Brexit: Trade in Goods (EUC Report)

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Tuesday 18th July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bilimoria (CB)]

My Lords, 22 February 2016, a date that many people forget, was when the referendum was announced. Normally when a business or a country goes in for a big change, it is caused by a burning platform: things are really bad or not going well. But at that time we as a country were flying. Our Foreign Secretary is very fond of cake: well, we were eating our cake and having it as well. Sovereignty was a big issue where the wretched referendum was concerned, but we had full sovereignty. We are not in the euro but we are at the top table in Europe. We are not in Schengen. We measure our roads in miles and we pour our petrol in litres. I pour Cobra beer in pints when I choose to and I sell it in litres on supermarket shelves when I choose to. When I challenge people on EU laws because they say, “I want to take back control and leave”, I ask them to name one law that affects them on a day-to-day basis. Most people cannot name even one because the laws that affect them on a day-to-day basis are made by us here in Parliament.

People confuse the European Court of Justice with the European Court of Human Rights. We wrote the European Court of Human Rights and we will continue to be subject to the court, but people do not understand that. Then they say, “Oh, look at the billions that we put into the EU every year”. A pie chart of our annual government expenditure of £800 billion a year would show a thin line with an arrow pointing to it to indicate the 1% of our annual expenditure that goes into the EU. I would pay that 1% just for the peace that we have on the continent.

Yesterday we had a debate on the impact on immigration of Brexit. What would we do without the 3 million people who are working over here? We should be grateful to them because without them we would have labour shortages. We have a 4.5% unemployment rate, one of the lowest in living memory. Is it low-skilled labour? That is nonsense. It is labour that is high-skilled and low-skilled, right across the board.

Since 22 February last year the country has been deeply divided. We as a country had the fastest-growing western economy in the world, but today we are growing more slowly than Europe. Our savings rate is really low. We have a Government who are leaderless with a leader with no credibility. The will of the people as expressed on 23 June is shackling this country, this Parliament and our parliamentarians. The vote was to leave, but to leave on what terms? No one wants to leave if we are going to be worse off as a country, as an economy, as businesses and as individual citizens. A Survation poll taken on 18 June 2017, just 10 days after the election, showed that 53% of people want a say on the final deal, and that well over two-thirds do not want a hard Brexit.

I turn to Emmanuel Macron. Luckily the populist bubble seems to be in the past. We had Trump and the referendum, but we did not have it in Austria or Holland and we now have Emmanuel Macron in France. Moreover, we are not going to get it in Germany. We have also heard former Prime Minister Tony Blair say that, according to him, European leaders are willing to consider reforming Europe to adapt to what we are looking for. I firmly believe that, when it comes to the free movement of people, there needs to be reform in Europe. That will be to everyone’s benefit because Schengen works from the tourism and business point of view, but not from the point of view of the migration crisis or the need for security.

I am a lone voice in this country but I will keep saying this: why do the Government not bring back exit checks at our borders? I challenge the Minister on that. We should have visible, physical exit checks and then we would have control over our borders. In every other country that I fly in and out of on a regular basis, whether it is Europe or South Africa or India or the United States, my passport is scanned on the way in and again on the way out. You then have control over immigration. From the security point of view it is negligent not to do it—and we need to give people more faith where immigration is concerned.

What will the future be? Brexit is the most important decision this country has faced—but, quite frankly, the future is worrying. First, we know that it is a Conservative Party issue. It was UKIP that drove Brexit, but where is UKIP today? Also, unfortunately there is no clarity at the moment from the Labour Party as to where it would stand once the issues are boiled down. The worst thing about all this is obvious, but I have to say it. For the past year and over the months ahead, what are we talking about in Parliament? Brexit. What we are not talking about are the issues that really matter to this country and which we need to be getting on with. Indeed, we are being left behind already. What hurts me most is that Britain was at the top table of the world. We are not a superpower but a global power: the G7, the G8, a permanent seat at the Security Council, the G20, a member of NATO, but no longer at the top table of the EU. We have lost our global standing and right now we are actually the laughing stock of Europe and the world.

I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, and her committee on the report. It states right up front:

“Brexit will fundamentally change the UK’s conditions of trade with the other 27 EU Member States, and with over 60 countries with which the EU has preferential trade agreements”.


It sets out the reality:

“Goods make up the bulk of the UK’s global trade, and accounted for around 60% of all UK exports to the EU, and almost 77% of total UK imports from the EU”.


Yet the Prime Minister set out her intention for the UK to leave the single market and the customs union in her famous Lancaster House speech of 17 January. The report clearly states that,

“in the absence of a FTA with the EU after Brexit, tariffs would apply”.

When you have tariffs, you get WTO rules. That means 10% on cars, 200% on some agricultural products, and great damage in areas where we are integrated into the EU supply chain. Indeed, we have heard the noble Baroness herself say that,

“tariffs could be levied multiple times in the production process”.

Then there is the big issue of non-tariff barriers such as rules of origin.

What about the wonderful EU agencies that the UK participates in, some of which are based over here? I cite the European Medicines Agency and the European Aviation Safety Agency. The UK’s proposed relationship with the EU outside the customs union and the single market will also result in a customs border. That means customs procedures and delays, increased administration and red tape, red tape, red tape. Wow—more red tape. That is a nightmare for business; we see red when we hear about red tape.

The timetable for withdrawal is so tight. First, the Prime Minister was in a hurry to get the notice under Article 50 submitted by March. Why? Because she wanted to get out by 2019 so that she would have a clear run to the 2020 elections. Then she called a snap election which ate into that two-year period when the clock was already ticking. Now we are waiting for the German elections and the clock is still ticking. Concluding an EU FTA agreement in that time is dreamland. And then there is talk of transitional agreements.

The EU member states combined were the single largest trading partner of the UK, accounting for 47% of our exports and 54% of our imports. There are also important trade agreements with third countries that we benefit from, such as the one with the Republic of Korea that has been referred to. They are the FTAs that we have through the EU, with up to 60 countries, which we will no longer enjoy if we leave the European Union.

I chair the Manufacturing Commission—we are a proud manufacturing country. Along with Molson Coors, my joint venture partners, we manufacture Cobra beer in Burton-on-Trent. Manufacturing was 30% of GDP in the 1970s, at the time that we joined the European Union. Today it is 10%—but it is still very high-value manufacturing. The report states that our manufacturing export intensity rose from 30% in 1991 to 47% in 2011. I am boasting here—please forgive me—but Cobra has won 94 gold medals since 2001 and this year was the only beer in the world to win the judges’ trophy. It is manufactured in Burton-on-Trent in Britain. It is British manufacturing at its best—British manufacturing that employs 2.7 million people in the UK; British manufacturing that supports jobs in the services sector.

