European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Lord Cavendish of Furness and Lord Foulkes of Cumnock

Committee: 11th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 28th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

Thank you very much. There was a huge measure of support there, principally from the Cross Benches. I do not think I have done anything to offend the Cross Benchers; quite the reverse, I was keeping them amused earlier on.

However, this is a serious point. Not only are we taking a lot of time dealing with the Bill, including Wednesday mornings, but we are spending a lot of money. My honourable friend in another place, Stephen Doughty, got an Answer recently that stated that £395 million has been transferred to the Home Office just for dealing with Brexit. Just the process is taking up a lot of money. In fact, we ought to have more Questions and Answers about exactly how much is being taken up by the actual physical process of dealing with this, including civil servants and travel. I understand that Mr David Davis does not like to travel by Eurostar so takes charter flights to Brussels, so the costs are mounting day by day and week by week.

My last point is more general. We now know that the leave campaign has been guilty of fraud and continues to be under investigation by the Electoral Commission. We now know that money was transferred illegally from the leave campaign to the BeLeave organisation, and that unfortunately some of my colleagues and former colleagues in the Labour Party were involved in that because one of them, a former MP, was a director of the Leave campaign. I think it is particularly reprehensible that she was involved in that.

That brings me back to the point made not by the noble Baroness, Lady Humphreys, but by the noble Lord, Lord Roberts, about if Brexit goes through. People are becoming increasingly disillusioned by the way in which we were duped during the referendum campaign, and that strengthens the case for having a new look—

[Lord Cavendish of Furness]

The noble Lord will remember from an earlier debate that it seems that Euratom was understood in detail in Yorkshire by not tens or hundreds but thousands of people. I think people were probably not duped.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

That is a matter of opinion. More and more research is being done, including recently by an organisation whose exact name I am trying to remember which carried out some work, about which I had an email this morning, showing that people who voted leave did so for a whole variety of reasons, unconnected in some cases to the whole question of the EU. That is one of the problems of referenda generally, as we have discussed before. Still, as we discussed earlier, if the decision was made by the British people, there is a very strong argument that it needs to be undone by the British people. We need to look at that again as the arguments become even stronger.

To return to the amendment, I hope we will get some specific promises and details from the Minister. As I said when I started, he has been known for his credibility, sincerity and honesty. I hope we will see that again today.

[Lord Thomas of Gresford]

My Lords, I have a specific question for the Minister: do the Government accept the proposition, put forward so clearly by the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, in introducing the amendment, that they are bound by the promises made by the leave campaign? They say, “It is the voice of the people that we are following”. The Government had a number of choices that they could have made, but in fact they have chosen to follow a model that must bring great delight to the most extreme Brexiteers. If they do that, they are bound by those promises, I submit—I accept what the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, said.

It is suggested—this is the weak and feeble argument put forward by the leave people these days—that it did not make any difference, and that what they said really had no impact whatever. Before the people spoke and before we heard the voice of the people, the people listened. And what did they listen to? They listened to a universal lie about the National Health Service, that it would receive £350 million a week. The noble Lord, Lord Liddle, has referred to this as “lying”, but I prefer the word “cheating”, which has been used elsewhere in this building this week. The campaign, we now learn, was prepared to send out contradictory messages to targeted people. We do not know what those messages were and we do not know who the people targeted were, but that was cheating. So when the people spoke, they had listened to the lying and cheating propaganda that had been put forward.

Let me be more specific about Wales, where specific promises were made. Wales has been the net recipient of £650 million a year from European funds. That is not something to be proud of; it is because Europe recognised the needs of Wales, and gave money in structural funds and agricultural support that addressed those needs. I will not enumerate precisely what they are, because my noble friend Lady Humphreys has already covered that ground quite fully.

There is a moral imperative about this Government: if they are going to campaign for the sort of Brexit that the most extreme Brexiteers want, they should fulfil those promises, and make it clear in the report that the amendment calls for. In Wales it was said by leave campaigners, in terms, “You will not lose a penny”; that was said widely, across Wales, in all the campaigning that took place.