Leaving the European Union

Lord Hain Excerpts

Tuesday 12th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

As I said, the Prime Minister has had conversations with President Juncker and she has seen the Taoiseach to talk about the changes that she believes will be needed to the backstop in order for that withdrawal agreement to get through the House of Commons. Those discussions are ongoing. I am afraid that I have not seen the specific issue that she raises on transport and social media, but I will make sure that the department is aware of it.

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

My Lords, is not the Statement a space filler rather than a scene shifter? On the Irish border, I urge Parliament to stick by the agreements that the Prime Minister made with the European Union on the question of the backstop. It is the only insurance policy available to keep that border open. The Prime Minister has come up with no practical alternative, I venture to suggest, because there is no practical alternative other than both sides of that border keeping the same customs and single market arrangements. Otherwise, it is actually impossible to keep that border completely invisible and open with all the identity issues at stake in the Good Friday agreement. We should say that we agree the backstop because there is no practical alternative, and then seek to negotiate a future trade policy.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I assure the noble Lord that there will be an insurance policy for Northern Ireland. Current discussions are about the form that it takes and how we get an arrangement that gets the support of the other place. It rejected the withdrawal agreement with that backstop in place. But I agree that the backstop that we have negotiated gives the whole of the UK tariff-free access to the EU market without free movement of people, without financial contributions, without having to follow most of the level playing field rules and without giving access to our waters. That is not something that the EU wants to happen. It is a backstop that was negotiated but the House of Commons decided it did not support it, so the Prime Minister is going back to have further conversations to try to get some changes that mean that the House of Commons can support it.

Brexit: Withdrawal Agreement and Political Declaration

Lord Hain Excerpts

Thursday 6th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

My Lords, I echo everything that the noble Baroness, Lady Humphreys, has said, especially speaking as she did so well about Wales.

Last week, the Government finally admitted that any form of Brexit will make the nation poorer. The Prime Minister is therefore offering Parliament a false choice: vote for her flawed deal, which would deliver only less control, more uncertainty and a cliff edge within a couple of years over a new trade deal; or face a truly catastrophic no deal. But there are better choices. Parliament should therefore reject the Government’s draft withdrawal agreement, together with the political declaration about the future relationship. This so- called ambitious text is riddled with ambiguity and contradictions, and offers absolutely no guarantees whatever about future trade relations with the EU in the longer term.

There has been so much bluster and ignorance by Brexiteers. For example, in airily claiming that all will be well on the night, the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, shows no real understanding of WTO non-discrimination rules, which would prohibit sector-specific deals and prevent the EU granting the UK a preferential agreement on tariffs in comparison with other non-EU states once we have left. Furthermore, WTO rules do not adequately cover many important sectors, notably services, which form 80% of the UK economy. The EU’s own preparedness notices make it clear—

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

My Lords—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hain]

I am sorry; I am very happy to debate this in the future, but I do not have time now.

The EU’s own preparedness notices make it clear that, after a no-deal exit the UK will be treated like any other non-EU state.

Similarly on the Irish border, on which my noble friend Lord Murphy spoke so eloquently and compellingly, in the debate on 20 November I criticised as “fanciful, back-of-an-envelope notions” the alleged solutions offered by Iain Duncan Smith and Owen Paterson—to which I could add David Davis. These senior figures are playing with fire on the island of Ireland.

It is not only Brexiteers; Westminster politicians more generally have been reluctant to acknowledge the UK’s status as a highly successful and influential state within the EU. As a former Europe Minister, I can confirm that for decades the UK was a driving and liberalising force when it came to the single market, enlargement, competition and trade, and was highly influential in foreign policy. UK Ministers were on the winning side of votes on EU legislation 95% of the time, abstained 3% of the time and were on the losing side in just 2% of cases.

On immigration and citizens’ rights in other EU countries, the Prime Minister claims that the deal marks the end of free movement once the transition is over. But leave voters were never informed that successive UK Governments have failed to use the tools available to them to better control EU immigration. The citizens directive of 2004 allows EU member states to return home EU nationals after three months if they have not found a job or do not have the means to support themselves. Countries such as Belgium regularly return thousands of individuals on this basis. We never have. Meanwhile, in the biggest loss of value to a country’s citizenship in history, we, the 66 million UK citizens currently living in the UK, will lose our EU citizenship, and therefore our rights to live, work and study in the 27 EU countries.