The noble Lord, Lord Marland, referred to our world-class universities, the best in the world along with those of the United States of America. UUK illustrates this with an example: we are less than 1% of the world’s population, yet the UK produces 16% of the world’s most highly cited articles. The UK also ranks first in the world by field-weighted citation impact. What is the danger of leaving the EU? It is not just losing the funding that our universities rely on—the Government can say, “We’ll give you that funding”—but, more important and more worrying, it is losing the collaborations that exist. I saw this when I went to India with Jo Johnson, the Universities Minister, as chancellor of the University of Birmingham and wearing my hat as chair of the advisory board of the Cambridge Judge Business School. In India, we demonstrated the collaboration between the University of the Punjab and the University of Birmingham. Our field-weighted impact result is about 1.8; that of the University of the Punjab is 1.3; combined, it is 5.3. When we research with Harvard, which has a field-weighted average of 2.3, the combined result is 5.4. That is the power of collaborative research; that is what we would possibly be losing.

The noble Lord, Lord Howell, spoke about services being 80% of our economy. We are already a great trading nation; we always have been. Trade makes up 65% of our GDP. Then the Government will have to make a trade-off between their desire to determine UK laws and regulations and the extent to which an FTA with the EU can operate to two separate regulatory standards. As the report points out, that is another problem. The report then states that leaving the customs union would result in costly administrative requirements and customs procedures—burdens for companies—and further states:

“Administering UK-EU tariffs and non-tariff barriers—in the absence of a common regulatory system—would also significantly increase the work of HMRC”.


What about HMRC? How will it cope with this?

We are going to lose out on a huge amount. The 60 countries with which the EU already has free trade agreements account for about 17% of our exports. If we add the 50% of our trade accounted for within the EU and the 17% with those other countries, we see that two-thirds of our trade globally is tied up with being in the EU. Wake up—this is really serious. Leaving will be a huge problem.

And then our great International Trade Secretary, Liam Fox, goes to India and says, “I’m going to open up a free trade deal with India”. I have shared a platform with the Indian high commissioner, a seasoned diplomat, who says that we are welcome to do a free trade deal with India—“Please, do come along, but also remember that a free trade deal with India also means looking at movement of people”. It is not just goods and tariffs; it is services, it is movement of people and it is students. By the way, how many bilateral free trade deals does India, the largest democracy in the world with 1.25 billion people, have in the whole world? Nine—and not one is with a western country. How many free trade deals does the biggest economy in the world, the United States, have? It has 20.

This is not easy; this is not a joke. This will take a huge effort; it is not the panacea. The noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, said very sensibly that business is invariably ahead of government. Unfortunately, for a whole year, the Prime Minister did not listen to business. Now she is trying to do that. It is not just the CBI; it is not just the British Chambers of Commerce; it is not just the FSB. We need individual business leaders—FTSE 100, FTSE 250, FTSE 350 and SMEs—to speak out individually and have the guts to say to government and to the country, “This is madness, because it is business that creates the jobs that pay the taxes that pay for our public services that we all benefit from”.

EasyJet is already saying that it is going to set up a new European base. A report from the Centre for London think tank said that up to 70,000 finance jobs could be lost—Paris and Frankfurt are just waiting. And then the biggest free trade deal in the world, the EU-Japan deal, has just been concluded after four years of negotiation. Here is the reality. A headline in the Independent states:

“Brexit: German business warns May its priority is to protect single market, not a good trade deal with the UK”.


Here is the other thing. We hear it said: “Oh, Europe’s going to be desperate to do deals with us, because the German car makers will make sure of it”, but the article states:

“Carmakers in Germany were expected to lobby their government for a free trade deal to help them sell into the British market, but they say protecting the single market is more important”.


That is the reality. The Financial Times says that short-term transition deals will not work and gives reasons for that.

It is said that this situation is about respecting democracy. We are being shackled because of the will of the people—52% versus 48%—that was expressed a year ago. The reality is that in a normal democratic election, if the Government have not performed, five years later the public can throw them out. Here, this is permanent. Keynes said:

“When the facts change, I change my mind”.


If we really respect the will of the people, we will allow them to make a decision once they have the full facts. That is respecting democracy; that is the will of the people. By that time, the people will see that the Brexit emperor has no clothes—and then it will not be “Brexit means Brexit” but “Remain means remain”, because people will realise that, for the benefit of this country, its economy, its business and its citizens, it will make sense not to leave the European Union.

Brexit: European Union-derived Rights

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Tuesday 4th April 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rooker]

My Lords, I support both the Motions but want to address the second one, or what is behind it: in other words, the role of Parliament.

I have much in common with the Minister. I was a remainer and I accept the vote count of 23 June. Indeed, there are not really two sides anymore but the language of contest is still used. It is because I am a democrat that I accept the vote count and it is because I am a democrat that I accept the rule of law. Parliament is sovereign, not the Government, and it is Parliament’s role to protect the rule of law. As such, it has to be Parliament’s role to consider and judge the terms of fundamental changes to our way of life. Governments come and go via Parliament, or in this case through an ill-thought-out advisory referendum held for more purposes than just to remain or leave the EU.

It is in my view more important to protect Parliament than the Government. A Joint Committee would help considerably in this respect. In fact, the Supreme Court case in some ways helped in respect of protecting the rule of law, and at some point will probably need to do so again. When the people voted on 23 June, it was simple—leave or remain. They knew that the Government’s view was to remain, as set out in the booklet sent to every home in the country. They knew then that the Government had abandoned the idea of an advisory referendum and that the decision would be implemented. They also knew that there was a set of rules around the decision, to the extent, for example, that it was not the Government who drafted the question but the Electoral Commission. They knew that there were rules about the funding of the two strands of opinion. Parliament had set out those rules so there was confidence. However, in the last couple of months, any informed person has to be concerned by the extensive reporting by Carole Cadwalladr in the Observer of 26 February and 2 April, to refer to just two of the very long articles. I have never met nor had contact with Ms Cadwalladr, but I contacted the Electoral Commission in February following the first of the three-page articles and received this response on 8 March:

“I can confirm the Electoral Commission has begun an assessment in respect of Leave.EU’s spending return at the EU Referendum to determine whether or not there are potential offences under the law that require investigation. Our assessment is focused on whether any donation—including services—was made by Cambridge Analytica or Goddard Gunster to Leave.EU; whether those donations, if any, were from a permissible source and whether Leave.EU spending return was complete. Given the high public interest in the returns submitted by campaigners, the Commission will announce the outcome of its assessment in due course”.


I suspect that that response will be made public to others.

Accepting the vote count of 23 June, therefore, we need Parliament to play a key role, as via these proposed Motions. There must be concern that the major donor to Leave.EU is now quoted as saying:

“I don’t give a monkey’s what the Electoral Commission says”,


and:

“We were … cleverer than the regulators and the politicians. Of course we were”.


To me, that is an admission of “cheating”—that they were cleverer than the regulator, the Electoral Commission. The self-confessed cheat Mr Banks is planning to unseat “bad MPs”, via an unregistered organisation. Therefore, Parliament itself is now under threat from dark money, as we have not yet passed the legislation introducing unexplained wealth orders—I suspect that he will be the first candidate for one of those.

Passing these two Motions will send a signal to those who threaten democracy with secret funds and by cheating election regulators. Indeed, it is a wake-up call which, if we fail to answer it, will put Parliament, not the Government, in peril. When I hear a Brexit extremist raise these concerns, I will know the battle of the referendum is over and the battle for Parliament has begun.

[Lord Bilimoria (CB)]

My Lords, following the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, the important part about these two Motions is that they say that once again, Parliament should be at the heart of everything. Let us not forget that straight after the referendum, the Prime Minister and the Government wanted to bypass Parliament altogether.

