Brexit: Withdrawal Agreement and Political Declaration

Lord Brennan Excerpts

Thursday 10th January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brennan (Lab)]

My Lords, present circumstances present a major challenge to Parliament. A month down the line, we have a Government determined to delay, taking up one month of the four left to 29 March—to do what? To start again now. They are resolute for repetition—

“No deal is better than a bad deal”—


as if the repetition proves the assertion.

When the crunch comes about no deal, there is obvious incompetence in the choice of a company like Seaborne Freight. The public outside Parliament must be deeply concerned as to what on earth is going on. The world outside, as I glean from my frequent travelling, is shocked that this country could find itself in this state of affairs. This challenge now has to be met by Parliament.

The ex-Cabinet Minister, Nicky Morgan, said at the beginning of the week that Parliament has been denied a say on the way forward for too long and that it is time for it to assert itself. The Commons has done so. The Finance Bill amendment requires a no-deal scenario to be brought back for a decision by Parliament; and the Government defeat yesterday means that if the vote is lost by the Government next Tuesday, they have to come back with a next-steps programme within three days. That is action, and it speaks of a desire by Parliament to become the deciding voice: not acting as a Government, but acting as the representative spokespeople in the Commons of the electorate who brought us here, and who are here by appointment.

Process in Parliament for the next few months is vital. We have to show that the country can competently progress this matter. There are specialist committees of both Houses. We have no break coming up, except for a weekend, it transpires after yesterday. We have just short of four months in which to use our committees and those in the Commons, and to have debates in the Chamber of both Houses that are designed to inform the world outside and ourselves as to what we are about, with much more competence and detail than broad debates permit.

Here are some suggestions about what to discuss. The first is the consequences of no deal—not from the point of view of cloistered economists or national institutions, but of the people involved. The most reverend Primate yesterday spoke to experts in Kent. They have used past, actual experience as evidence of what might happen in the future in order to show that no deal will be a real and material risk to Kent and the country. That is a topic we should be on top of and that the country should understand.

The next issue is trading with the WTO regime. As I told the House last time, I have been involved in trade negotiations between countries, not with the WTO. I remind the House that the Doha round to create the WTO after GATT stopped after six failed years in the early 2000s, because nobody could agree on how to shape it for the future. What of the logjams of the European Union and the United States refusing to change their systems of agricultural subsidies? We talk about going in on WTO terms, as if you sign a document, press a button and everything starts moving. Every country in the WTO has its own interests to serve.

If there is a dispute, it is supposed to go to a judicial panel for resolution, but at the moment it is not functioning. Why not? Because the United States refused to support the necessary appointments to the judicial panel. Therefore, we would be joining the WTO with no working internal system to resolve problems. This morning, Greg Clark, the Business Minister, stated that business, commerce and industry in this country regard WTO as a “dire prospect”, based on rudimentary systems that do not reflect modern commerce and trade. That was a Government Minister. Are we ready for this? Are we ourselves educated enough? Do the people outside with whom we are going to negotiate think we are serious?

Finally, there is the extension, if necessary, of Article 50, which can surely be obtained if the objective is to allow Parliament more time to make a more considered decision and, if necessary, to put forward a new proposal. What does all this mean? It means that Parliament is now required to provide leadership. It must inform the public, impress the world outside that we know what we are about and achieve an exit from Europe—in whatever way we do it—that is reasoned, transitional and balanced, and in accord with our traditions of being a serious trading nation, fit to do trade with once we are out of Europe.