The Irish backstop kicks in if future trade talks fail to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland. However, the real solution to this crucial issue should be that both the Republic and the UK remain in the EU, which has greatly facilitated the success of the Good Friday agreement over the past 20 years, or, at the very minimum, that Northern Ireland and Ireland share a common single market and customs union arrangement. That is the only guaranteed way to keep the border completely open.

The chaos that no deal would deliver to this country is now becoming more widely understood. As we know from the Government’s own assessments, it could lead to the collapse of the port of Dover on day one and shortages of fresh food, petrol and medicines within days. Flights could be grounded and energy security threatened. Hauliers’ licences might be invalid in Europe, 60 trade deals between the EU and third countries would cease to apply and the Irish border would become a hard one.

The problem for Brexiteers, including my good friends in the DUP, is that they never had a proper plan of their own. Voters were not told that in 2016. Now it is crystal clear. They still do not have one. They charged the Prime Minister with a mandate to square an impossible circle and she has done her very best, but it is rightly unacceptable.

I say to those whom I greatly respect and who have been on the same side of the argument as me so far but are now tempted by the Prime Minister’s deal—such as the noble Lord, Lord Butler—that it does not actually solve anything. It just postpones the crunch until October 2020, with all the extra economic instability and business uncertainty that that means. A Norway option without a customs union deal would deliver at least as hard a border as it has with Sweden. Adding a customs union at least resolves that, but we might as well remain in the EU and be a full rule-maker.

Parliament, as the guardian of the nation’s best interests, should therefore vote down the Prime Minister’s deal, vote down no deal and instead seek a people’s vote. Only this will give people, including the 12.3 million who did not vote in 2016, a democratic choice to reject this utter mess and vote for a more prosperous future in a UK which can again be a leading member of the European Union.

Leaving the European Union

Lord Hain Excerpts

Monday 26th November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

It states in the documents that any backstop—which we have repeatedly made clear we do not want to be implemented—will be superseded by a future relationship. Both sides are signed up to that.

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

This political declaration is full of ambiguities and contradictions. Citizens, businesses and consumers have no certainty, stability or sense of security in going forward. Do not this Government continue to set sail on a journey but have no idea where it will end—where the boat will berth, which port it will berth at or what the final destination will be? That is surely why this deal should be rejected and we should move to a position where the country has an opportunity to decide whether it wishes to remain or whether it is willing to put up with this total shambles.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

The political declaration sets out a clear vision and framework for a future relationship. Once we leave the EU, we will begin negotiating the detail of that. It is set out. We all want an ambitious economic and security partnership and that is what we will be working towards. Of course any final agreements with the EU will be put forward to Parliament in the usual way.

Brexit: Negotiations

Lord Hain Excerpts

Thursday 15th November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

As my noble friend rightly says, we have an Agriculture Bill; a fisheries Bill will come soon. Legislation will continue to be put forward in the House, and we now move towards talking about our future partnership. But we will now also have the capability to decide our own agriculture and fisheries policies as we leave the EU.

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

My Lords, I urge the Minister not to repeat the fiction that it is either this deal—almost certainly dead in the water—or no deal, which would be disastrous. Parliament has the power, the opportunity and, I would submit, the duty to take back control of this whole disastrous saga, including the option of a people’s vote giving the people a final say on whether they want to remain in the European Union. All the alternatives before us at present are far inferior to that.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I have been quite clear that we will not be having a second referendum. We have had a people’s vote, and we are now delivering on that. However, the noble Lord is absolutely right that the withdrawal agreement and implementation treaty will be brought forward to the House and there will be opportunity for both the House of Commons and this House to scrutinise it and discuss it. It will be for Parliament to pass it.