On so-called independence day, 29 March, I was on a radio programme following Nigel Farage and Alex Salmond battling it out. Nigel Farage said, “This is independence day—the day we got our country back”. We never lost our country. Philip Hammond said that,

“we can’t cherry pick. We can’t have our cake and eat it”.

The irony is that we had our cake and were able to eat it too—we had the best of both worlds.

What nobody mentions, and people overlook, is: why the promised rush into triggering Article 50 by 31 March of this year? It is a self-imposed deadline. The answer is very simple: the Prime Minister wants this two-year process to be over, to put it to bed so that she can go into the next election and get re-elected. In every other way, this timing is madness. We have the French and German elections coming up, and we will lose six months of these two years when Europe will be completely distracted. Why rush into it now and try to bypass Parliament altogether?

If you look at the letter that was written, it very clearly admits how complex these negotiations will be. I believe that the letter also shows that the British people have been completely misled. The Conservative Party manifesto very clearly stated that staying in the single market was a priority. Now the Prime Minister, from her Lancaster House speech and then on 29 March, has said that we will not stay in the single market. Had the British people known this and been told this by the leave campaign, many would not have voted to leave. In fact, if British businesses—small, medium and large—had been told, “You vote to leave and you will be leaving the single market”, they would not have done.

What about these 3 million people and their rights? What about the fact that our unemployment is less than 5%—what would we do without these 3 million people? We would have a labour shortage in this country. We are up against it. We need Parliament to be involved because this is not a balanced negotiation. We are one against 27, against the European Commission, against the European Council, and against the European Parliament. Therefore, getting this done in two years, with the bureaucracy that exists in Europe, and dealing with all these countries, will be very difficult.

What about the rights of these European Union nationals? How many of them are there? By the way, on this figure of 3.2 million, we do not know the exact figure. Why? I came back from a short visit to India this morning and came through the passport checks. You scan your passport when you come into the country, but when you leave this country, nobody checks your passport. Every single passport, European Union or not, should be scanned in and scanned out. Then we would know who is in this country, and these European Union citizens, for example, would be able to say, “I’ve stayed here for five years—I’ve got the right to stay regardless”. Why will the Government not bring in those visible extra checks? That would give us security over our borders—and we are not in Schengen.

Now we have the European Union’s chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, saying that he has told a delegation of EU citizens that he wants to have an agreement in principle to secure the future of EU citizens in the UK and UK citizens throughout Europe by the end of the year. However, he had to admit that it would be late 2018 before he could strike a deal with the UK. Can the Minister tell us why we cannot do this quicker?

We hear that record numbers of EU citizens quit working in the NHS last year. Can he confirm that? As we have heard before, EU nationals are being denied mortgages because of this. The Institute of Directors said just yesterday, very clearly, that a guarantee for EU citizens after Brexit would reduce uncertainty for IoD members. Allie Renison of the IoD said:

“Just under 40 per cent of our members employ EU nationals. You’d be surprised about the amount of nervousness that is genuinely giving to a lot of these employees”.


This is a human issue.

The House of Commons Exiting the European Union Committee has not been spoken about much here. Its report has just been released, in which it said:

“Sadiq Khan told us that uncertainty over the rights of one million Londoners who are EU citizens is feeding into uncertainty in business recruitment”.


The committee clearly said:

“The status of EU nationals in the UK and UK nationals living elsewhere in the EU cannot be left unresolved until the end of the two-year period for negotiations”.


It urges the Government to sort this out now and says:

“We note that, to date, Ministers have not taken this step. The debate around whether ‘no deal is better than a bad deal’ has focussed on the trade aspects of the future relationship. If the negotiations were to end prematurely without an agreement on rights for the 4 million, this could put them in an uncertain position”.


The committee’s recommendation is very clear. There should be,

“a stand-alone and separate deal which is otherwise not dependent on any other exit or future trade deal being agreed to between the parties”.

Will the Minister agree with this?

I conclude with the whole concept of “no deal is better than a bad deal”. This is absolutely ridiculous. It is now clear that the Government have said that it is unsubstantiated—they have not even done the homework. Looking at the report prepared by the Select Committee, there is such complexity: the timescale for reaching agreement, Gibraltar has suddenly come up, there is a potential exit payment, securing a free trade agreement, the customs union, free trade agreements with countries outside the European Union, and co-operating in the fight against crime and terrorism is now being used as a bargaining chip, which is hugely irresponsible. How can we as a country even think of doing that? There is also immigration and consultation with devolved Administrations, we have the Scotland issue, the Northern Ireland border and the Republic of Ireland, and minimising disruption when we leave the EU.

Sir Simon Fraser has just said that transitional agreements will almost definitely be necessary. Once again, it is crucial that these two Motions be agreed. He has said clearly that we will reach a cliff edge. In fact, a number of EU diplomats have now said that the Government,

“fears the economy could be left in ‘havoc’ if Britain left without agreeing any preferential access”.

Does the Minister agree?

The noble Lord, Lord Kerr, spoke about Boris Johnson saying that it will be “perfectly okay” if we leave, and David Davis admitted that the Government had not assessed what “no deal” means. Michel Barnier—this is not fear-mongering—said that no deal would have,

“severe consequences for our people and our economies. It would … leave the UK worse off”.

I support these two Motions in the name of the noble Baronesses, Lady Hayter and Lady Smith. The last point is about 16 and 17 year-olds who were not allowed to vote last year. By the time we come to 2019, these individuals will have the right to vote, and almost 100% of them will want to reverse this decision. People will be allowed to change their minds; the public might change their mind, having seen that the Brexiteers’ emperor has no clothes. We are watching a train crash in slow motion.

European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Report stage (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Tuesday 7th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

This place is beginning to be like the House of Commons.

What is going on here is like Gulliver. These amendments are trying to tie down the Prime Minister—by her hair, her arms and her legs—in every conceivable way in order to prevent her from getting an agreement and us from leaving the European Union. The House should reject this amendment for what it is—which is an unelected Chamber trying to frustrate the will of the democratically elected Government and of the people, which has been expressed in a huge vote in a referendum.

[Lord Bilimoria (CB)]

My Lords, one of the main reasons why we are where we are now is that the Prime Minister and the Government wanted to go ahead and use the prerogative, and it is only because of the ruling in the Supreme Court that we are debating this here.

In this amendment, we are asking to have something put in statute to protect against uncertainty in the future. We have heard so far in the discussion that questioning why voters voted—remain or leave—would be an insult to them. However, this was not a general election. In a general election, you have the party’s manifesto—or an “Ed’s stone” and its commandments. If the people do not like the Government and say that they have not lived up to their manifesto, or have not delivered, in five years’ time they can throw them out. The difference here is that this decision is permanent. The last referendum was in 1975—over four decades ago. Then, there was a majority of 67%. A supermajority was achieved. The decision was decisive. There was certainty. This time, we were told that it was a binary decision—remain or leave—but the outcomes are anything but binary. One of the outcomes is a hard Brexit.

