Further Developments in Discussions with the European Union under Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Monday 11th March 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bilimoria (CB)]

My Lords, today is Commonwealth Day, with a Commonwealth of 53 countries and 2.4 billion people—India makes up more than half of them with 1.25 billion people. A big part of the leave campaign was about global Britain doing more trade with Commonwealth countries. The reality is that 9% of our trade at the moment is with Commonwealth countries, versus 50% with the EU and another 17% through EU trade deals, now including that with Japan which has just been formed, the biggest trade deal in history.

Recently, I taught a negotiating class at the Cambridge Judge Business School, on which I chair the advisory board. It was on negotiations, with Brexit as a case study of how not to do it. As Sun Tzu says, every war is won or lost before it is even started. The starting point of all this was a 52:48 narrow position, whereas the previous two national referenda we had were won by two-thirds majorities—quite conclusive. The next thing is that we rushed into it. Prime Minister David Cameron went to Brussels and came back empty-handed, especially on the emergency brake on migration, which was a big issue at the time. Why has no one spoken—why did he not speak—about the EU regulation in 2004 that allows every EU country to repatriate EU nationals after three months if they cannot show that they can support themselves? Other European countries, including Belgium, use this regulation to control EU migration and have repatriated thousands. We have never done that. Finally the Government acknowledged that to me, but will the noble and learned Lord tell me why it has not been brought to the notice of the public? In 2015-16, immigration was one of people’s biggest fears—the migration crisis, the sad, sad stories that we saw. Today, concerns about immigration are the lowest in more than 15 years.

It is now almost three years since the referendum. The world has changed: we have Trump, trade wars—I could go on. People did not know much about the European Union three years ago; now everyone knows much more. Northern Ireland was barely mentioned in the referendum; now it has become the Achilles heel.

As has been said, we were told that a trade deal with the EU would be so easy to do. In reality, the Government rushed into imposing Article 50, one of their biggest bargaining points, and we have wasted two years on this withdrawal agreement. What is the withdrawal agreement? Agreeing to citizens’ rights between the EU and Britain? We cannot have people used as bargaining chips. To me, it was obvious that we had to sort that out. As for the £39 billion, what is £39 billion in the context of Britain, which has a £2 trillion a year economy in the long run? It is an immaterial figure in the bigger picture. Finally, there is the backstop. That is it. That is all we have done. We were meant to roll over all these EU deals; we are ready to roll over only six of them, including with the Faroe Islands. We have had three Brexit Secretaries.

The biggest difference is that Europe negotiated properly: it negotiated the process first and substance later. What did the Prime Minister do? Set red lines: no more customs union, no more single market, no more ECJ, no more free movement of people. On top of that, the EU had a clear mandate from 27 countries and one negotiator: Michel Barnier. It said very clearly: “You cannot have your cake and eat it too. You cannot have the same terms as you have now”—rightly so—“and you have already had the best of both worlds. You are not in the euro, you are not in Schengen, you measure your roads in miles, you pour your beer in pints. Now you want to opt out and want all the opt-ins”.

The EU has been united throughout this period, whereas we have a Prime Minister without a majority, reliant on the DUP. We have both major political parties, the Government and the Opposition, split. The EU and the world are looking on this great country saying, “Why are you shooting yourself in both feet with both barrels?” The noble Lord, Lord Armstrong, with his years of experience, used the term a “sense of shame”.

This deal is a blindfold Brexit. It will be to infinity and beyond. It is the worst of all worlds. It is bad regardless of the backstop; it is the worst of all deals. If it is voted down, as logically it should be unless something miraculous appears overnight, Parliament must then take no deal off the table. No deal is causing uncertainty. The CBI’s chief economist, Rain Newton-Smith, said:

“With Brexit stuck in stalemate, this only means growing damage today and a weaker economy tomorrow. Growth is at a near standstill and investment is evaporating; the economy is undoubtedly slowing down … the spectre of no deal is holding them back from investing in new factories, new overseas markets and new jobs”.


