Queen’s Speech

Baroness Smith of Basildon 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.

[Baroness Smith of Basildon]

My Lords, we have had an excellent debate today. As the 64th speaker, I feel grateful to all noble Lords who tried to keep to the advisory time limit.

I welcome the Minister to her new position. We all know from comments she has made before that if she were in charge of Brexit we would not be starting from here. I wonder what sin the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen of Elie, has committed that he has to wind up today’s debate. We will miss the noble Lord, Lord Bridges, at the Dispatch Box. He tried hard at all times to address the questions put to him—although, at times, given that the Government themselves have no answers, it was clearly difficult for him.

We have debated for more than seven hours, and it is confirmation of the complexity of the hugely important issues that face us that we have really only touched the surface of them. If anyone was in any doubt about the impact that Brexit will have on British political life and the key issues that affect our citizens, they need look no further than this Government’s programme as outlined in the Queen’s Speech.

What are the great challenges for society today? If you ask young people, housing will be at the top of the list, but the Queen’s Speech promises only:

“Proposals will be brought forward to ban unfair tenant fees, promote fairness and transparency in the housing market, and help ensure more homes are built”—


hardly a bold, creative programme to deal with one of the great crises of our generation. If we skip that generation, many older people might suggest that the issue of social care as they get older worries them most. Despite that being a key issue in the election, though, the most that the Government could promise was:

“My Ministers will work to improve social care and will bring forward proposals for consultation”.


These are the kinds of issues that go right to the heart of the kind of society that we want to live in, where everyone has a decent home and no one fears for their own care as they get older and need help. Just imagine what could be achieved by our brightest and best if they could focus on them.

Yet, alongside vagueness on these issues, the Government programme talked of providing certainty to individuals and business with a Bill to repeal the European Communities Act, an avalanche of further legislation just to ensure that the existing EU protections from which we currently benefit are brought into UK law, and a whole raft of legislation on trade, customs, immigration, international sanctions, nuclear safeguards, agriculture and fisheries.

Part of the Government’s problem is that the referendum result meant different things to different people and that, at the time, the Government were unable to provide any clarity about what the result meant or what would happen next, as no preparation had been done on what Brexit would look like or the detail of what it meant in practice. So, with the new Prime Minister, the Government had to play catch-up to seek to define how they saw Brexit. The answer, initially, was, “Brexit means Brexit”.

The Prime Minister’s Lancaster House speech and the White Paper were early-stage thinking from a Government seeking their way. I think the noble Lord, Lord Horam, said that it was a fundamental error. But we have to move on from there, because that speech and the White Paper did not inspire. It was the Prime Minister’s version of Brexit, on which she sought and failed to gain a mandate from the British people in the general election.

Given that she got her Article 50 Bill through unamended, I will never understand why the Prime Minister then squandered her parliamentary majority through an unnecessary election. She presented that election as a judgment on her leadership and sought a mandate for the Brexit that she had outlined. Her pitch appeared to be basically that she had been questioned and challenged—including by your Lordships’ House—but that she should be allowed to get on with it in whatever way she wanted. It is not unlike Andrea Leadsom criticising the press for being unpatriotic when asking her questions.

Nothing could be more patriotic or more democratic than on this, the most complex and challenging issue of my generation, to question, scrutinise, challenge and offer alternatives. The process of Brexit cannot be led by those who have no doubt. It is only through doubt, careful thought and consideration, analysis and, yes, challenge, that we can achieve the best outcomes. From listening to tonight’s debate, there is wise advice for the Prime Minister and the Government in a number of areas.

First, the Government should be clear that they now accept that, rather than no deal being better than a bad deal, no deal is the worst possible deal. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown, disputed that, but I must say to him that any acceptance that we could crash out of the EU on WTO terms obviously creates uncertainty for the economy. It also means, for example, no deal on EU nationals, no deal on data sharing regarding serious and organised crime and terrorism and no deal on the Irish border. It would mean no deal on mutual recognition of environmental regulation or, indeed, any regulatory alignment on standards and enforcement. It would mean no deal on employment rights in trade deals. It would mean no deal on safety regulation of the nuclear industry, as we would have also left Euratom, a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, and my noble friend Lord O’Neill of Clackmannan. It would mean no deal on the European Criminal Records Information System. The then Home Secretary said in April 2016 how important that was because the Government had checked the details of more than 100,000 foreign nationals against that database. No deal is not just the worst deal: it is irresponsible, dangerous and a failure of catastrophic proportions.