October European Council

Lord Hain Excerpts

Monday 22nd October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

On my noble friend’s second point, the length and cost of any extension will be subject to the negotiations that are going on now on the drawing up of this option. On his first question about the temporary nature of the backstop, the Prime Minister has been absolutely clear: this cannot be a permanent situation. Obviously, a date is one option, but there are other ways in which this may be triggered in order to ensure it is temporary. Again, as we are getting down to the fine detail of these two options, those are the kind of issues that will be discussed and negotiated between ourselves and our EU partners.

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

My Lords, is not the Prime Minister’s claim that the deal is 95% done an utter misrepresentation? Is it not the truth that, because of the Brexiteer extremism in her party, by far the biggest issue, as it always has been—the Irish border—is still unresolved? Is it not also the case that her claim is designed to make everybody think that Brexit is done and dusted, when in reality it is merely the terms of divorce? Even if she does achieve a fudged agreement with Brussels soon, that will only be a prelude to years and years of immensely more difficult negotiations on our future trading relationships, in which we will again be asking for the impossible—all the benefits of trading into the single market and using the customs union, with none of the obligations—with the Irish border still the Achilles heel.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I hope that the noble Lord will be pleased to hear that in fact at the Council there was a lot of good will towards the UK and recognition around the table that in the past weeks there has been huge progress in agreeing the withdrawal agreement. The fact that I have made two Statements in the last two weeks discussing Northern Ireland in some detail shows that we are not hiding the fact that we still have an impasse in this situation. The Statements have been quite clear about that. What we are absolutely committed to, along with our EU partners, and particularly our Irish partners, is finding a way through, because as we said in the Statement this one issue is outstanding. We want a withdrawal agreement and an implementation period and we want a strong and positive relationship going forward. So I can assure the noble Lord that we are not taking things lightly; we are absolutely committed, with our partners, to cracking this very difficult nut, as he rightly says. We will do that and we will get a good deal with the EU, which is what we are intending to do.

Syria

Lord Hain Excerpts

Monday 16th April 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I can certainly reiterate that this action was not about regime change or intervening in a civil war; it was about preventing further humanitarian catastrophe and restoring the international norm against the use of chemical weapons.

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

My Lords, I agree that a line must be drawn internationally against the use of chemical weapons, but does not this terrible war also represent a catastrophic failure of UK foreign policy, beginning with bombast from David Cameron in 2011-12, which I am afraid the noble Baroness has repeated today, that Assad must go, refusing to allow both him and Iran into the negotiations—in other words, excluding the main players? This has never been about a barbaric Assad, as he is, against his people, but a complex civil war of Sunni versus Shia, of Iran versus Saudi Arabia, of the US versus Russia, an inter-state and proxy conflict involving also Israel, Turkey and the Kurds. Britain will remain culpable as long as we adopt a partisan role, rather than an honest broker role to promote a negotiated settlement to what otherwise looks like a war without end.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I certainly agree that this is an extremely complex situation and we need to pursue a diplomatic resolution, which is why we need a genuine and sustained ceasefire; we want an independent investigation into the recent attack; and we want safe passage for aid convoys and medical evacuation. The noble Lord is right that this is a complex area. We will continue to work with our international partners and allies to try to help to get a resolution in this area, because the people who are suffering, the Syrians, have been suffering for far too long.

Salisbury Incident Update

Lord Hain Excerpts

Monday 12th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

The noble Lord will know that of course the Government and the police are aware of other allegations, but I am afraid I cannot be drawn into them. The police obviously have operational independence to investigate criminal activity, and we do not direct police investigations. It is up to the police to decide whether to investigate, but I think that all of us believe that at the moment the focus should be on the events in Salisbury and making sure that we get to the bottom of that. We want to make sure that we deal with those who have carried out this appalling crime and that they are held to account.

