European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 6) Bill

Lord Winston Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 5th September 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howard of Lympne]

Parliament passes laws initiated by government, and when Parliament passes, and indeed amends, those laws, it does not enter into the detailed prescription of government contained in this Bill. That is why this Bill and its predecessor, introduced earlier this year, represent so fundamental a breach of precedent. They were facilitated only by the fact that the Speaker in the other place decided to dispense with precedent and, as far as we are aware, to dispense with the advice he was given and to allow the Opposition to take charge of the business of the House.

I want to take the House back to the Second Reading of the referendum Bill in the other place—the Bill that provided for the referendum. That debate was introduced by the then Foreign Secretary, one Philip Hammond. He said that,

“whether we favour Britain being in or out, we surely should all be able to agree on the simple principle that the decision about our membership should be taken by the British people, not by Whitehall bureaucrats, certainly not by Brussels Eurocrats; not even by Government Ministers or parliamentarians in this Chamber”.

I repeat,

“or parliamentarians in this Chamber”.

He said that the decision should be,

“for the common sense of the British people”,

and that this Bill,

“delivers the simple in/out referendum that we promised”.—[Official Report, Commons, 9/6/15; col. 1056.]

The Bill which provided for that referendum was of course passed by a very large majority, but the difficulty that we have faced ever since is that the British people delivered a result that Parliament neither expected nor wanted. I am happy to give way to the noble Lord.

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

I do not want to take up much time but it is very clear that, if we had to take the decision again, we would not have a referendum.

[Lord Howard of Lympne]

The noble Lord is entitled to his view but I would not agree with him.

That is the root cause of the difficulties that we have faced over the last three years. Parliament took a different view. Parliament got the result from the British people, and certainly the then Foreign Secretary, who moved the Second Reading of the Bill, got a result very different from the one that he wanted or expected. I regret to say that Parliament has, at every turn, sought to thwart the implementation of that decision of the British people, and this Bill is but the latest instalment of that sad endeavour. Of course, it gets us nowhere. We have had one extension as a result of the Bill’s predecessor. It has given six months of extra time, which has resulted in no conclusion. The failure of the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, to answer the question posed by the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, was eloquent in its admission that those who came together to support the Bill before your Lordships, both in the other place and in this House, are not in any sense in agreement about the next steps and what ought to be done.

This situation is made even more serious by the refusal of those who proclaim their belief in democracy to put that belief into practice. It is bad enough that Parliament thinks that it knows better than the British people on this issue; it is even worse that, as things stand at the moment, Parliament is denying the British people a general election in which they would have the right to decide and to express their view on the performance of the malfunctioning of the other place and to insist on the implementation of the decision that they took in 2016. This Bill is, I hope, one of the final acts of a House of Commons that has proved itself manifestly incapable of meeting the challenges in front of it. I urge your Lordships to reject it.

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

Lord Winston Excerpts

Wednesday 27th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard]

I wait to see what will be the fate of its massive investments in Deeside and in Derbyshire, both of which are very important. I am concerned; I know the company is concerned. The noble Lord, Lord Howell, has worked very hard to secure investment in this country and must be very sad.

The noble Lord, Lord Newby, started with a Churchillian quotation, which put me on my mettle. I was determined to match him. I can just beat him on vintage; mine is a 1936 quotation. Churchill described Chamberlain as,

“decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift”.—[Official Report, Commons, 12/11/1936; col. 1107.]

As we kick the can down the road, somehow it came to mind. It is actually quite unfair to Mrs May; it was probably unfair to Chamberlain too. What is more striking about Mrs May is her messianic, Mosaic mission, and her determination not to listen to anybody else. I am impressed by her belief that she knows all the answers, and does not have to pay attention to any of us.

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

I think the noble Lord will find that Moses listened. That was one of the issues.

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard]

But what he brought down was graven on a tablet of stone, and what Mr Nick Timothy drafted for the Prime Minister in September 2016 was not, in my view, to be taken as graven on a tablet of stone. We know now that the Cabinet was not consulted about it. We knew at the time that the country and this Parliament were not consulted, but these four red lines have determined where we are now.