The main issue here is that people are allowed to change their minds. Whether it is the Prime Minister, her Ministers, Members of the other place or Members of this House who want to change their minds, it is their right to do so. In fact, Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, said that changing your mind was a sign of intelligence. As Keynes said, “When the facts change, I change my mind”. As the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, said, many facts and many outcomes of this negotiation are completely uncertain. The Dutch elections, the French elections and the German elections are coming up. The eurozone might collapse. Europe might even reform its immigration rules, which we would like. Therefore, it is only right that Parliament has a full say on the road ahead. This amendment would protect us from the potential outcomes.

I concluded my Second Reading speech by quoting Professor Deepak Malhotra of the Harvard Business School, a world expert in negotiation. He told me to make sure that I read a book called The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman about the beginning of the First World War. He said that reading that book was like watching a train crash in slow motion. That is what we are seeing right now with Brexit. I conclude that we need to support this amendment more than anything in order to protect the future.

[Lord Tebbit (Con)]

I wonder whether in 1975 the noble Lord knew about the Maastricht treaty?

[Lord Bilimoria]

My Lords, in 1975 I was barely a teenager.

I conclude by saying that the main reason why we need to support this amendment is for the sake of future generations and to protect them. I am sure that noble Lords have received several tweets, emails and letters from individuals. Just this morning I received an email that said, “Please support parliamentary democracy and our young people’s future”. One of our doorkeepers reminded me of an ancient Gaelic saying: “We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children”.

[Lord Finkelstein (Con)]

The noble Lord, Lord Hannay, seemed to suggest that we should support this amendment because Article 50 was not unilaterally irrevocable and that we would have to leave the EU. The argument used by the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, just now was that we should support the amendment because it is unilaterally irrevocable. Which is it?

[Lord Bilimoria]

Whether it is irrevocable has not been tested legally. The expert on this is the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, who wrote Article 50 and who claims that it is revocable. However, this amendment would cover all potential outcomes, and that we should have.

European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 1st March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tebbit]

Of course we do not have the power to look after our citizens overseas—not in these days when we do not have many gunboats—but we have an obligation to look after the rights of those people and to look after those rights first. The best way we can preserve the rights of all those concerned—EU citizens here and our citizens on the continent—is to allow Article 50 to be proceeded with as expeditiously as possible, to get the worries over, and for a decent and proper arrangement to be made. I only wish that European statesmen such as Mrs Merkel would come forward, perhaps arm in arm with Herr Juncker, and say that that is exactly what they want, too. We do not need this amendment; it would make it much more difficult to get to that solution.

[Lord Bilimoria (CB)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)]

My Lords—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Campbell of Pittenweem]

No doubt the noble Lord will try to intervene at another stage, given his characteristically generous attitude towards the Liberal Democrats.

The noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, referred at the outset to the legal implications of what we are discussing. He is perfectly right because there may well be convention rights, and it is also the case that Parliament and even more so the courts have often been very reluctant to pass legislation with retrospective effect. Indeed, in my recollection the only time that has been done recently was in relation to former Nazi war criminals for whom the United Kingdom was determined to exercise retrospective extraterritorial jurisdiction. However, the mere fact that these issues are live in this debate surely indicates just how complicated any kind of expulsion might be and the extent to which its effectiveness would undoubtedly be adversely affected by people going to law. I venture to guess that they would get a successful outcome from any effort at judicial review.

It has been said already that this is the right thing to do. I doubt very much whether anyone’s mind has been changed to any extent by today’s debate. At least in my mind, it is still the right thing to do and I will vote for it.

[Lord Bilimoria]

My Lords—

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)]

My Lords—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Clark of Windermere]

The point really is that we then move from the practical to the moral. Some of us take the belief that we have the high moral ground here and that is the ground which is occupied. I say this because we are in a win-win situation. As my noble friend Lady Kennedy said, we are going to have a much stronger negotiating position if we spell it out and show our European neighbours that we can be generous and that, even if we are not in the European Union, we want to remain part of the continent of Europe, working together with our neighbours. That is why I believe we are in a win-win situation with this amendment.

[Lord Bilimoria]

My Lords—

[Lord Dykes (CB)]

My Lords—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Strathclyde]

I heard the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, loud and clear. What I suggest is: can we believe that these groups might be wrong and that, therefore, this House is putting at risk the future of a million British citizens living in the EU? That is why we should not support these amendments.

Noble Lords have said that they do not know what the policy of the British Government is. All they have to do is read the White Paper; it is there very clearly:

“We want to secure the status of EU citizens who are already living in the UK”.


We all agree with that. The bit that noble Lords opposite do not agree with says,

“and that of UK nationals in other Member States”.

[Lord Bilimoria]

I thank the noble Lord for giving way. He said that we should trust the British Government; the Home Secretary has written a letter to all of us in which she says:

“I … reassure colleagues that Parliament will have a clear”,


say. This is the same Home Secretary who wanted companies to list every foreign worker, from a Home Office with a Minister who wanted companies to pay £1,000 per EU worker. How can we trust the Home Secretary?

[Lord Strathclyde]

Very simply—the law can be changed only with the agreement of Parliament. That is why these amendments are at the wrong time, in the wrong Bill and on the wrong subject. We should support the rights of British citizens living in Europe.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Balfe]

Thank you very much. I ask noble Lords to understand that we are talking about the future of human beings. This is not something to jeer about. Because of my role in the trade union movement, I have met these people and they are very upset. A few of them will be tuning in to the broadcast of this debate and will hear the jeers.

I just say that we have to be sophisticated in the way we treat these agencies, and we have to be humane in the way we treat their staff. A thank-you would not go unmet by some of the agencies. We have to look at the employment, welfare and pension provisions of these staff. These are people who went to work for Britain. They are British nationals and they deserve our support.

Finally, I ask the Minister two things. First, will he appoint a dedicated civil servant to deal with these agencies so that they have a point of contact, and, secondly, will he meet them, or at least representatives of their staff associations, to hear at first hand what I have reported only as an intermediary?

[Lord Bilimoria]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Balfe: we are talking about people. The greatest issue arising from the European Union referendum is the uncertainty that it is causing, in every aspect of our lives. Amendment 29 talks specifically about the priorities of the UK’s higher education institutions, students and academics. Our universities are the jewel in the crown of Britain. They are the best in the world, along with those of the United States of America, and international students contribute up to £14 billion to our economy. Yet Cambridge University has just announced a 14% drop in students applying from the European Union. I declare my interests as a chancellor of the University of Birmingham and as chair of the advisory board of the University of Cambridge Judge Business School. I am also president of UKCISA, the UK Council for International Student Affairs, which represents the 450,000 international students in this country, of which 180,000 are from the European Union.

This is not just about the money; it is about what these students contribute to our universities. They enrich the experience of our domestic students and they build lifelong bridges between our country and their countries around the European Union, with friendships that last for generations. Our international students and universities are one of the strongest elements of soft power that exists in this country. It is not only the students but also the academics at our universities, up to 20% of whom are from the European Union.