The next thing we as a Parliament must do is seek an extension to Article 50. That would give the Government, the Conservative Party and the Labour Party a chance to compromise on a Norway-style deal. Remember: we had a vote over here during the withdrawal Bill. I was one of the signatories to the amendment when we voted overwhelmingly that the EEA option was the least bad option.

Putting the decision back to the people would be the best option by far. As the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, pointed out, 2 million more youngsters—including my younger son, who will be 18 on 21 March—are now eligible to vote, at least 75% of whom would vote to remain. Sadly, about 1.5 million older voters have left this world since the referendum, most of whom voted to leave. Look at the demographics: 1.5 million versus 2 million. On top of that, the youngsters who did not turn out in June 2016 regret it. How many times have we heard, “Respect the will of the people, the 17.4 million”, in debates? Which 17.4 million? One and a half million of them are not even here. What about the others? Today’s electorate and democracy—the reality of today—matter.

I conclude with a point on the essence of it all. In a recent debate, when the Minister pointed out that the Prime Minister’s deal would leave us 7% better off than no deal, I asked him whether he agreed that the best option for our economy by far would be remaining. Why are we forcing ourselves into this position? In a business, you go to the shareholders, who make a narrow decision and say, “Go and do the deal”. The board of directors and managers then try to do the deal, but if they find the deal so bad that it might destroy the company, do they still implement it? If they go back to the shareholders and say, “Are you sure you want to do this deal? It will destroy our business”, do the shareholders say, “We made the decision. You’ve got to do it”? That is the reality. Why is our country doing this? The British people, the people of this great country, deserve better. We deserve to take back control. Ironically, the best way to do that is to remain in the European Union.

Brexit: Negotiations

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Tuesday 20th November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bilimoria (CB)]

My Lords, the Prime Minister has said these things for two and a half years: Brexit means Brexit; no deal is better than a bad deal; we will leave the EU on 29 March 2019; there are red lines in leaving the customs union and single market; we will take back control of our borders and laws; we will have no more to do with the ECJ; the result was 52:48; the previous EU referendum was won with 67% of the vote, and was convincing and decisive.

Now we are told that we must implement the will and instructions of the British people. Time and again, we have been told that 17.4 million people voted to leave. What about the rest of the 50 million people in Britain, including the 16.1 million people who voted to remain? What about Scotland, London, Northern Ireland and young people, all of whom voted to remain? Two and a half years after the referendum, the country is being held to ransom by a narrow decision made by just over 25% of our population.

Throughout the negotiations, we talked about equivalence and asked whether we would get something as good as what we have now as part of the European Union. This deal is not about protecting jobs, security and the integrity of the UK, as the Prime Minister said. Northern Ireland, the Achilles heel of Brexit, remains a circle that cannot be squared without jeopardising the Good Friday agreement and the almost-century-old common travel area. What a mess we are in. This is now a hokey-cokey Brexit; it is a case of in and out and shake it all about, as said by the noble Lord, Lord Reid.

The EU is not perfect but it is not the bogeyman. It has not bullied us; Michel Barnier has followed the instructions of 27 other countries. The EU has said, “You, the UK, want to leave and have boxed yourself in with red lines. You opted into Europe 45 years ago but you have had your cake and eaten it because you have had all the opt-outs too. We are talking about the biggest and best free trade agreement in the world, yet you are not in the eurozone, you are not part of the Schengen agreement and you are not for further unification. Now you want to opt out but have all the opt-ins”.

We are losing our sovereignty. Day by day, we are losing our standing in the world. No one in the world, including the EU, wants us to leave. London has already lost to New York its number one spot as a leading financial centre. In future, we will not be at the top table. As said by the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, we will pay but have no say. Two-thirds of MPs and 75% of this House wanted to remain in the EU at the time of the referendum. What has happened to our precious representative democracy, spoken about by the noble Lord, Lord Higgins? Do we have the guts to do the right thing for our country?