The European Union has said all along—it said it in the cover note of its first mandate—that if our red lines were to change, then it was happy to look again at its mandate and change it. However, we do not seem to listen to those across the House of Commons who propose something that would break one of the red lines. When Labour talks of customs union, and this House votes for customs union, it is dismissed because it breaches one of the four red lines.

By the logic of the Prophet Timothy, Switzerland, Turkey and Norway are not sovereign states independent of the EU, because in at least one respect each breaches at least one of the four red lines laid down by Mrs May in the party conference speech in September 2016. Yet the Swiss think that they are independent. They do not think they are in the EU, and are commonly regarded as not being in the EU. I do not know why the definition of Brexit that was laid down without consultation in September 2016 has to be accepted as the only definition, and why it is a denial of Brexit, flying in the face of democracy, to argue that there might be a better Brexit than the one defined by Mr Timothy and the Prime Minister in September 2016. That is why I am offended by the “my deal or no deal” choice.

As everyone has been saying and as the document published yesterday proves, no deal is an economic catastrophe for the country, but it cannot be right that the only alternative is the lineal descendant of the tablet brought down by Moses to the party conference in September 2016. There are at least two more options available. One is to try for a better Brexit, which I do not believe the Prime Minister is going to do with the short extension she says that she might be ready to foresee. She is not looking at anything other than the sort of declaration that could be fitted into the political declaration, or might be free-standing, in some way adding emollient words about the backstop. However, the backstop is not the only defect in this dreadful, humiliating package—this humiliating treaty and vacuous declaration.

If we were prepared to contemplate the Swiss approach to free movement of persons, the Turkish approach to a customs union or the Norwegian approach to the single market, or if we were prepared to envisage an EEA-type arrangement, we do not know what new prospects might open up—we have never tried, because No. 10 does not listen. It has never been tested. We have never discovered what the EU means when it says that, if we were to change our red lines, it would change its negotiating position. That makes the “my deal or no deal” position irresponsible.

Others have explained why no deal is extremely bad for our trade. There would be no preferential arrangement with the EU or with any of the countries with which it has preferential deals, which amounts to more than two-thirds of our trade. The non-EU countries I am talking about include some very big ones, such as Japan, South Korea and Turkey. We are told that we have rolled over six agreements, but these are with minnows—not Japan, not South Korea and not Turkey.

Quite apart from the question of our domestic tariff, which the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, spoke about, we have to accept that our export market would be seriously damaged by no deal. Whether it happens in April, May or June, no deal is no better then than it would be on 29 March.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Winston Excerpts

3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 16th May 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Framlingham]

I am addressing the amendment and other amendments too.

The House has repeatedly been warned of the recklessness of the course it has taken. The noble Lords, Lord Grocott and Lord Howarth, from the Labour Benches, and the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, from this side of the House, have made excellent contributions, showing not only their understanding of the workings of Parliament but the damage that we have been doing to our reputation and the dangers we have created for the future of your Lordships’ House. They have been derided and scoffed at—not because they were wrong, but because every word they said was true. The scoffers knew this in their hearts and simply could not bear to listen to the truth.

It is not often in life that one is given a second chance to correct a big mistake—a folly of historic proportions—but we will be given one and I sincerely hope that we will take it. When the Bill returns to this House from the Commons, if we all accept, in as healing a way as possible, that whatever side we have been on and however we have behaved, our job is done and we should no longer seek to impose our will on the parliamentary process, perhaps not too much lasting damage will have been done to your Lordships’ House. Should the principal remain protagonists continue to pursue controversy, they will serve only to deepen the divisions in this House.

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

Does the noble Lord not feel that, important though the future of this House may be, the future of future generations is very important indeed—our children, our grandchildren and civilisation after us?

[Lord Framlingham]

Indeed I do, and I think that in many ways this House has recently been demonstrating its detachment from that.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Winston Excerpts

Report: 4th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 30th April 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

Yes, it will. Rather, we should seek to understand the nature of this public discontent and the depths of this anger and offer something better. I give way to my noble friend.