The second piece of advice to the Government tonight is about tone. There has to be a more constructive approach. For the Prime Minister to claim to be a “bloody difficult woman” might play well with some at home, but is curious and unproductive as a negotiating strategy. A constructive tone would achieve so much more. Anyone who has negotiated knows that the tone of the talks, and the relationship and the trust that are built up, are essential for effective discussion and agreement.

A key start on changing that tone would be a unilateral offer on EU nationals. This House offered a way forward for the Prime Minister before she started the Article 50 negotiations. She was warned by my noble friend Lady Symons and others that until everything is agreed, nothing is agreed—so it would be helpful to have that issue resolved at an early stage. As my noble friend Lady Kennedy said, our EU Select Committee report on acquired rights recommended that the Government should,

“give a unilateral guarantee now that it will safeguard the EU citizenship rights of all EU nationals in the UK”,

post Brexit. The report further stated:

“The overwhelming weight of the evidence we received points to this as morally the right thing to do. It would also have the advantage of striking a much-needed positive note for the start of the negotiations”.


It is the right thing to do for common humanity, but it is also the best thing to do for the economy. The Government’s proposals fall short—too little, too late—and there are practical reasons why they seem to me to be unworkable.

The other issue that has been raised in a considerable number of contributions tonight—indeed, it is the subject of my noble friend Lord Adonis’s amendment—is the single market and the customs union. In many ways, this issue comes down to the question of why 52% of the population voted to leave the EU. In reality, the Prime Minister’s “hard Brexit”—which I think should more properly be referred to as “extreme Brexit”—means that the benefits of the customs union and the single market are not even being put on the table for discussion, and that is totally wrong. Our approach on this should be not ideological but pragmatic. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said that it should not be a hard or a soft Brexit, and I think that we should look at something different. The choice seems to be between an ideologically extreme Brexit or a pragmatic Brexit that is in the interests of the economy and the people of this country. I am not particularly interested in structures or the mechanisms of how we get there, but we have to ensure that when we negotiate an agreement, the starting point is the single market and customs union that have served this country, our economy and the workers in our economy so well for the past 40 years.

We understand that the Government have to negotiate an agreement that recognises the referendum result, but they must also ensure that the priorities are jobs and an economy that works for the British people. Other noble Lords have said the same thing but I think that we mean different things when we say it. Our starting point is the benefits that we have obtained from the single market and the customs union. We have to be clear about the benefits to and interests of the UK, and also convince the EU 27 that it is not only in the UK’s interests but in the EU’s interests too. It is not our decision alone, and we should start from that point.

In answer to the question from the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, I did not invent the objective of “exact same benefits”—that is a quote from David Davis, the Secretary of State. He said that we should seek the “exact same benefits” and I am very happy to hold him to it.

A further issue is how to ensure that our new regulatory infrastructure is and continues to be aligned with that of the EU if we are to ensure ongoing trade in goods and services. That is not an abstract concept or burdensome; it is as important as the benefits of the single market and the customs union if we are to continue to trade with the EU. Let us take the European Medicines Agency and the pharmaceutical industry as an example. EMA certification provides companies with market access to around 500 million people across the EU. That market accounts for 25% of sales worldwide. On its own, the UK accounts for just 3%, but it is significant for our economy. I wonder whether the Government understand the professional concerns that are being raised about this. The market is so small in the UK as a whole that companies may decide not to come to the UK, not to invest in the UK and not undertake their research and development operations in the UK. In 2013 this sector provided a trade surplus of £2.8 billion to the UK economy. Squander that and we do a great disservice to parts of our economy and to medicine.

On Wednesday the noble Baroness the Leader of the House did not—perhaps she could not—answer any of my questions about the progress on plans to deal with our leaving the EMA. Those questions were straightforward and they do not apply just to the EMA; they also apply to all the other agencies of which we are a part, including the European Aviation Safety Agency, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, the European Environment Agency and the European Maritime Safety Agency. We have spoken about Euratom. There is also the European Police Office and the European Securities and Markets Authority. When we leave these in leaving the European Union we will need to have something in their place, and not something that is regulatory just at that point in time. If we are going to continue to trade we will need to have ongoing compliance and an ongoing process by which we match what is happening in the EU—otherwise we lose the markets that want to trade with us. We need to know what the Government are doing now to address those issues.