No deal is not an option. That is pretty unanimous. So the choice is between this deal and a transition period until 2020 or possibly 2022—the can has been kicked down the road—with a backstop that we may be held to inordinately. Two-thirds of our global trade is already with and through the EU. We have a six-and-a-half-page political declaration being finalised in six and a half days. What a fudge this is; it is a blind Brexit. Spain is already talking about having a veto over Gibraltar. The French are already talking about their fishing rights. The British public have been sold a pup. This is not in the best interests of our economy, businesses or citizens.

What about the 800,000 children born every year in this country? Since 2016, that makes almost 2 million more 16 and 17 year-olds who would be allowed to vote today. If the transition period goes on until 2022, almost 5 million young people will not have a say when their future is at risk. We have to break the spell. It would be democratic, after two and a half years—a normal democratic cycle—to go back to the people and say, “If you have changed your minds or do not like what you see, you can vote differently”. The polls already show that 100 leave constituencies now want to remain. Last week, straight after the Prime Minister’s Statement, 54% would have voted to remain, as opposed to 48% in 2016, and 55% wanted a second referendum.

If we really want to respect the will of the people this should not be Hobson’s choice of a deal or no deal, and a bad deal at that. The British people can get their future back by choosing the Prime Minister’s newly declared option: no Brexit. We need a people’s vote. That would stop this train crash, save our union, respect the will of our people and do the right thing for the British people.

Good Friday Agreement: Impact of Brexit

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Thursday 11th October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bilimoria (CB)]

My Lords, I remember when my father was posted as a lieutenant-colonel from the Indian Army to the British Army in Warminster, Wiltshire, seeing the Troubles as a young boy living among soldiers. I then went back to school and to university in India, and came back for my higher education here in the UK. In 1982, just as I was about to move into the International Students House in Regent’s Park, there was a tragic attack on our soldiers there. As an Indian coming over here, I have witnessed and felt the Troubles as a young boy and a student.

Later on, I had the privilege of going to Northern Ireland with the UK-India talks and seeing it on the ground after the Good Friday agreement. Anyone who goes to Belfast today will see the high fences and barriers that still exist, in spite of that agreement. The Good Friday agreement was precious. The noble Lord, Lord Trimble, who is not in his place, won a Nobel Peace Prize for it. We are grateful to everyone involved who enabled what is now an amazing 20-year-old peace process to have happened. What is happening today? For the sake of something called Brexit, we are threatening the very union and the very peace of the United Kingdom. At the heart of the Good Friday agreement was north-south co-operation and east-west co-operation—they were absolutely interlinked.

Look at the movement of people, to which the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, alluded. There is a free travel area between Ireland and the UK. We are not in Schengen. If somebody gets a visa for the UK, they can go to Ireland; if somebody gets a visa for Ireland, they can come to the UK. However, that is in the context of being in the European Union. People such as Arlene Foster say that the Good Friday agreement is not sacrosanct and praise Boris Johnson’s Brexit vision. But the Good Friday agreement was created in the context of the European Union and the free movement of people, goods, services and capital, and of the UK and Ireland united in this context.

Now we have the backstop. I remember sitting next to an EU Prime Minister who said, “We’ve got the backstop”. I said, “How can this backstop logically work? It cannot work”. There is no workable backstop in the way that it is being proposed at the moment. In fact, Sammy Wilson initially described a Canada-style trade deal as “too vague”. We have the DUP saying that it will not have a border between Ireland and the UK, and Ireland saying that it will not have a border between Northern Ireland and Ireland. How will this work in practice?

The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, said that Northern Ireland is the Achilles heel of Brexit. Then, there are those who say that this is the tail wagging the dog. How can they say that? Let me put it into context. Two of our children were not old enough to vote in 2016, but before March 2019 they will be old enough to vote. They are part of the more than 1.5 million people who did not have the franchise at the time, and it is their future that has been decided by something that is two years out of date. What are we doing?