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

My Lords, in associating myself particularly with the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Ricketts, can I ask the noble Baroness to agree that robust language from the Prime Minister has not always been followed by robust action, and that it is better to have calibrated and effective action which genuinely deters President Putin than to seek tomorrow’s headlines?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I certainly agree with that. I would say that we have responded robustly and proportionately to Russian provocations over the last decade, from the murdering of Mr Litvinenko to pursuing illegal wars in Ukraine and Syria and constant aggression on the internet. At every stage, we have taken the appropriate actions and encouraged international partners to do the same.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Hain Excerpts

Tuesday 30th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

My Lords, this Bill offers possibly the last guaranteed parliamentary opportunity to change the Government’s Brexit strategy, prevent a hard Irish land border and protect all the precious gains of the Good Friday agreement. To achieve that, since the DUP has quite understandably insisted that Northern Ireland must not have a separate constitutional status from the rest of the UK, surely not just Northern Ireland but the whole of the UK must stay in the single market and the customs union.

As the CBI, supported by the TUC, has made crystal clear, our businesses do not want to be cut off from their largest markets, or from the EU’s regulatory bodies that guarantee our access to them, in return for promises of jam tomorrow in far-flung emerging markets. UK services exports to Europe are around 60% higher than those to the US, and twice those exported to Asia. The 11 countries in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, favoured as an alternative by Brexiteers, account for only 7% of our trade, while Germany alone accounts for 11%.

As for the claims that, once freed from the EU, the UK can negotiate preferential trade deals with third countries, the truth is that we already have 60 such deals through the EU that unless renegotiated in time, which is highly unlikely, will actually cease to apply after Brexit—that is, by March 2019. Furthermore, with a market of over 500 million people, the EU often negotiates trade deals that are far more comprehensive in scope than those achieved by individual countries outside the EU, so the likelihood of the UK getting even better terms with third countries than we already have through the EU is minimal. Remember that many non-EU countries, such as Japan, invest here because of the level of access that they currently have from the UK into that larger EU market; access that their UK-based companies will lose once we are no longer in the single market and the customs union.

Trade deals take years to negotiate. They are usually designed to secure the convergence of standards and regulatory regimes, not divergence, which is what Brexiteers want in relation to the EU. Moreover, because of the EU’s internal budget timetable, Brussels is now suggesting that the transition period should finish at the end of 2020, after just 21 months. There could then be a dramatic cliff edge, with queues of lorries stretching for miles in Kent and gridlock on the roads of Northern Ireland. This is the true prospect for Brexit Britain, not the fantasies of the Government and the Brexiteers.

Another government fantasy is more ominous. No one who really understands the complexities and dangers of politics on the island of Ireland seriously believes that keeping the border open can be achieved without Northern Ireland staying in the same single market and customs union as the Irish Republic. The 8 December agreement requires the UK to retain “full regulatory alignment” with the EU to prevent a hard border with customs posts and security checks. Meanwhile British Ministers, divided over what was actually agreed, waffle about a high-tech frictionless border. They remain in denial about the reality that, for the European Union, protection of the integrity of the single market—which is a legal construct, not a political arrangement—means that you cannot be half in, half out.

It is important to recall that the 1998 Belfast Good Friday agreement, and the peace process which followed, was explicitly designed to depoliticise the Irish border by making it completely open. Any restriction whatever would completely undermine the agreement, which, by the way, formed an international treaty with the Irish Republic, recognised by the European Union. Border posts, customs personnel and surveillance technology could provide sitting targets for dissident republican paramilitaries to rerun the IRA’s border campaign of 60 years ago, also provoking the reactivation of their loyalist paramilitary counterparts to defend Ulster.

Worryingly, Dublin’s and London’s interpretations of the December first-phase deal are very different. The EU sees it as binding Northern Ireland and the whole of the UK to the EU’s regulatory domain; the UK sees it as merely an outline containing work in progress, with the Cabinet divided and unable to resolve the implications. The contradiction is that EU rules do not permit frictionless trade while Northern Ireland—and by extension the UK—is outside the customs union and the single market. Remember too that the Good Friday Belfast agreement is not only of constitutional and institutional importance; it requires a shared regulatory structure for cross-border movement, trade and co-operation.

