Brexit

Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne Excerpts

Saturday 19th October 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne (Con)]

My Lords, I am most grateful for the opportunity to participate in this take-note debate where we are looking at the, I think, magnificent agreement on the withdrawal of the UK from the European Union and its matching and finely written political declaration. Much of the last few years, and certainly the recent months and weeks, have focused on our needs and the European Union—that is, what we feel is wrong. Today, I think we should look at the needs of our fellow member states and, from that perspective, at how Britain has been of use and value to the European Union itself. Essentially, it is in the relationship between France and Germany where our input has been most valuable of all. For 43 years, the UK has been the centrepiece of the see-saw that is France and Germany, on which the entirety of the European Union’s peace and security hangs. The question seems to be: how can we continue to do that from outside?

I personally believe profoundly in the value of co-operation, co-ordination and collective action as far as possible. So why should we feel that we might be better out than in? Britain has a unique capability of global partnerships. I do not think it is right for us to continue to work almost always through the narrow prism of the European Union. Indeed, when one is overseas negotiating for the United Kingdom in different ways, it is very clear that those outside the European Union feel that they can hardly find us because we are covered by this enormous cloak, or cloud, of the European Union.

We have to move ahead, and as we do so we have a heavy obligation towards other member states of the European Union. Why move ahead at all? It is an obligation to our own people. We need no stumbling blocks in our pathways when we seek greater prosperity and peace. Perhaps it is worth recalling, then, that the European Union is a highly sophisticated protectorate and we flourish through free trade. Indeed, listening to others, the chief economist of Germany remarked the other day that Britain would be economically far better outside the European Union, because the European Union’s restrictions were becoming tighter and tighter for Britain’s financial and economic future. We will undoubtedly be better out; I am sure that that is true.

Look at money flows, for example. The SWIFT banking system, which I worked on here, emanated from the United States of America, our major global partner. Look at how the European Union—with the best will in the world and with us assisting, but against the USA’s wishes—has been attempting to find another money transfer system to work with Iran; it simply has not proved possible. We are the internationalists and it is absolutely vital that our key strengths are now used more fully.

Of course, we have the magnificent key strength of the English language. We are tremendous innovators—almost better than anyone. The world wide web is just one example. We have the City of London. Our historic position in the Hanseatic League may be the best model for us to develop for the future, because it is absolutely clear that we are leaving the European Union. I believe that the vote will go through today but if it does not, you will see from the statistics from the various surveys that the tidal wave of the British people trying to leave is unstoppable.

The European Union has not yet finished its project and that is another reason why we should do all we can to help. It still has the Baltic states to pull in and a great deal of internal work to do to get some form of co-operation on its enormous corruption. As we settle into our next phase, I hope and believe that we will support the continent of Europe, mainly, but not only, through the European Union.

I had the good fortune—I thank my country for allowing this—to serve in the European Parliament, the parliament of the Council of Europe and the parliament of the Western European Union, as well as in the other place. I can see that ever closer union is crucial to keeping the peace between France and Germany, but not crucial—in fact, antipathetic—to the feelings of the United Kingdom, which is global and international, and always will be.

Therefore, there is a task behind which we can now all pull: to get on with leaving the European Union. There is no more time left. Colleagues, friends, noble Peers and those in the other place, it is time to act.

Brexit: Withdrawal Agreement and Political Declaration

Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne Excerpts

Wednesday 9th January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Walmsley]

I ask the government Whip to bear it in mind that the Government have unnecessarily shortened the speakers’ list for tomorrow. If they had not done so, we would have several more minutes.

[Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne (Con)]

My Lords—

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne]

My Lords, it is my turn now. I apologise for my earlier mistaken intervention. The latter part of this afternoon has been a little confusing.

As a former Member of Parliament and a former Member of the European Parliament, I feel strongly that the voter has spoken and the bell has tolled. I believe powerfully that, in this Chamber and in the House of Commons, it is our duty to put through Brexit in whatever way is best for the United Kingdom. I see here colleagues who have studied the political declaration more closely. Yes, it has some significant black holes. There is no doubt that one feels fearful about the position of Gibraltar, for example, and about the unexplored deep black hole of data protection.