When we negotiate with European Union members, they are the baddies because they are bullying us. Hang on: we elected to leave and then we drew our red lines—no customs union, no single market and no ECJ. How will that work in the Northern Ireland situation? It cannot work in practice.

The irony is that the Government say that they are implementing the will and mandate of the people. However, the referendum was two years ago and the facts have changed—the world has changed. I remember taking part in a debate on a European Union Committee report before the Brexit vote. It said it was going to be so complicated that it would be impossible. The most complicated part is the Northern Ireland issue, but it is just one of the complicated aspects.

Goods move freely. Recently, I spoke at Board Bia in Ireland, where an example was given. Baileys Irish Cream is made in Dublin, goes to be bottled in Northern Ireland, comes back to Dublin and is then exported around the world. It is frictionless. There are goods going from Dublin across the sea and across the land to Calais. It takes 10 hours and is frictionless. If you try to take goods around, it takes 40 hours. Are we going to give up all this?

What about identity? What about the will of the people? The reality is that the latest polls show that 80% of the readers of an Irish newspaper reject sacrificing Northern Ireland peace for Brexit. The Northern Ireland result was 56% to 44% to remain. What about their will? On the one hand, we are told that we will have separate arrangements to keep them out. On the other hand, we are told that we have to respect the will of the whole of the UK. Will the Minister square that circle for me?

There is the sad and dangerous potential that Brexit could reignite conflict in Northern Ireland. I really hope that that does not happen. How will it work in practice if we have a common regulatory area and a separate customs union for the whole of the UK? You would need a single market as well to keep the Northern Ireland-Ireland-Britain relationship going. As the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, asked, what about the control of free movement of people? If there is free movement of EU people into Ireland, they can freely move into Northern Ireland and therefore they can move into the UK. This is an absolute nonsense.

The great Jacob Rees-Mogg says that any divide in the customs regimes governing Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK after Brexit will be completely “impossible”. So there we have it; he said it. And Nicola Sturgeon is now saying that, given that the Scots would be competing for investment as well, any backstop deal would lead to the break-up of the United Kingdom. I conclude by saying that it is Great Britain and Northern Ireland that make up the United Kingdom. Let us never destroy that.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Committee: 5th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 7th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

My Lords, one of my comrades, if I may use that word in this place, commented that I was unduly brief in my introduction—or perhaps it was unusually brief; it was one or the other. That was because I stuck precisely to the terms of my amendment. The debate, however, has gone much wider than that. We have heard some powerful, passionate pleas on behalf of the rights of European Union citizens. We have heard them from colleagues on all sides of the House, and it is important to note that it is not just the opposition parties arguing this: support has come from the Cross Benches and from the Conservative Benches.

One of the ironies is that if European Union citizens has been given the right to vote in the referendum—they are taxpayers: “no taxation without representation”—as they were in the Scottish referendum, we would not now be going through this tortuous procedure. We would be getting on with running the country, looking after education, health, justice and all the things we should be doing as the sovereign Parliament.

My noble friend Lady Prosser put it very well: the reputation of the United Kingdom is at stake in all the matters that we are looking at today. The arguments put forward by my colleagues on behalf of all the amendments in the group were very powerful.

[Lord Bilimoria (CB)]

I thank the noble Lord for giving way. Could he add that European Union citizens will be allowed to vote in the forthcoming council elections in May?

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

Indeed, and as I understand it, if I read the Evening Standard right, they are going to send a very strong message as far as London is concerned about what they think of this Government.

I conclude by saying that I wish I was learned as well as noble, like the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, because I would then be able to understand some of the detail rather more precisely.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 28th February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Faulks]

I am grateful for that intervention. I am certainly receptive to the possibility of some restrictions on what the Government can do, but this is far too much of a restriction—it is a complete straitjacket.

