European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Lord Cavendish of Furness and Lord Davies of Stamford

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 21st February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Stamford (Lab)]

My Lords, I wish to address Amendments 152, 197 and 206, on the matter of the customs union. Before I do so, perhaps I might be permitted to say a word of admiration about and pay tribute to the people outside this building—many of them waving British as well as EU flags—who have been there for several months, hoping to impress on us the importance of the case. We in this House—from the comfort of these Benches—should not be tempted in any way to neglect or slight efforts made by our citizens to bring their concerns to our attention. I have been most impressed by them. I have often spoken with them; one young lady, on a very modest salary, told me that she paid quite a lot of money on a fare from Manchester and was sleeping on a friend’s floor in order to stand for 12 hours outside this House. Her account was very typical. I counted more than 140 people one evening, when the temperature was getting very close to zero. I believe that sort of dedication and selfless concern for the future of the country is most impressive.

I am well aware that many of my colleagues in the House have come to this debate in the belief that they are carrying out an instruction from a referendum. I reject entirely that concept, which clearly contradicts the idea of a sovereign Parliament. By definition, if a body is sovereign, it cannot receive instructions from anyone. That is a matter of definition; it is what philosophers call an analytic truth. Even more absurd would be the idea that we could take instruction from a referendum in a previous Parliament. Heaven knows what Parliament would be subject to after a certain period in which we adopted that proposal. One can easily see to what ridiculous results that would lead. It would also make a nonsense of the fundamental principle of our constitution that no Parliament can commit its successor, and if you abandon the concept of parliamentary sovereignty and the belief that goes with it that no Parliament can commit its successor and therefore every Parliament after a general election can open a new page, there will be very little left of our constitution that people who take that line will still believe in.

[Lord Cavendish of Furness (Con)]

Would it not be true to say that the sovereign Parliament gave the people the decision through the referendum?

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

My Lords, as I have explained, I do not accept that we are in any way under instruction from anybody. I have heard the word “instruction” and it deeply shocks me. As a matter of fact, I heard it from the then Leader of the House in the days following the referendum. For the reasons that I have already set out and I do not need to repeat, that is a pernicious doctrine that is extremely dangerous in its constitutional ramifications and should be rejected.

Outcome of the European Union Referendum

Debate between Lord Cavendish of Furness and Lord Davies of Stamford

Wednesday 6th July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Stamford (Lab)]

The noble Lord said he was going to have respect for the other side of the argument, and I appreciate that. I hope he might realise, therefore, that we have not in this series of debates been talking up the virtues of the European Union because that would have been to fight the referendum campaign all over again. It is not very germane to today’s debate, which is on what we do now. That is precisely the reason we have not spoken about the merits of the European Union, not because of any loss of conviction.

[Lord Cavendish of Furness]

I have no doubt about the noble Lord’s enthusiasm for the European Union; it has been plain over many years.

Fourthly, we are indebted to the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury for an immensely powerful speech. It is for all of us to reflect long and hard on an intervention which redeemed an otherwise rather sad day.

Of the many facets of the EU debate, nothing has driven me so much as the conviction that failures of accountability are a principal cause of much of humanity’s wretchedness and pain. I have long feared that our centuries-old settlement, under which government is conducted with the consent of the people, is under threat and is in total conflict with the EU’s direction of travel. As I enter old age, I was stirred into action these last few weeks to protect my children and grandchildren from the possibility of arbitrary rule, perhaps even tyranny, if an unreformed European Union persists in turning its back on the democratic process.

Many motives have been ascribed to those who voted to leave. It would be a mistake to underestimate the sense of anger British people feel about the undermining of their democracy. I found it to be an ever-present theme during the campaign. The perception of national identity being stolen was also identified and articulated in various ways.

That brings me to the more prosaic fears I encountered. Of the many civilised, but often passionate, exchanges, I suppose the most common anxiety I met with had to do with our alleged access to the ineptly named single market. After so many years, I find it deeply shocking how many barriers there still are to trade and how damaging they are, especially to our national interest. What has become known as the single market should more accurately, I am told, be called the single regulatory zone. I continue to think of it as a customs union. Whatever it is called, it is protectionist in character and morally questionable in its impact on the poor of EU countries and even poorer citizens of countries outside the European Union.

Brussels plays host to tens of thousands of lobbyists, more than in Washington. Large multinational companies effectively purchase laws and regulations, first, to benefit themselves and, secondly, to disadvantage their smaller, often more innovative, rivals. This horrible kind of venality seems to be comfortably at home in Brussels. Perhaps a product of globalisation so much talked about is the appearance of giant organisations, whether institutions or corporations, whose very size destroys any semblance of a morality. It is a problem that we need to address, as has been said today and yesterday.

In the matter of trade, it becomes daily clearer that non-EU countries export more successfully to the EU than we do. The reason is not hard to find. The WTO tariff averages out at 3%, which compares with the cost of our membership equivalent to a 7% tariff. Our trade deficit with the EU has risen in recent months and now runs at a record £100 billion. It really is hard to see how it would be in the EU’s interest to damage this, its most important market.