When it comes to research, the amendment speaks about Horizon 2020 and European research area programmes. A lot of funding comes into our universities from the European Union. For example, the University of Cambridge—at the top of the list, I think—took about £100 million of funding. But again, it is not just the funding that is in jeopardy. The Government might say, “We will replace that funding”. But what is at stake are the collaborations we might lose out on. The power of collaborative research is extraordinary. At the University of Birmingham, our field-weighted citation impact is 1.87 when we do our own research; Harvard University’s is 2.4 when it does its own research. But when we do combined research with Harvard University, the figure is 5.69. That is the power of collaborative research—and I am proud to be an alumnus of the Harvard Business School.

When you put all that together—the students, academics and research funding from the European Union, as well as our collaborative research with the European Union—it is all in jeopardy, all under threat and all uncertain. Could the Minister give us as much certainty as possible about this vital area of our economy?

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I very much support what the noble Lord just said, but I am speaking in support of Amendments 16 and 33. My main focus will be women’s rights—covered by Amendment 33—but first I want to mention briefly the rights of disabled people, with reference to Amendment 16. Concerns have been raised by groups such as Disability Rights UK and the Papworth Trust, concerning, in particular, issues around employment, personal mobility and transport, accessibility and health and social care. On this last point, there is a very real concern that, apparently, a disproportionate number of personal assistants to disabled and frail people are from other European Union countries. There is a real worry about what will happen to the caring services. These issues were raised in the recent Lords debate on Brexit and disabled people, but I do not think they were satisfactorily addressed by the Minister responding to that debate.

On Amendment 33, while I value the Government’s commitment to preventing the erosion of equalities protections at the point of leaving the EU, I hope they will take on board a broad warning of the Women and Equalities Committee report, published yesterday, that the process will be complex—as has been said—and that there could be an unintentional regression if the greatest care is not taken. The committee advises on how this could be done and how to embed principles of equality in our own law, mirroring, for example, the Human Rights Act 1998.

It also makes a point I made at Second Reading about what happens in the future. My noble friend Lady Drake pointed out that the EU has been the driver of many women’s rights, not just the principle of equal value but, for example, opposing direct sex discrimination in social security law. I spent many hours campaigning in the 1970s against the very real discrimination that married women faced in social security law and it was thanks to the EU that we got rid of it. It would have taken us a lot longer if it had not been for the EU. At present there are discussions in the EU about, for example, strengthening leave for fathers and for carers. It is important that we are not left behind as the EU itself progresses, particularly—again echoing what my noble friend said—given all the talk about the possible move to a radical enterprise economy if there is no deal. I note what Sir John Major said about the implications of this for our welfare state.

At Second Reading I cited the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which has called on the Government to commit to taking on board future rights-enhancing laws emanating from the EU where appropriate. I asked the Minister to clarify the Government’s position on this. I do not know whether the Minister is listening. I understand that he did not have the time to respond then, but I would very much appreciate a response now.

European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 27th February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

That is not what the noble Lord’s amendment says. It is an interesting argument. When he says that the money is going to disappear because we will be poorer, that brings me to the extraordinary Amendment 22, which appears to be supported by a former Cabinet Secretary. It asks for,

“any existing impact assessments or economic forecasts relating to the United Kingdom’s future trading relationship with the European Union conducted by HM Treasury, the Department for Exiting the European Union, the Department for International Trade or the Office for Budget Responsibility”.

As my noble friend Lord Blencathra pointed out, the Treasury and the Office for Budget Responsibility told us that we would have a recession and limited growth and that unemployment, interest rates and mortgages would go up, all of which has not happened. We have turned out to be the most successful economy in the G7. This continuing running down of our economy and telling people that we will be worse off is not good for confidence or for the Government and it flies in the face of what people voted for. They listened to all these impact assessments and decided not to believe them, which is why they voted to leave the European Union.

[Lord Bilimoria]

Is the noble Lord finishing?

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

Is the noble Lord wishing to intervene? The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, wants to intervene.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

I just say to the noble Lord that at least I am not asleep.

[Lord Bilimoria (CB)]

My Lords, I intend to build on the comments made by the right reverend Prelate in relation to universities and to link that subject into the whole debate about leaving the single market. The Indian Finance Minister is in the country and he was asked a question today about free trade agreements between the UK and India. He made it clear that free trade agreements are not just about tariffs and goods; they are about goods and services and people. He specifically mentioned students and the ability of Indian students to study over here.

A report came out on 23 February saying that almost a third of university academics are from outside the UK. If you look at certain areas—engineering and technology—non-UK academics account for 42% of the staff. In maths, physics and biology, 38% of staff are non-UK and most of them are from EU countries. Then you have the statistic—I declare my interest as chair of the advisory board of the Cambridge Judge Business School and Chancellor of the University of Birmingham—provided by Professor Catherine Barnard from the University of Cambridge, who told MPs that her university had seen a 14% drop in applications this year from EU students. There is, therefore, already a worry about the future of EU students and EU academics.

You cannot just say, “We don’t do impact assessments”. That would be foolish in business: if I make a forecast and I get that forecast wrong, does that mean that I stop forecasting in future? I would be foolish not to forecast. You have to keep trying to forecast, even though you might not always get it right. Impact assessments are absolutely essential. It is wrong to keep going on about the will of the people and saying that we therefore do not need to do anything, or to say that the forecasts were all wrong so we can ignore forecasts and experts. We are going to start sounding like Donald Trump complaining about the elites and ignoring the experts. No, we must continue to forecast and have impact assessments. We must look at the concerns of our universities, our academics and our students and at the potential loss of EU students and academics in the future.

[Baroness Massey of Darwen (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 27. I am pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, has just said what he did about impact assessments, because I, too, am going to speak about them, but in this case in relation to inequality. I support the views of the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, on impact assessments and other issues. Of course they are not all rubbish; they are for measuring and calling to account. That is what we should be doing.

The Equality Act 2010 provides a basic framework of protection against direct and indirect discrimination, harassment and victimisation in services and public functions. It provides protection for people from discrimination because they are perceived to have, or are associated with someone who has, a protected characteristic. It extends the provisions related to disability and includes gender pay discrimination, private clubs and new powers for employment tribunals. The purpose of this new clause is to ensure that the impact of decisions on those with protected characteristics is considered, taken into account and debated at every stage of the negotiation process for Brexit. That is all—just looked at and debated.

The word “equality”—and its implications—is curiously absent from documents from the White Paper onwards. Given the various debates that Britain and Europe have had about race, disability, gender, sexuality, employment and so on, it seems amiss not to be screening for discrimination in these and other areas related to equality. We must have regard for such potential discrimination during the process of our deliberations and in the final deal. This new clause would ensure that considerations of equality were at the forefront of government thinking throughout the withdrawal process and would inform the new arrangements. That is necessary to ensure a good deal for everyone and to make sure that any negative impact on those with protected characteristics was presented up front and that steps were taken to deal with potential negative impacts.

The Minister in another place responded to the deliberations on this new clause by saying:

“The Prime Minister has been clear: we want the UK to emerge from this period of change stronger, fairer, and more united and outward-looking than ever before. We want to get the right deal abroad, but ensure we get a better deal for ordinary working people at home. In the White Paper, we set out our ambition to use this moment of change to build a stronger economy and a fairer society by embracing genuine economic and social reform”.—[Official Report, Commons, 7/2/17; col. 392.]