[Lord Bilimoria (CB)]

If I may, I shall just reference the former Attorney-General, Dominic Grieve, who wrote recently:

“Having just spent four months considering the EU (Withdrawal) Bill … I don’t think I have ever seen a piece of legislation that conferred such power on the executive to change the law of the land by statutory instrument … and where the entire structure was so closely interwoven that the same end could often be achieved by different routes”.


We have not yet touched on this, but we had the Strathclyde review from the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde. On 26 October 2015, noble Lords withheld agreements to tax credit regulations and the following day a Motion was moved and narrowly defeated and, therefore, the Prime Minister said that we should review this. The House was criticised for flexing its political muscle and the review said that we should,

“understand better the expectations of both Houses when it comes to secondary legislation and, in particular, whether the House of Lords should retain its veto”.

We built up lots of experience with secondary legislation and, of course, the House of Commons is meant to be primary and its will should not be blocked. As the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde said:

“It would be regrettable if the Lords simply became a highly politicised ‘House of Opposition’”.


We are not a House of opposition; when that happened, it was a rare occurrence for all of us present, because since 1968 there has been a convention that we should not reject statutory instruments. It has very rarely happened. The rejection of the tax credits regulation broke new ground.

So it is much more complicated. There are so many different types of statutory instruments, including super-affirmative, subject to affirmative resolution procedure, subject to negative resolution procedure, laid instruments and unlaid instruments. The noble Lord, Lord Faulks, said that there were already 8,000 statutory instruments in place regarding the European Union. If you look at the number of instruments over the years, it runs into thousands. How many thousand statutory instruments does the Minister predict we will need to implement this Bill?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way, but does not he see how absurd the argument is that he is putting when these European regulations are matters over which the House of Commons has no choice but to implement? The whole point of this Bill is that it is restoring it to the primacy of Parliament to decide on these regulations.

[Lord Bilimoria]

The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth has great foresight, because I am about to cover that in my speech.

[Baroness Manzoor (Con)]

In terms of limiting the powers of Ministers, is that not within Clause 7? Forgive me if I have misread that, but I refer both to the point that the noble Lord is making and to the point that the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, made earlier.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Bilimoria]

With all due respect, that is the whole objective of this—the fact that one can use statutory instruments. Here is the underlying worry—about a Government who have tried to bypass Parliament from the beginning, from the wretched referendum. They tried to implement Article 50 without Parliament. That is a fact. It took an individual—Gina Miller—represented by my brilliant noble friend Lord Pannick, to defeat the Government in the High Court. The Government then appealed to the Supreme Court and were defeated resoundingly—and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, was on the other side.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

Did the noble Lord think that it was the intention of Miss Gina Miller that, when the House did have a vote, it would actually vote by an overwhelming majority to move Article 50?

[Lord Bilimoria]

I remind the noble Lord that this House, in that Article 50 Bill, had two of the largest votes in the history of the House of Lords; 614 of us voted in one instance and 634 in the other instance. In both instances, we defeated the Government by almost 100 votes. The fact that the House of Commons did not accept that is a different matter—and the point that I am making is that the Government tried to bypass Parliament. There is the worry that statutory instruments bypass Parliament.

Do Henry VIII clauses give Governments the power of royal despots? Well, secondary legislation is used all the time to amend the text of primary legislation in non-despotic ways, as the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, said—they do not have to be. In fact, the biggest Henry VIII section of them all can be found in the European Communities Act 1972—the very piece of legislation that we are repealing.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

My Lords—

[Lord Bilimoria]

I am coming to the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth—will he please have some patience? Specifically, Section 2(2) of that Act deals with the type of EU legislation and rulings that need to be transposed into UK law. Typically, these involve EU directives where the intended outcome of the law is made clear, but it is up to the individual member states how to implement them. After Brexit, if Brexit happens, the Government want to use a Henry VIII clause in reverse—to adapt EU laws to make them British. For example, disputes that are currently referred to EU regulators or courts will be amended to refer to their British equivalents. The logic of the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, is that, if you are going to have a swathe of amendments to undo primary legislation that has already been made using secondary legislation, you should make those replacements in the same way. It is not as simple as that; because of the “deficiencies arising from withdrawal”, the references to the EU regulators, the European Court of Justice and other entities will no longer have any sway if there is Brexit. It is not as simple as saying, “Because they are simple things, we just can’t do this”, and the Government saying, “We will just use these Henry VIII powers to tidy up things”. The problem is that it might alter not just technical details but also the substantive effect of the law. These amendments are trying to protect really important issues.

