"My Lords, one thing on which we are all agreed is that this is a hugely important and necessary Bill if we are to avoid any kind of legal cliff edge. For me, it possesses a very important characteristic that is sadly all too rare in most of the legislation …..." Lord Grocott - View Speech
"My Lords, already today we have had two or three supplementary questions and three main Questions on the EU and withdrawal, and we have two days this week, Tuesday and Wednesday, scheduled for debate, and 10 days scheduled for Committee stage—so there will be no shortage of opportunity for Members …..." Lord Grocott - View Speech
"My Lords, will the Minister clear up something which seems baffling, to me at any rate, from these exchanges, drawing on her experiences as a former Chief Whip? If Parliament, either this House or the other House, wants to have a vote, it is within Parliament’s power to have a …..." Lord Grocott - View Speech
"My Lords, it would assist all sides of the House if the Minister provided a glossary of terms relating to Brexit. My noble friend referred to hard Brexit, the Liberal Democrats referred to brutal Brexit—I am sorry, extreme Brexit—and we have heard of the hardest of hard Brexits, most extreme …..." Lord Grocott - View Speech
"My Lords, the Minister should gain strength and succour—I am sure he will—from the fact that although he will be on his feet for hours on end in the complexities of this and other Bills, this Bill has the advantage that although the detail may be difficult, the objective could …..." Lord Grocott - View Speech
"I am grateful for that generous tribute. Will the noble Lord advise us as to whether the referendum he proposes would be an advisory or a mandatory one?..." Lord Grocott - View Speech
"My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, because he, like me, sat through most of the debate that resulted in this House, without opposition, deciding that we should have a referendum to determine whether to remain in or leave the European Union. I say …..." Lord Grocott - View Speech
"My noble friend is absolutely right but in this case the Act of Parliament that this House passed to establish the referendum included precisely the mechanism for the alternative vote election that would come into place should that referendum be carried...." Lord Grocott - View Speech
"I do not disagree with that at all. The debate when the referendum campaign was under way was clearly on the basis that this was a once-in-a-lifetime decision, and we need to acknowledge that as well.
My main points are in respect of the validity of the decision and whether …..." Lord Grocott - View Speech
"Please can I finish my point? A lot of people said thereafter that perhaps we should have another referendum, and of course we did. The only problem from the perspective of those who voted no in the first one in 1975 was that we had to wait 41 years to …..." Lord Grocott - View Speech