What I am seeking in this amendment is a reassurance that practical measures, such as scrutiny of equality implications, and protection will be built into the Brexit process for all, whatever their condition, in all aspects of life.

European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Tuesday 21st February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bilimoria (CB)]

My Lords, I am as much a Eurosceptic as any Brexiteer. I do not like the way in which the European Parliament works. Nobody knows their MEP; MEPs have no connection with their constituencies and move from Brussels to Strasbourg every month. The euro is a disaster; one size will never fit all. Thank God we did not join it. I thought that we missed out on Schengen for business and tourist visas, but one of my favourite sayings is that good judgment comes from experience and experience comes from bad judgment. We are lucky not to be in Schengen. In many ways, we are not affected as much by the migration crisis. From a security point of view it is better not to be in Schengen.

There is no question but that, with our democratic system, we have to accept the result of the referendum, however narrow it was. When the Minister sums up, will he clarify why, when we passed the referendum Bill, this was an advisory referendum? Why was it not set in stone that it would become law straightaway? Why was there no supra-majority, which is normal for something like this? Compare it with the AV referendum, which was very simple. The outcomes were spelled out—yes or no; for or against AV. It was a simple yes or no question. Here, however, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jowell, said yesterday, the question was black and white—remain or leave—but with a technicolour answer.

As several of my fellow Cross-Benchers and other noble Lords have said, we have to accept the result of the referendum. However, because the outcome of the no vote is totally unclear, it is not that simple. People voted to leave for a number of reasons. Many, sadly, believed the figure of £350 million a week to save the NHS. No one put it to them that this was despite its being a gross figure and despite the fact that the £8 billion to £10 billion of our net contribution is barely 1% of our Government’s annual expenditure per year. I have met people who voted for that reason. People voted to take back control of EU laws. When I have asked people who did this to name any EU laws that affects them day to day, they cannot name one. I built Cobra beer from scratch over a quarter of a century and I have not spent one hour of one day worrying about EU legislation. EU law, the law that is made in this country, is predominantly made by us in this Parliament, whether it is about taxes, planning or business rates.

The biggest issue of all was immigration. How badly this subject has been portrayed. These 3 million EU citizens, many of them leaving homes and families thousands of miles away, not knowing the language, come over here, work hard in an alien culture and put in five times more than they get out in taxes and benefits. Are we grateful to them? If we are grateful to them, right now, without legislation, we should be guaranteeing that they should be allowed to stay here. The Government should confirm this and I ask the Minister to do so. Far from being a burden on our country, these people work in our public sector. In fact, many parts of our public sector would collapse without them. Some 160,000 work in our NHS and care sector. Sajid Javid wants to build more homes: 250,000 people from the EU work in our construction sector. We have less than 5% unemployment, the lowest in living memory. We have the highest level of employment in living memory. What would we do without these people? We would not be the fifth largest economy in the world.

I am chancellor of the University of Birmingham and I chair the advisory board of the Cambridge Judge Business School. Some 20% of our academics come from the EU. I am president of UKCISA, the UK Council for International Student Affairs. We have 450,000 foreign students, 180,000 of them from the EU. It is not just about the money that comes for research. As the vice-chancellor of Cambridge said, more worrying than the loss of revenue is the damage to the networks of collaboration on which world-class science depends today. The Indian high commissioner gave an interview just this week in which he said, “Yes, we can talk about free trade agreements, but we also need to talk about visas and immigration”. Does the Minister accept that we should stop including international students in our net migration figures? They should be removed at once.

When these facts are made clear, when we move away from going back to hate crime and racism thanks to this wretched referendum, then people will have every right to change their mind. After all, the Prime Minister changed her mind; she was a remainer. Phillip Hammond changed his mind. Our court jester, Boris Johnson, was emphatic to remain just a couple of years ago. We are respecting the will of the people but not accepting that the people can change their minds. Look at the hypocrisy of it. It is said that countries such as the United States of America, China and India do not have trade deals with the European Union but they still deal with the European Union and that Brexit means that we are unleashed to do deals with the whole of the rest of the world, but we are going to give up the biggest deal on our doorstep—50% of our trade. What hypocrisy. Keynes said, “When the facts change, I change my mind”. Here, the facts may not change but people will wake up to the facts and then they may want to change their minds.

I think it is wrong that this House of Lords has been threatened. I think it is wrong that people are told that they are not patriotic if they are not for Brexit and that they are not for Britain if they are not for Brexit. That is wrong and it is disrespectful. The attitude of this Government, who have had to go to the High Court and the Supreme Court and have produced a White Paper only when pressed to, is neglecting government. If we want to negotiate now we will have to negotiate with many different countries, yet the Government are saying that no deal is better than a bad deal. Leaving the single market and ruining our economy would be a bad deal. To emphasise what the noble Lord, Lord Butler, said, logically, because of the nature of this question, there is no way we can respect the will of the people if we do not go back to them with the deal that we have and ask, “Are you now happy to leave on this basis?”.

Where sovereignty is concerned, I conclude by saying that we have our sovereignty. We measure our roads in miles and our petrol in litres. I pour my draft beer in pints and sell it on the supermarket shelves in litres. No one can force us to join the EU army or force us into further integration. As the noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell, said, there will be complications for the Civil Service. There are 38 countries and regional assemblies that we will have to negotiate with—six in Belgium alone. The majority of the youth of our country voted to stay. We have to think of the youth of our country. I conclude by quoting Professor Deepak Malhotra of the Harvard Business School, a world expert in negotiation, who said, “Karan, read a book called The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman about the beginning of the First World War”. We are currently commemorating the centenary of that unnecessary war that sacrificed millions of lives. He said, “Reading that book is like watching a train crash in slow motion”. That is what we are watching right now.

UK Withdrawal from the EU and Potential Withdrawal from the Single Market

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Thursday 26th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bilimoria (CB)]

My Lords, when the Government lost the case in the Supreme Court, the reason that I thought it was a very good thing for this country was that I believe it was wrong of the Prime Minister and the Government to try to by-pass Parliament in this matter. It is not that I want in any way to delay implementing Article 50—the timing of Article 50, by the way, is a huge negotiating tool and I do not think it was right for the Prime Minister to say we would impose it on a certain date; it is giving away a big part of the negotiation—but, importantly, we are a parliamentary democracy and this Parliament should be involved from day 1. This case has now established that we will be involved from day 1, and the Prime Minister is already U-turning—a White Paper; no White Paper; now we have a White Paper coming and there will be more to come. I am really relieved that this has happened.

We are talking about people—3 million people from the European Union who are over here and working. And in spite of the non-EU workers over here, we have the lowest level of unemployment in our history and the highest level of employment in our history. We need these people. We heard up front from the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, how the National Health Service would not function without the foreign workers that we have—160,000 are EU workers—and about the care sector and hospitality industry. Sajid Javid wants to build more houses; 250,000 people from the European Union work in the construction industry. You can go to a restaurant or a hotel anywhere in the country—I was in Bristol yesterday—and of course there are EU staff serving you and working very hard. As the noble Lord, Lord Judd, said, instead of being grateful for this, we are treating these people as bargaining chips.

