Ministers, but after exit day. There is, therefore, a hiatus. What is the legal architecture that fills the gap in that transition? That is the question I am asking in new clause 14.

[Mr Kenneth Clarke]

Just to reinforce the hon. Gentleman’s question: the Bill seems to say that after exit day all European law and legal obligations drop and the jurisdiction of the ECJ goes. If we have the transition period proposed in the Florence speech, the subsequent Bill will presumably have to amend this Bill, change the Government’s position and produce new provisions that qualify it. Given that the Florence speech seems to be the only policy we can cling to—it is agreed to by both Front-Bench teams, in theory—would it not be logical just to put the substance of that speech into this Bill and adjust it so that it complies with it?

[Mr Leslie]

The right hon. and learned Gentleman and I have shared this inspiration in the form of an amendment that will also come up on day eight of Committee. Of course, the Labour Front-Bench team will shortly be talking to their own amendment 278, which seeks to deal with this problem by deferring exit day until after the transition has been completed. The idea essentially is to keep the existing legal framework in place, not just for the period up until exit day but for the transition period. That, of course, is one way to solve the problem.

The Bill, though, cannot adequately deal with the transition, and not just because of the contradictions in clauses 5 and 6. Even if one stands on one leg and squints a little bit at the order-making powers in clauses 7 or 9, none seems capable of dealing with the implementation of a transition period. It is clear, then, that we need answers from Ministers. They have said that they will bring forward a Bill, but they have to ensure certainty for business during the transition period. It could be a two-year-plus period. I do not think that two years is long enough, but if it is to be two years, that is still a long time for businesses to operate without a framework of legal certainty. New clause 14 simply says that Ministers must give details within one month of Royal Assent as to how the ECJ arrangement will apply during the transition.