When she was speaking, the Minister implied that we need to ensure that all these matters are resolved within the two-year period. It is right that we should ask what is being done today and what has happened. My noble friend Lady Kennedy and others raised the issue of the ECJ. Whatever you call it, there will need to be a disputes mechanism that is recognised in international law. For those in the party opposite simply to say that we are going to leave the ECJ and not say what will replace it—because they have an obsession with leaving the ECJ, which has served us so well in trade and other areas—is to do a disservice to this country.

The party opposite and the Government have not liked talking about transitional arrangements, so I am happy to call it an implementation stage, if that makes it any easier. I thought that the noble Baroness, Lady Finn, had a very pragmatic approach in her speech to why transitional arrangements will be essential.

I quote my noble friend Lord Mandelson in his excellent article in the Financial Times last week, where he wrote of the “pragmatism and compromise” that the Government need to bring to these debates, taking a “wider view” of the UK, even outside the EU, as an EU partner. That ties in with what my noble friend Lord Cashman said about consensus and the wider agreement that the Government need to seek. You can contrast that approach with this ideological, extreme Brexit. We have to ensure that the Government step back from this and take a pragmatic approach, not just go heads forward, with red lines that may damage our economy and do a disservice to the people of this country.

My noble friend Lady Hayter has already said that we want to ensure that as the process continues we give the best advice that we can to the Government and the House of Commons. We will use all the expertise that this House has to offer to be supportive in getting that pragmatic, practical Brexit that works in the best interests of this country. A vote on our amendment tonight would allow us to reinforce the point that we made in today’s debate, but it would not at this hour reflect the views of the House—but there will be other opportunities to do so, and we will seek those opportunities. Those two key votes on our amendments to the Article 50 Bill, on the issue of providing unilateral guarantees to EU nationals and on the parliamentary process, showed by their massive majorities not just the view of your Lordships’ House but also the strength of opinion in your Lordships’ House. Although the PM cajoled and persuaded sympathetic MPs not to support those amendments, I very much doubt that she would have the same success today.

The Minister spoke about the negotiations and said that she would come to this House to update it; I know that she says that with good intentions, but that is not good enough. There has to be a move not just to update your Lordships’ House but to engage with it, listen to what is said, take note and at times act on what it has to say. For the avoidance of doubt, I want to be clear how we as the Official Opposition will approach legislation, Brexit and others, in this Parliament. Since the general election resulted in a minority Government, most of the debate relating to your Lordships’ House is around the historic Salisbury/Addison convention and whether it still applies. As I set out in my initial response to the Queen’s Speech last week and in media commentary since, the focus of that debate is misplaced; the ultimate purpose of that convention was to guarantee the primacy of the elected House of Commons, which rightly continues to hold. As history tells us, no minority Government can ever take the support of the House of Commons for granted.

On Brexit, and other legislation brought to your Lordships’ House, we on these Benches will continue to fulfil our constitutional duties, examining and debating issues and when necessary seeking amendments for further consideration in the other place. I welcome the comments of my noble friend Lady Jay, with her experience on this issue, with particular reference to statutory instruments. The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, tried to make his report an issue between the House of Lords and the House of Commons, but it was not; it was an issue between the House of Lords and the Executive, who send statutory instruments to your Lordships’ House. I have had discussions with the Leader of this House and have given evidence to the House of Lords Select Committee on the Constitution; we need a new committee that will look solely at Brexit statutory instruments. I also call on the Government to commit to publishing all such SIs early on, so that they can be considered and consulted on prior to being introduced in your Lordships’ House.

With a minority Government, there are two areas in particular where the Government need to be aware of the constitutional position and how it would be viewed by Members of both Houses. Clearly, it would be very unwise for the Government to inappropriately use Henry VIII powers in the proposed great repeal Bill as a way of rushing through primary legislation without proper parliamentary scrutiny. With significant clauses not even debated by the House of Commons, your Lordships’ House can provide a useful service to the other place by seeking amendments that would allow the Commons to take part in scrutiny that they would not otherwise be able to.

A number of questions have been raised in tonight’s debate. I hope that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, will be able to answer those but, if not, can he circulate his answers to all Members of your Lordships’ House who have been asking questions tonight? These questions will be returned to and will come up again and again but, so far, the answers from the Government have been far from satisfactory.