Can the Minister confirm how many EU citizens there are here exactly and how many of them are here beyond five years and eligible to stay under our permanent residency rules? He cannot give us an answer, because we have removed our exit checks from our borders. We have no control over our borders. If we bring back visible exit checks and check every EU person and non-EU person in and out, we will know who is and who is not here. We will not make assumptions that foreign students overstay, when only a small fraction of them do. As the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick, said, our universities are dependent on EU workers. Thirty per cent of academics are foreign and 18% to 20% are from the EU. What happens to all the EU students who might not come because they were reliant on being treated like domestic students and eligible for loans? It is 160,000 students—I am the president of UKCISA and chancellor of the University of Birmingham. We are jeopardising all this and it is seriously dangerous. The Government need to get on and control our borders.

I was with Professor Deepak Malhotra at the Harvard Business School, who is an expert in negotiations. He said that it is very likely that there will be a no-deal scenario—this would be disastrous. His view is that if a deal is going to happen, we need to be creative and we need to be sensitive to the other side. Both sides will have to make concessions. The EU is not trying to punish us. If we look at it from its point of view, it is trying to preserve the Union and keep it together. Smart negotiators know that the goal is not to win but to achieve their objectives. We need to have empathy for the other side.

What really worries me is the mindset of this Government when it comes to immigration—all immigration. It is across the country. This wretched referendum has created race and hate crime that did not exist before. It has unleashed it. It is sad that when the Prime Minister was Home Secretary, she made statements that she wanted foreign students to leave the day they graduated. The Chancellor of the day had to say that it was not Conservative Party or government policy. Amber Rudd wanted companies to list foreign workers. Immediately, there was an outcry in the country. Then a Minister I have never heard of wanted companies to pay £1,000 for every EU worker. This is ridiculous. It shows the mindset of the Government—we have to get out of this mindset. If we are going to get through this negotiation, it must be in the best interests of this country that we treat with gratitude the 3 million EU workers who are here and who have benefited our country and helped to make us the fifth—or sixth—largest economy in the world.

Article 50 (Constitution Committee Report)

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bilimoria (CB)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, and his committee on their excellent report. We should acknowledge that this House has huge authority but also that, within it, one of its most reputed parts is the European Union Committee and its sub-committees. It is one of the most respected bodies not only in both Houses of Parliament but throughout Europe. The European Union Committee is held up as an authority to be listened to and respected. When it says that it believes that Parliament can play a vital role in offering constructive and timely comment on both the process and the substance of the negotiations and that such scrutiny will contribute to a greater sense of parliamentary ownership of the process, strengthening the Government’s negotiating position and increasing the likelihood that the final agreement will enjoy parliamentary and public support, I think that we should listen.

The committee has said that Parliament has a duty here, which is the crux of this whole matter. Let us go all the way back to Oliver Cromwell and what he did when King Charles went too far. The principle of parliamentary supremacy was then established once and for all. Cromwell was the most famous alumnus of my college at Cambridge, Sidney Sussex, and his statue still stands outside Parliament even though he was responsible for killing a King. The principle of parliamentary supremacy was established when things went too far. Let us fast forward to today. We are talking about a situation where we must ask: is it the will of the people that Brexit means Brexit, or is it for parliamentary democracy? Then it is all about the individual who is to sit on the Woolsack, where for centuries we had the legislature, the judiciary and the Executive all in one person—completely conflicted but not giving rise to a problem for centuries. There was no need to establish the Supreme Court because we had a perfectly good working system right here in the highest court in the land, the House of Lords.

Now, this is all about the balance and the wonderful unwritten constitution of ours, a delicate thread that has been woven through the centuries and has built the strength and foundation of this amazing country. That foundation lies in the rule of law, and respect for the fairness and independence of our judiciary is at its crux.

The noble Lord, Lord Kerr, in his submission to the committee said:

“This is not the Montreux Convention or the Antarctic Treaty. We are talking about something that … will affect almost every area of public life in this country … Vast areas of domestic policy will be affected, and policy choices possibly foreclosed … by this negotiation. Therefore, it follows that this is a treaty where there absolutely needs to be very full parliamentary scrutiny”.

The committee said that:

“It would be constitutionally inappropriate, not to mention setting a disturbing precedent, for the Executive to act on an advisory referendum without explicit parliamentary approval—particularly one with such significant long-term consequences. The Government should not trigger Article 50 without consulting Parliament”.

That is the crux of it. What was the Prime Minister thinking? Why try to ride roughshod over Parliament? Why try to bully us and disturb our wonderful convention and history? Let us be honest: as I said earlier, this referendum result was democratically definitive, but the figures were 52% to 48%, representing 17 million people and 16 million people respectively. We keep talking about the will of the people, but what about the will of the 16 million? Any responsible constituency MP says, “I have been elected by the majority of my constituents but I look after the interests of every individual in my constituency whether they voted for my party or not”.

One of the recommendations is:

“We recommend that the new Committee appointed to scrutinise Brexit should incorporate the existing scrutiny functions of the European Union Committee”.

Does the Minister agree that that should happen? No one has mentioned so far the fact that the report talks about the wonderful concept of parliamentary diplomacy. Parliament should play an active diplomatic role throughout the Brexit process and the European Union Committee is perfectly placed to do that. Again, does the Minister agree with that?

In the speech she made yesterday to the CBI, the Prime Minister said:

“For this is a true national moment. The decision of the British people on 23rd June gives us a once-in-a-generation chance to shape a new future for our nation”.

But what about the generations ahead?

I turn to the legal ruling that has led to all this. Kenneth Armstrong, professor of European law at the University of Cambridge—and here I declare an interest as chairman of the advisory board of the Cambridge Judge Business School—has written an article entitled Victory for Parliamentary Democracy in which he states:

“However, while the outcome of the referendum has given the Government a political mandate to withdraw from the EU, the legal power to notify must be exercised within legal limits. The High Court has concluded that where an exercise of the Royal Prerogative would remove legal rights, derived from EU law but made available in domestic law by Parliament through the European Communities Act, only Parliament can legislate for such rights to be removed”.

It cannot be any clearer than that. Government lawyers argued that the prerogative powers were a legitimate way to give effect to the will of the people, but the summary of the judgment stated that,

“the Government does not have the power under the Crown’s prerogative to give notice pursuant to Article 50”.

Of course, this has scared Nigel Farage, who said that we were heading for a “half-Brexit.” The noble Lord, Lord Kerr, the author of Article 50, seemed to suggest that once we invoke Article 50, we may be able to retract from it during that process. This is a debatable issue.

Just recently, the Government decided not to implement the recommendations of the Strathclyde review, with the Leader of the House stating:

“We recognise the valuable role of the House of Lords … The Government are therefore reliant on the discipline and self-regulation that this House imposes upon itself”.

But then came the threat:

“Should that break down, we would have reflect on this decision”.—[Official Report, 17/11/16; col. 1539.]

How many times have I been told by people in the other place: “Watch it. Don’t go too far, otherwise that’ll be the end of you lot”? I have heard it outside as well: “You unelected Peers pushed this too far. Your days are numbered”. However, the House of Lords has killed only five statutory instruments supported by Governments since 1945. Let us get real: this House, when it boils down to it, does not filibuster; this House does not block for the sake of blocking; this House does not throw out legislation; we debate it in the best interests not of one party or another but of the country. Three senior members of the Conservative Party, including Dominic Grieve, the former Attorney-General, have said that the Government should withdraw their appeal to the Supreme Court and just get on with it.