For example, we wish to have a major trade deal with the United States of America, and that is contra-indicative to the United States’ approach to data protection. The European Union has a very significant data protection position, drawn from its experience in the last world war and delving deep into what happened in Germany with data then. Although today’s international electronic world rather gives the lie to data protection —we only have to see what has happened in Germany this week, with the data of the German Members of Parliament and political aficionados displayed everywhere —there is nevertheless a profound belief in the European Union about data protection and the protection of the individual. That is very different from the USA’s position.

We wish to have a strong and powerful deal with the USA and as near a free market agreement as we can have with the European Union. Both things are going to be difficult, and naturally they have therefore not been tackled in the rather rapidly drawn political declaration and draft agreement. I say rapidly because, having been fortunate enough to have worked on such agreements when I was in the European Parliament, I know they take years to put together.

Article 50, which I believe one of our colleagues on the Cross Benches, the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, was heavily involved in, looks exactly like a scribble on the back of an envelope which really does not make sense. It is very short. The treaty of Lisbon, which was not even signed by the British Prime Minister, is desperately weak. That is where the European Union started to unravel in 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009.

I suggest that the central purpose of the European Union is one that we need to think about very carefully indeed. I am sure we will be leaving. The lunacy of a second referendum would dramatically undermine the primacy of the other place which should be omnicompetent in our system, but will not be any longer if it keeps having referenda.

Once we have left, we will need to consider very carefully how we support the European Union that we leave behind. The original purpose of the European Union is still there. It is not completely fulfilled, and that may be why so many people feel a sense of loss in advance of leaving. The very strength of Germany alarms the rest of Europe, most particularly in its eternal differences with France, which is the weaker partner. That has enlarged and heightened the fragility of the European Union, along with continued land issues: between Poland and Germany, between Hungary and Romania, within and beside the Balkans, between Spain and the UK—I have already mentioned Gibraltar —let alone the continuing disputes within the individual member states, such as between Spain and Catalonia, and within the neighbourhood of member states, of which Cyprus and North Cyprus is a very clear example.

The European Union has successfully held the ring for a growing EU population to live and work in peace. It has enabled France and Germany to meet and reach agreement on a near-daily, and sometimes a near-hourly, basis. In consequence, both nations—perhaps for the first time in hundreds or thousands of years—now work in partnership and not in conflict. This in itself is, I suggest, a truly magnificent achievement—one of which we too should be rightly proud as we played our part therein.

Yet, commanded by the British people, our Government are struggling with the complex manner of us handing in our EU membership and becoming a third-party state outside of the EU, albeit with high-level benefits. Certainly, the withdrawal agreement, which the Prime Minister has painstakingly agreed, is perhaps the best we can expect today. We should be proud of the large body of civil servants who have spent months working on this, in partnership with fellow members of the European Commission secretariat, another fine body of professionals. We should be very proud and grateful to them for their work, even if we do not firmly endorse the outcomes that they have reached.

But what next? What concerns me is, once we have left, a huge and continuing piece of work approaches for us: forging new relationships, opening up fresh trading opportunities, exploring distant horizons and refining relationships nearer to home. We in Britain are indeed up for the job. Our nation has never been so successful nor so at ease with itself, since the last world war ended, as we are today.

So why is this dramatic change required? Why should we pursue this tricky and perilous alteration to our European status? The most reverend Primate the Archbishop fears that it will harm millions and all end in tears. The reason, of course, lies within the European Union itself. It has grabbed competences far wider—more intrusively invading and destroying rights and privileges, customs and local ways and means—than ever before. Its legislation is a daily diet that is both detailed and proscriptive. Massive centralisation has overwhelmed the original and praiseworthy concept of Europe of the regions against Europe of the nation states. It is far away from the founders’ creation of an intergovernmental body, on the lines of those post-war institutions which did not set out nor plan to become a model of democracy. No parliament was foreseen, nor was the creation of any legislation at all anticipated. The opposite took place, and we now have this enormous centralised body; and it is right, therefore, that today the European Union should be our partner but not our owner.

I support leaving. I do not foresee an easy ride, but I hope we will end up with the most powerful solutions that fit our nation, as well as our future relationship with Europe.

Brexit: Preparations and Negotiations

Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne Excerpts

Monday 23rd July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne (Con)]

My Lords, the White Paper is very welcome. It is a very familiar document to those of us who have worked with the Commission on enlargement and foreign policy. It merits high praise to the Whitehall and regional civil servants for their dedicated work and to their colleagues, the Commission officials. As a large set of teams tackling a unique task of historic proportions in a very short time, their combined work has been magnificent.