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

I am grateful to my noble friend for giving way. Would he not concede that the political resentment against political figures occurred before the referendum rather than afterwards?

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

Indeed it did, and what we saw in the vote at the referendum was an extremely disturbing expression of that. As I say, we should not fan those flames.

In any case, there is no sign that those who voted to leave have changed their minds. A recent ComRes poll, which took a rather larger sample than the occupants of the Electric Ballroom in Camden, found that 68% think that remainers should show respect for the majority for leave, and that we should get on with it and end the uncertainty. Instead of which, however, there is a proposal for a big campaign in support of a second referendum. That would be a bad use of time, energy and money.

I believe that the result would be the same because the European Union is unreformed. It remains in relative economic decline. It is undemocratic in its processes and it has completely failed to grip the problem of migration. There is deep popular discontent still with the EU. The only proposal for reform that is around is that of President Macron for deeper integration. In the unlikely event that that comes to pass, the UK would find itself even more marginalised.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Winston Excerpts

Committee: 6th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 12th March 2018 Lords Chamber

I strongly support the view that clinical trials are an absolutely essential aspect of our life. From time to time I have been involved in seeing just how complicated they are. One of the bureaucratic difficulties is that if you have a number of clinical trials in different hospitals for the same matter you have to get the consent of the ethics committee in each one. They all have an ego of their own so getting agreement is not always easy. The proposal which the EU has adopted, and which will come into effect in due course, is an extremely important step forward. I would like to see the power to implement and use it being adopted in the Bill. I suggest, as a possibility, that the Minister should have discretion to adopt such measures of EU law which are agreed to but not yet in force. This deals with a point debated earlier at the instance of my noble friend.

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

I will add a brief note of agreement with the amendment, for the obvious reason that this country’s pharmaceutical industry is our most important and must be involved in drug trials. I have seen this myself, having been involved with various clinical trials in the past. These have been of benefit to British patients and, subsequently, to our economy.

[Lord Spicer (Con)]

My Lords, I have a tentative question. If it is true that we do not trust our own legal environment with medical research in which, as has been said, we have great expertise, why should we trust ourselves with anything else? Across the whole of the Bill, responsibility is being transferred to this country. Why should we not be able to do that for medical research as much as for anything else?

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Goldie]

I think these businesses understand the very real and practical challenges that confront the Government in the unprecedented complexity of a process to leave the EU: that is, when we leave, we will not be part of the body of EU member states nor its regimes, agencies and institutions. However, there is no reason to imagine that in the UK post Brexit we will not continue to be at the forefront of the life sciences or that we will not have the most excellent regime of clinical trials regulatory structures. These will fall within our control.

[Lord Winston]

I am increasingly puzzled by this conversation. If you are doing a clinical trial, you have to harmonise all the arms of that trial for it to be randomly and properly assessed and for its statistics to be valid. Is the noble Baroness suggesting that we do our own small trials, irrespective of what is going on in a much larger pool of people? Does she not understand that, given the genetic diversity of the European population, the more people who are involved in the same trial, the more relevant the answers to the trial are, particularly in cases such as cancer, where they are all under the same rules?

[Baroness Goldie]

I am not in any way diminishing the important point that the noble Lord makes. I am pointing out that there are many types of clinical trials—for example, at the moment we are engaged in partnerships with non-EU countries. However, the Prime Minister has made it clear that we desire to have the closest possible relationship with the EU. We think that the systems we have been engaged in around clinical trials have been very strong, good and important.

European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Winston Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 1st March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howard of Lympne]

My Lords, we could but the Government decided not to. I wish we would. I would like the Government to take that view but they decided not to. I believe that this House needs to face—

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

The noble Lord, Lord Howard, has made one major assertion repeatedly: he kept saying that there are no new facts. There are new facts and they are really important to the British economy. The Government made it clear that science and technology is one way in which we will lead. Yet we are bleeding the best academics from this country at present. They are leaving one by one, or thinking about leaving, because they do not see themselves having a future in this country. That is urgent. It needs to be dealt with now.