We talk about a transitional deal. The noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, said that Brexit would be a long-drawn-out process. It will take two to 10 years. The elements of it are not as simple as exiting the European Union. What about the treaties, whether it is staying in the single market or in the customs union or doing trade deals? The Prime Minister saw this in action in India—I was there when she was. She thought that she could go there with Liam Fox and come back with trade deals. Before she went out, it was announced that Indian IT workers’ minimum salaries would be increased by 50%. One of India’s main exports is its excellent IT services, from which our public services and private sector benefit. Suddenly, they are told that salaries will be 50% higher, which makes them less competitive. When the Prime Minister was there, she spoke about returning to India Indians who had overstayed—that has built a lot of friendship as well. Then, when she had 35 university leaders there with Jo Johnson, she did not mention higher education or universities once in her opening speech; she did not even meet the university leaders, whereas Prime Minister Modi, one of the most powerful people in the world, said humbly that the mobility of India’s youth in education was crucial. We send out negative messages about international students; we still treat them as immigrants and include them in our net immigration figures; and we think that we can do trade deals with India. Dream on.

Canada took eight years to do a trade deal with the EU—it was 1,600 pages. The noble Lord, Lord Kerr, spoke about that. What do the Europeans think about all this? We know for a fact that the whole world thinks that we should not leave the European Union—I know that; India is a perfect example. Anyone I speak to in India—civil servants, government or business—says, “You shouldn’t leave the European Union”. The whole world except Donald Trump thinks that we should stay in the European Union. What about what the Europeans think? We talk about great negotiations—“They need us more than we need them”. What nonsense. Forty-five per cent of our exports go to the EU and 55% of our imports come from it. We are net importers from the EU; we are only 8% of its exports, and that is spread out between 27 countries. Get real. Twenty-seven countries, encompassing nearly 500 million people, will be negotiating against us. We are not in the strongest negotiating position here. According to the Dutch Finance Minister, Boris Johnson has said things which are “intellectually impossible”. The Home Affairs Committee heard that the Brexit campaign had created a dangerously toxic EU debate where facts did not matter.

I do not have the time to re-run the referendum, but the crux of it is that there was a definitive democratic vote to leave the European Union—but based on what? I have met people who said: “I voted to leave the European Union because I wanted to save the NHS”, because they believed the claim on the leave battle bus about £350 million a week being put back into the NHS, a claim in front of which Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson spoke on TV time and again. People voted for different reasons, based on lies.

As the EU Committee’s report states:

“The forthcoming negotiations … will be unprecedented in their complexity”.

The basis is highly complicated and the outcome is far from certain. Does the Minister agree, as many noble Lords have suggested, that there should be a Green Paper, let alone a White Paper, on this?

The Prime Minister wants to use the royal prerogative. One of the strongest areas in which such a prerogative can be used is in going to war—a Prime Minister does not need to consult us; they can go to war. Have they done that in recent history? In 2011, with Libya, the Government granted a vote. In 2013 and 2015, with Syria and Iraq, the Government granted a vote. The Government have not exercised the prerogative, yet here is something that will affect the whole of this country, including our security, and the Prime Minister thinks that she can just go ahead without such a vote. A headline to an article written by Vernon Bogdanor, previously of Oxford University and now at King’s College London, states:

“The EU referendum shows how the sovereignty of Britain’s people can now trump its Parliament”.

That is the big issue here. Is Parliament sovereign? Here is the irony of it all: “Vote leave and take back control. Take back control of our Parliament”. And then Parliament is just cut out of it, and that is convenient. That is hypocrisy. It is contradictory and hypocritical.

I said before the vote and straight after it that there would be repercussions. The first vote of no confidence in this country by the world was the devaluation of the pound—it fell by as much as 20% and is still 15% lower than its pre-vote value. That is the first sign of the uncertainty, which could then lead to higher interest rates, which could then lead to inflation, which could then lead to our economy not growing as quickly, which could then lead to problems for every citizen of this country.

I conclude by referring to the way in which our judges were attacked. I remember when I came as a student to this country and heard Lord Denning, then Master of the Rolls, speak. It was a speech that I will never forget. Then the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Hale, was criticised, including by Iain Duncan Smith, who said that there would be a constitutional crisis. And then the judges were called “enemies of the people”. The noble and learned Baroness said in response:

“It is unfortunate that isn’t made clear to the British public, because it is very important they understand what the role of the judiciary is, which is to hear cases in a fair, neutral, and impartial way. You have to be independent and true to your judicial oath and cannot allow yourself to be swayed by extraneous considerations that have nothing to do with the law”.

When at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet last week the Lord Mayor, Andrew Parmley, praised the judges, he got the biggest ovation of the evening. Our judiciary are respected as the finest, the most just and the fairest in the world. They are independent. There is no way that we should ever dare to criticise them.

This House has the greatest depth and breadth of expertise of any parliamentary Chamber in the world. It would be a waste for it not to be consulted. The point being made by the committee is that this House and Parliament need to be consulted on Article 50 right at the beginning, right through the process and right after it. That is what is at stake here. We need to be part of this process throughout, because our role is that of the guardians of the nation. Whether or not it is smart Brexit, as the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, called it, what is at essence is that we will do our best for this country and nothing else.

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

My Lords, I remind your Lordships that in a debate of this type, with the exception of those from the Front Benches, contributions are normally about 10 minutes. I think that that would help the conduct of proceedings.

Next Steps in Leaving the European Union

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Monday 10th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bridges of Headley]

My noble friend makes some very wise points, coming from the position that I know he does. It is absolutely critical that as we go on we are very clear and precise in the terms we use. As he rightly said, there is a great difference between membership and access. In the debate over the last few weeks, people have become rather confused on this. I agree that it is critical that we are clear what we are talking about. On where we are going, as I said, I am not in a position at the Dispatch Box to go further in defining the Government’s course of action other than to say that clearly we are considering a whole range of options, but equally clearly it is in our interests to ensure that we get the maximum freedom for business to trade with and within the single market.

[Lord Bilimoria (CB)]

Would the Minister just clarify the timing? The Prime Minister has decided to go ahead with pressing the button for Article 50 by the end of March next year. Yet I heard from a very senior level of the Government at the time the referendum was declared last summer, “Why did you rush into this?”. We rushed into it because the Europeans told us, “Get it out of the way before the French and German elections”. Now we are rushing into it with the French and German elections, and we have two years in which to negotiate when their minds will be on their elections. Could the timing be explained?

On the prerogative, why is it that when a Prime Minister has a prerogative to go to war, every time—whether it is Iraq or Syria—they come to Parliament to approve it, yet in a situation like this, one of the most important decisions in 40 years, Parliament does not have a say? How can the Government say it was a definitive decision? It was 52:48. It was not 70:30 or 60:40 but 52:48. The instruction of the public was to leave—but on what basis? No immigration or reduced immigration? No contribution to the EU or reduced contribution to the EU? If it is not definite, why can we not have a say in helping the country to, in the words of the Statement, deliver prosperity for its people?