Queen’s Speech

Baroness Ludford Excerpts

Wednesday 28th June 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, follow that—I agreed with every word said by the noble Lord, Lord Liddle.

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

Thank you.

[Baroness Ludford]

Especially, of course, about the Labour Front Bench—you are truly wonderful.

Getting back to my script, I, like others, welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, to the ministerial brief for Brexit. We have obviously had a productive experience with her before as Foreign Office Minister. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Bridges, who was briefly here earlier but unfortunately did not speak. He valiantly tried in his period of office to represent government policy, but found it a pretty impossible task. We always knew when the noble Lord was most uncomfortable with his brief because he got irritable with my Benches, especially somehow with me. I am sure that the noble Baroness will do no such thing.

The Government lost a full year on litigation to resist parliamentary accountability and then on an unnecessary election. Indeed, the Government undermined their own case, when they had a mandate from the referendum last year, by seeking a renewed mandate. Brexit is therefore in total flux and a total mess. There is no plan. Still now, nobody knows what Brexit will look like. Instead of competent, supple and intelligent government, which was needed to cope with the situation where the country was almost evenly split, we have unfortunately had arrogance, brash triumphalism, hubris and pigheadedness with brittleness instead of strength and disarray instead of stability. This was followed by an inevitable clash with reality and led to, for example, the capitulation on the sequencing of negotiations. Instead of a win-win approach, we had a lose-lose one. How can there be a sound conduct of negotiations against this background? As the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, said, you do not start with red lines and insults.

The Minister has promised openness and transparency in the negotiations. We will see what that means in practice, but so far there has been nothing to match the publication of position papers by the European Council and Commission. Just as the Prime Minister’s forlorn call to the country to rally in unity behind extreme Brexit was not followed by the British people, it has not been followed by her own Government. The headline in the Times today was:

“May’s top team splits over Brexit”,


with the Brexit Secretary calling the Chancellor inconsistent. It is indeed the Cabinet of chaos. Those divisions have been fully aired on the Benches behind her this evening, where a full range of opinions have been expressed. I hope that some will vote for the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Adonis. It is shameful that while the Cabinet airs its disunity, a Back-Bencher, the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, has told us that he has been punished by the loss of a committee post, where he was most valued, because of a vote that he cast.

Can the Minister confirm that the “no deal” threat is now dead? It was repeated in the Conservative manifesto alongside—astonishingly, although without acknowledgement of the irony—a promise to secure a “smooth and orderly” Brexit. That was, as the noble Lord, Lord Jay, said, an admission of no confidence in the Government’s own negotiating powers. Only the reference to a “smooth and orderly” Brexit was repeated today in the noble Baroness’s opening remarks, so is the cliff edge off the scene? Is the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of York’s “gentler slope” now policy? How gentle is it?

I remind the noble Baroness and the House that the Treasury said last year that the country would be £45 billion a year poorer if we fell off a cliff edge into WTO terms. As the Chancellor rightly observed, and as has been repeatedly invoked tonight, no one voted last year to make themselves poorer—although they already are, as my noble friend Lord Campbell of Pittwenweem remarked. How any Government could contemplate such a destructive Brexit, let alone with relish, an astonishing abrogation of responsibility, beggars belief. As the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said, economic self-mutilation is not a wise policy.

My noble friend Lord Oates was so right in calling for a sensible and pragmatic approach. We need a reset. As the noble Lord, Lord Mandelson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong of Hill Top, pointed out from the Labour Benches, nothing has been done to prepare the British public for the inevitable choices and compromises: no spelling out of the implications and no being honest with the voters that we and they cannot have our cake and eat it. There is a need for some grown-up government, which acknowledges that frankly.

I have no time for this Aunt Sally about how the EU is trying to punish us. It is not. There is huge regard for this country in Brussels, but of course you cannot enjoy all the benefits of the club if you leave it. The Government’s ideological red lines—refusing to stay in the single market and regulatory agencies because of a fetish about European judges—amount to shooting ourselves in the foot. This folly is at its starkest in putting dogma before our real interests in crime and security co-operation. My noble friend Lord Teverson mentioned Euratom. My understanding is that it is because of some very marginal jurisdiction that the ECJ has over some aspects—something about the free movement of nuclear scientists—that the Government are pulling out of Euratom. While these arrangements are vital to our safe transfer of nuclear material and treatment for cancer patients, I cannot believe the British public would think that is a sensible outcome.

Enough has been said for me not to repeat it about the Government’s proposals on EU citizens being too little and too late. We will come back to that, not least in a debate next week. On the repeal Bill—thank goodness for the dropping of the pretentious “great”—I am grateful that the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, under the chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, who spoke earlier, expressed concern in its report at the end of April, which these Benches fully share, about secondary legislation being used to implement significant and controversial policy matters, not just some technical corrections. We will need to scrutinise these powers with great care and exercise our proper constitutional position, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jay, said.

I believe many people voted for Brexit because they were asked to vote for a status quo in voting for remain as though they were content with everything that was happening in their lives. That was not the case—quite the opposite, in fact—and they were given the chance to vote for drastic change that promised the earth. That promise is not going to be realised, and the great tragedy of Brexit is the waste of time, capacity and money when we should be pursuing domestic problems.

The Labour amendment tonight promises the exact same benefits of the single market without membership. This goes beyond the party’s manifesto claim of retaining the benefits. I can only agree with the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, that this is a slidy position. I fear it is open to the same type of parody as “strong and stable”. That is the real cherry-picking—pretending you would have the benefits of the single market without membership of it. These Benches welcome the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, and will support it if he wishes to ask us to vote on it. We have a great deal of sympathy with some of the sentiments in the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong, but it does not perhaps express quite the next step that we need to take.

The fact is, as my noble friend Lord Campbell said, that remaining should be an option that the British people have in having the final say once they can see what Brexit actually means in practice. These Benches quite understand why the granddaughters of the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, were distraught. Let us negotiate a sensible Brexit but then, as a second step, let us allow the voters to decide whether it is sensible enough.