The Supreme Court has also said that it is well established that, unlike statutes, the lawfulness of statutory instruments can be challenged in court. Even if a statutory instrument gives Ministers broad powers, the courts have established that they will apply limitations. The broader the power, the more likely the courts are to intervene to ensure that the intention of the law in question is not being altered or undermined. Does the Minister accept that?

I conclude that the power to amend all EU-derived primary and secondary legislation by the Government without sufficient scrutiny, checks and control, bypassing Parliament, goes against the ultimate supremacy of Parliament itself.

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, may I elaborate on the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick and invite the Minister to respond further? A key point in this debate is surely that powers conferred by Parliament should be exercised only as Parliament intended. A key point on paragraph 3 of Schedule 8, which the noble Lord referred us to, is that the power to make and approve subordinate legislation—which is conferred in primary legislation—was, in the case of retained direct EU legislation, originally conferred in the context of directives and legislation which derived from the European Union itself. So the context in which Parliament gave the power to make subordinate legislation was that it should achieve the purposes of the directive.

That being the case, allowing these powers to be used completely independently of those directives significantly enlarges the scope within which those powers can be exercised, which was not intended by Parliament when the powers to grant that subordinate legislation were first conferred. I am not sure that I am carrying the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, with me, but that seems to me to be a crucial aspect of Schedule 8, and it would be good to get the Government’s comments on that.

Brexit: Devolved Administrations

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Thursday 25th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bilimoria (CB)]

My Lords, in the referendum both Scotland and Northern Ireland were among the strongest supporters of remaining in the EU, with majorities of 62% and 55.8% respectively. In Wales, 52.5% voted to leave the EU and in England 53.4% voted to leave. There is no question about it: the referendum has been a huge divide in this country. Many have said that it has been a demonstration of English nationalism. In the Supreme Court Miller case, the decision of the court was that devolved legislatures did not have a veto on the UK’s decision to withdraw from the EU. I thank the House of Lords Library for its excellent briefing notes on the matter.

The Scottish and Welsh Governments have described the Bill that is coming up—this debate is very timely before the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill reaches our House next week—as a “power grab”. The Government have said that they will come back to it, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, referred to in his excellent speech.

The Brexit White Paper of 2 February 2017 was based on the Prime Minister’s famous Lancaster House speech, in which she said very clearly that she would strengthen the union by securing a deal that works for the whole of the UK, as the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, just said.

What is the role of the devolved Administrations in this? The Government have stated their intention to fulfil Brexit responsibilities in close consultation with the devolved Administrations. I ask the Minister: has this actually happened? The noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, gave the example of CETA. When Canada negotiated with the European Union, it had members from each of its provinces at the table. Has this genuinely been the case?

We have the Joint Ministerial Committee on EU Negotiations, which I believe has met only five times between October 2016 and September 2017. Could the Minister confirm this? It has been described by a Member of the House of Commons as,

“a total and utter waste of time”.—[Official Report, Commons, 26/6/17; col. 417.]

Have they agreed the need for a common framework? What are these frameworks? Is it that between Northern Ireland and Ireland there will be only the land border, which I will come to later? The European Union (Withdrawal) Bill does not specifically mention a common framework. Could the Minister tell us why this is the case? I believe that in one of the Joint Ministerial Committee meetings they spent 45 minutes being told what the UK Government had decided, so did its members really have a say on it? Nicola Sturgeon has been very outspoken about this. She feels that the Scottish Government have been cut out of all the decision-making, which is a real shame whether you agree with her or not.