Surely our duty in your Lordships’ House is therefore to act over this Bill for the whole of the UK and not just for part of the Conservative Party. Surely we have to persuade the Government to stay in the single market and the customs union to protect our economy and, above all, to protect the Good Friday agreement and avoid the catastrophe of a hard Irish border. Everyone says that they do not want such a border, but we are accelerating remorselessly towards it, as long as the Government remain so dogmatically rigid about the terms of Brexit.

House of Lords: Lord Speaker’s Committee Report

Lord Hain Excerpts

Tuesday 19th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

My Lords, I wish to make just two broad arguments: about the imperative for reform now, and the legitimacy of the committee whose recommendations we are invited to endorse by taking note of its report today.

I will deal first with the legitimacy of the committee and its report. With the commendably active support of the Lord Speaker, your Lordships’ House established a fully representative Committee to look at reforms to deal with our increasingly embarrassing, ballooning size. Collectively, each major party and Cross-Benchers determined who should sit on it and who chaired it; it is our committee. Some colleagues have questioned details or specifics in the report and, yes, there are arguments for special pleading on this or that detail. Of course Members will find reason—I trust not excuse—in each bit to criticise the whole, but surely we all have to accept that the whole package hangs together or falls together. It is most ingeniously interconnected. Surely the point is that reducing the size has always been fiendishly complex, and that the committee has done an amazing job in solving the hitherto seemingly insoluble.

Secondly, I will talk about the imperative to act now. Weight watchers have shown that the best way to tackle a problem of excess is to combine personal responsibility with collective resolve and mutual support. The alternative—drastic surgery—involves unnecessary risk, no guarantee of success and an unpredictable outcome. A Commons Select Committee, having already begun considering the matter, stands ready to report but awaits the conclusion of your Lordships’ House. The media are also waiting to pounce. Newspapers, MPs and Ministers have already made threats over Brexit, which will doubtless increase to a crescendo when the withdrawal Bill reaches us early next year.

Yet we all know that things cannot continue as they are. We number over 800 and rising. Commercial properties are commandeered in the vicinity at great expense to provide us with additional offices. Through no fault of our own, we have become not so much an embarrassment but, many say, a scandal. At a time of austerity, when everything else is cut, our numbers rise inexorably through no fault of our own—until now.

Until we set up this committee to recommend reform some among your Lordships could argue we were more sinned against than sinners. We did not fill this House to bursting; Prime Ministers did. We did not put ourselves here, others did—although we all agreed with their immense wisdom in choosing each one of us. But all that changed when we, absolutely correctly, decided to establish the committee to solve the problem. That decision—our decision—means the buck stops right here with us in this Chamber today. Find excuses and we will be rightly pilloried. I therefore urge that the recommendations of this report are endorsed and implemented as soon as practicable early in the new year. I hope the noble Lord, Lord Burns, in replying will confirm this and I hope the Lord Speaker, with the party leaders, will also make sure that this happens.

When the committee was first established, I asked one venerable sage on our Benches for a view on the likely outcome. “It will be shelved as reform always has been shelved,” he said with a weary, knowing smile. I trust your Lordships’ House will prove him wrong. Things have reached a point where change is unavoidable. The question is therefore not whether there is change, but who makes it. Either this House takes responsibility or it will pass to the Commons and the Government. Either we reform ourselves or others will reform us.

European Council

Lord Hain Excerpts

Monday 18th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

The discussions in relation to us leaving the EU were very constructive. We have now agreed to move on to phase 2 and to start to talk about our future relationship, which is extremely welcome.

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

My Lords, given that the Northern Ireland question was responsible for rescuing the Prime Minister in the first stage of negotiations when she agreed a regulatory alignment on standards and the adjudication of those standards, not just physical controls on the Irish border, within the whole of the UK—that is, the customs union and the single market have to be aligned in order to keep the border open—and now that has been accepted for the transitional talks, what is the point of leaving the single market and the customs union? Does she think that the EU is magically going to give us a better deal by being exactly aligned with the customs union and the single market outside it?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

We have always said that the details of how we maintain an open border will be settled in phase 2 of the negotiations, when we agree our future relationship, and that is what we will do. We have also been very clear that alignment is about pursuing the same objectives, but achieving this could be done through different means. It does not require regulatory harmonisation.