Brexit: Negotiations

Lord Green of Deddington Excerpts

Thursday 15th November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I have been quite clear that we will not be having a second referendum. We have had a people’s vote, and we are now delivering on that. However, the noble Lord is absolutely right that the withdrawal agreement and implementation treaty will be brought forward to the House and there will be opportunity for both the House of Commons and this House to scrutinise it and discuss it. It will be for Parliament to pass it.

[Lord Green of Deddington (CB)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness will be aware that the question of immigration was a major factor in the referendum. Can she explain why these documents, apart from dealing with the rights of EU citizens in the UK and vice versa, are virtually silent on this important issue?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

We will end free movement when we leave the EU, which means that we will develop our own independent immigration policy. We will bring forward a White Paper setting out those thoughts shortly.

Brexit: Negotiations

Lord Green of Deddington Excerpts

Monday 15th October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Green of Deddington (CB)]

My Lords, this is a field day for the Opposition. Is it not the case that the Europeans might now be deciding that there will not be a deal and, as I believe they are, preparing themselves for no deal? Should that not be the focus of our own work very soon?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

As I said, we believe we are not too far apart. We have obviously been discussing some key issues today. We believe we will still get a good deal, but we have been working to prepare for a no-deal scenario, as the EU has and as any responsible Government would. We have published over 106 specific technical notices to help businesses, citizens and consumers prepare for no deal. There is work going across government, but I repeat that a good deal for the EU and the UK remains our focus and we believe that we will get that deal.

Syria

Lord Green of Deddington Excerpts

Monday 16th April 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Green of Deddington (CB)]

I declare an interest as a former ambassador in Damascus and as a member of the board of the British Syrian Society.

I understand the reasons for the Government’s actions, I support them and I strongly endorse what the noble Lords, Lord Kerr and Lord Jay, said on the subject. I also endorse their concern at a lack of strategy in tackling what is an extremely complex situation, as the noble Lord, Lord Hain, so clearly explained.

The reality is that the Assad regime is winning the civil war and, given that it has the support of Russia and Iran, it is going to stay there. So we had better wake up to that. This will not be popular, but we need to move from the support that we are giving to his opposition to a neutral position where we can actually help, with such influence as we have, to get some kind of discussion going. Let us face it, it will be a discussion that will leave in place the present regime in Damascus, whether or not it is led by Bashar—which, by the way, is very much the wish of many of those in the government-controlled region, especially the minorities, and especially the Christians.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

All I can do is to reiterate that we remain committed to the UN-led political process. This particular action was about degrading the regime’s chemical weapons capability and deterring their use. We remain committed to broader diplomatic efforts to deal with the Syrian crisis in a broader sense, but this military action was specifically focused on chemical weapons.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Green of Deddington Excerpts

Tuesday 30th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Green of Deddington (CB)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, referred to ex-Foreign Office luminaries. I am ex-Foreign Office, but I make no claim to be luminary; indeed, I am not entirely sure I agree with some of what it is saying.

I will cover rather different ground in my contribution, which, as usual, will be brief. Until I read the papers for this debate, I had not myself realised the extent to which the UK has been inexorably drawn into a binding legal structure so completely different from what the public, and I, originally voted for. However, the public have now come to recognise this, instinctively, if not in detail. That may explain why the outcome of the referendum was as it was: quite clear, but, as we have all recognised, narrow.

Irrespective of their own vote, many members of the public now look to the Government and to Parliament to get on with it and extract us from the European Union. In looking at this Bill, we must surely play it straight with the public. There are, no doubt, many valid and important legal objections to the Bill as drafted, but any impression that legal arguments are being used as a cover to frustrate the UK’s departure from the EU would be deeply damaging to the future of this House and, perhaps, to our political system as a whole, as the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, pointed out earlier.

I would like to refer specifically to one central issue, which is something of an elephant in the room. Noble Lords will have guessed that I am talking about immigration. There is no doubt that this was a major issue—some would say a decisive issue—in the referendum. Therefore, surely the outcome of this process must lead not just to control over immigration but to a substantial reduction.

Let me illustrate the consequences of failure to get such a reduction in three brief, simple but telling points. First, over the last 10 years net migration has been running at about 250,000 a year, almost half of it from the European Union. Secondly, at these levels of immigration, our population would grow by almost 10 million in the next 25 years, of which 82% would be due to migration. Thirdly, the continuation of current levels of net migration to England—I am talking only about England here—would mean having to build a new home every five minutes, day and night, just to house new migrants. This is just the tip of the iceberg. Public concern about the scale of immigration is well founded and should not be condescended to. More generally, the public are also aware of something of an alliance between some employers who prefer to employ cheap foreign labour and a metropolitan elite who sometimes suggest that any call for control of immigration is essentially xenophobic. If nothing else, the vote for Brexit has signalled a need for this to change.

This is not the place or the occasion to pursue these matters any further. Indeed, the implementation Bill in the autumn and the immigration Bill expected shortly will be more directly relevant. In conclusion, I simply invite the House to be alert to the wider consequences of our work for the future size and, indeed, nature of our society.