How much autonomy will the devolved Administrations continue to have over areas such as agriculture and fishing? It will be very complicated when it comes to issues such as this, especially when it comes to implementing new frameworks.

We then, of course, have Clause 11, which several noble Lords have mentioned. We are replacing that with a new restriction that devolved institutions cannot modify retained EU law. This will be a huge issue in the Bill. The reaction from Wales, which voted to leave, has been to put out, along with Scotland, a joint statement saying that this is a,

“naked power-grab, an attack on the founding principles of devolution”,

that “could destabilise our economies”.

There is of course the convention that there is a requirement for the Government to seek a legislative consent Motion from each of the devolved legislatures for the Bill, which the Government have made it clear they will do. That is reassuring. The Welsh and Scottish Governments believe that devolved Ministers should have the same powers in respect of matters falling within devolved competencies as UK Ministers. I do not think that that is happening in this case.

In their rebuttal, the Government have said that this is not a power grab. Any durable solution will need the consent of all the nations of the United Kingdom and all their elected representatives. A successful settlement cannot be imposed by the United Kingdom Government; it must be developed in partnership with the devolved Administrations.

We then of course come to the Irish border. This is absolutely ridiculous. In phase 1 of the negotiations, a joint report was prepared by the European Union and the UK that basically kicked the can down the road. It said:

“The United Kingdom remains committed to protecting North-South cooperation and to its guarantee of avoiding a hard border”.


Moreover, it said:

“The United Kingdom’s intention is to achieve these objectives to the overall EU-UK relationship. Should this not be possible, the United Kingdom will propose specific solutions to address the unique circumstances of the island of Ireland”.


However, it continued:

“In the absence of agreed solutions, the United Kingdom will maintain … those rules of the Internal Market and the Customs Union which, now or in the future, support North-South cooperation, the all-island economy and the protection of the 1998 Agreement”.


That is absolute nonsense. How can we remain in the single market and the customs union and have an open border? Then, of course, the DUP has said categorically that there will be no border in the Irish Sea. It wants a commitment to preserve the integrity of the United Kingdom and for our internal union to be preserved. How will this be possible?

Theresa May has said that,

“we will maintain the common travel area throughout these islands … the whole of the United Kingdom, including Northern Ireland, will leave the EU customs union and the EU single market. Nothing in the agreement I have reached alters that fundamental fact”.—[Official Report, Commons, 11/12/17; col. 27.]

I just do not see how this is going to happen. At First Minister’s Question Time in December, Nicola Sturgeon stated that if there was a differential for Northern Ireland it should be available to other parts of the UK as well.

This is so worrying a situation, where devolution is threatened. Brexit presents a risk to these overlapping competences. Article has followed article, among them:

“How Brexit has reopened old wounds on both sides of the Irish border”.


If we look at voting by religion, we see that 85% of Catholics supported remain and 40% of Protestants. Overall, the result in Northern Ireland was to remain.

Donald Tusk met Leo Varadkar, the Indian-origin Prime Minister of Ireland, and said:

“Let me say very clearly: if the UK’s offer is unacceptable for Ireland, it will also be unacceptable for the EU. I realise that for some British politicians this may be hard to understand … This is why the key to the UK’s future lies - in some ways - in Dublin”.


One of the most worrying things about this whole issue has been leave voters saying that they were 79% English, not British. What are we doing here? Amartya Sen spoke about identity—we all have multiple identities. As a country, we are a United Kingdom first, then England, then Northern Ireland, then Wales, then Scotland. That is what comes first and this is what we are threatening. We are threatening the European Union’s integrity; we are threatening the United Kingdom’s integrity. Everyone in this debate has said, “When Brexit happens”; Brexit is not a done deal; we still have the option to remain. Times have changed and we have the option to remain and that should be considered, because divided we fall and united we are strong.