Looking ahead, rather than obsessing about trade deals, why do we not just quietly and politely walk away? We might or might not have to pay the modest tariffs permitted under WTO rules until free trade agreements are in place. Or might we not explore the proposal that we unilaterally declare ourselves a free trade country? Those putting up barriers against us will soon discover that they are harming themselves more than they harm us. Surely a nation with its independence and democratic integrity restored, its identity recovered, its tradition of free trade renewed, truly internationalist in character, amounts to a vision that can inspire and unite us all.

Assisted Dying Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Cavendish of Furness and Lord Davies of Stamford

Friday 7th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

My Lords, I will make three points, which are important at this stage of the debate.

First, I very much deprecate the frivolity with which the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, answered my question about the time involved in producing an independent expert’s report. It is quite wrong to be frivolous about such a very important subject. Clearly, there has been a tendency to put forward a number of amendments in this group, all of which would increase both the time and the cost required to enable someone to benefit from the new regime brought in under the Bill. It is quite wrong of us in this Committee to underestimate the fact that if we passed these amendments we would add a considerable degree of cost and time. There would be the need to go to a coroner, the need for an independent medical expert, and for another independent expert who would be supposed to collect the drugs and oversee the process, and so forth. All that would mean more people, that arrangements would have to be made—in practice they cannot be made in a second or two—and that reports would have to be produced. We all know that people take some time to produce written reports, and on a matter of this kind one would take particular care to get every word in the report right. Therefore, I was not wrong to raise the issue of time and cost.

On costs, we heard with great relief some of the remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, about the possibility of using legal aid, but we know that, however generous the Government will be, not all the costs involved in this process will be defrayed from public funds. Therefore we do not want to produce a certain situation but, as a matter of fact, we already have a situation whereby if you have enough money you can go to Zurich and solve the problem that way. There is a significant gulf at present between those who have greater financial means and those who do not as regards the choice they have as they reach the end of their lives and how they want to go. We do not want to exacerbate that, and by increasing the cost we are doing so. We simply have to take that into account and it should not be frivolously dismissed, as it was this morning.

Secondly, I want to pick up the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, a moment ago. I see no reason why palliative care should not be continued until the moment when the patient decides to exercise his or her option to terminate his or her life under the procedures laid out in the Bill, if it becomes law. I see no reason why there should be any need to withdraw palliative care some days or weeks beforehand. That seems to me a problem that should not arise at all.

Finally, I want to address the point made by the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, whose main objection to the Bill seemed to be that the medical profession should not be involved in decisions about the deaths of patients. That is a very serious point; I made a point along those lines at Second Reading. At present, what most of us face if we have a slow death is palliative care, which generally ends up with palliative sedation. That means that the patient is put into a medically induced coma and all means of life support, including food and liquids—not invariably so but certainly in many cases liquids as well, so that the patient is dehydrated—are withdrawn, along with any life support in the form of oxygen and antibiotics. If the patient has had kidney failure and been on dialysis, that is withdrawn, so the patient dies from blood poisoning. The patient dies in a coma, which takes a great deal more than the 25 minutes that is the average in Oregon, when people use that regime for the right to die. It takes many days, in many cases; I have known at least one case when dehydration took two weeks to kill the patient, who of course did not awaken from the coma during the whole of that period. That is the reality: every day of the week and every hour of the day, doctors and nurses take decisions determining the timing and cause of their patients’ death. They are taking the decision to withdraw antibiotics and life support, putting the patient into a palliative coma.

It is the alternative to that regime that my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer is proposing this afternoon, so that people have a choice. The whole object of the Bill is to give the patient a vote. At present, in many cases, the patient does not even know about the decision being taken by doctors and nurses, which will determine the precise means and timing of their demise. Under the Bill, undoubtedly the patient would be in the front line and the driving seat, taking the key decision, and the doctors and nurses would respond to a decision made explicitly by the patient. That seems to me an enormous improvement. I hope that even those of us who do not want this particular regime and would not want to use it ourselves will not want to deny others the opportunity to have a choice between death in a palliative coma and death as it could be chosen under this Bill.

[Lord Cavendish of Furness (Con)]

My Lords, there seems to be developing some suggestion that people opposed to the Bill are introducing amendments simply to add time and cost and to make it unworkable. Would the noble Lord, Lord Davies, understand that those of us who were in principle opposed to the Bill from the very outset realise that it is intended to be compassionate—as we all feel compassionate—but just find it impossible to reconcile compassion and the objectives of the Bill with the necessary safeguards? That is at the heart of the whole matter.

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way, but I must intervene on him. I said nothing designed to impugn the good faith and sincerity of anyone in this House, let alone people who have gone to the trouble of producing these amendments. What I said was that, whether it is intended or not, many of these amendments would have consequences in terms of time and cost, and it would be wrong of us to underestimate those consequences—and certainly very wrong frivolously to dismiss that whole issue, as happened this morning.