We are presented with an opportunity that no other nation and no other British Parliament has ever encountered. We are leaving—yes, that is the case—a vast and somewhat controlling intercountry bloc to which we, the British people, have been the second-largest net contributor and much more for nearly half a century. Our task is an enthralling one. The British people voted to change the course of history. While a referendum is not the preferred choice of most people, for nobody ever trusts the outcome—even in California, the home of multiple referendums—this outcome was very clear indeed. To those who say that the information they were given was insufficient or misleading, I have to say that if 43 years in the same institution does not tell one how it works, then no amount of information will provide the understanding to ever satisfy the doubters who cry for a rerun.

It is tempting to recall that the latest eminent former Prime Minister to declare another referendum to be morally justifiable is the same former Prime Minister who achieved the notorious “empty chair” policy which ensured a full cessation of information and of political involvement by the UK in the EU. It was ignorance by choice for several years, which our nation paid heavily for in finance, in influence and in the information and knowledge that we are painfully reacquiring. We do not yet know the final detail of our leaving, but the way ahead is clear.

The earlier 1970s referendum resulted in a higher percentage of voters ticking the yes box, but voter confidence in the outcome was no higher. For all my political life, I have attempted, but failed, to dispel the subsequent view of the electorate that they had not got what they thought they were voting for. They believed that we were entering a single market; instead, our nation came under Roman law, which has intruded to such an extent that thousands of inherited British Magna Carta freedoms have been swallowed up. Unlike Ahab and the whale, we have no God-like powers to recover them. The earlier EU referendum campaign misspoke—in the endearing terminology of our recent presidential visitor. No one informed the electorate that by an almost invisible sleight of hand, certainly unknown here, the Luxembourg court had earlier passed a single case law judgment making Brussels law superior to that of member states. This judgment cascaded through the entire EU system, degrading Parliament’s unique position in our democracy. Never again since joining the EU has the Westminster Parliament been omnipotent and omnicompetent. It became, and still is, subsidiary to Brussels. Our electorate had no knowledge of that fundamental change of locus of decision-making nor of the coming Niagara deluge of frequently irrelevant and somewhat harmful legislation which has poured in over our heads and swamped our inherited systems. Measurements of window cleaners’ steps determined in Brussels for nearly half a billion people is just one of the multiplicity of mini-laws that affect us here today.

No further referendums on any matter affecting our EU status can ever hold the confidence of the British people as they were misled. The fundamental transfer of sovereignty was neither explained nor understood, even in Government or Parliament 20 years later. Were we to succumb to the siren voices suggesting a further referendum now and on the same subject, parliamentary government would be dashed on the rocks and our democracy could not recover. The voter understands that, and the electorate decided that we should regain our autonomy, reshape our future as a nation and ensure that there is a harmony of vision between the European Union and the UK and that there is no sharp, abrupt cessation of partnerships or deep, historic ties, and that our capacity to trade is heightened and enlarged, not shrunken. The statistics today about our economy are looking very good indeed, while the latest PwC global forecast for Britain is even better. The popular will as expressed at the ballot box was incontrovertible, and this White Paper, with the amendments it will acquire as it progresses through both Houses, will reinforce the confidence of the electorate in a powerfully positive future for our country—with a strong economy; financial services at the heart of a digital economy; greater exporting and outward and inward investment; a swifter reaction to the shifting centres of modern power internationally, and a creative shaping together of our nation’s future.

As for that pesky voice shouting too loudly that a 4% majority is not good enough and that we must rerun the entire competition, do we assume that they disregard the previous nationwide referendum which decided that first past the post was the way for British votes to be cast and counted? Shall we rerun that referendum too and the last election and the one before as well? That is not going to happen, not now nor in the future. Let us make friends again, not just with the EU but with ourselves. We are in Parliament to serve the British people and to enhance our nation’s greatness in her post-Brexit new clothes. As the Prime Minister has declared, we should back the White Paper. I believe we should win or lose any wished-for amendments with good grace, meeting political opposition with courtesy and never with personal hostility. Above all, let us get on with the job. I support the White Paper, the Prime Minister and the Government’s policy to the full.