European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard - continued) & Report stage & Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Tuesday 21st January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, I cannot really think that that is how things will play out. Yesterday I heard that an agreement had been made, meaning that there would be no vote that evening. On the strength of that, I arranged to take my wife out for dinner at last. Then everything changed, and there was to be a vote— indeed, there were to be two votes. I slipped out before any of that happened to phone my wife and say, “Dinner’s off.” I simply make the plea that we distinguish between what is in the marriage contract and the conventions that we create for ourselves that help marriages, and other relationships, to flourish.

This is a convention; it is not a law. But in granting this convention and incorporating it in the Bill, we will improve the relationship between us and the people in the devolved Administrations. It is so simple. We have heard arguments about things being set in stone, and about the thin end of the wedge. Who remembers reading FM Cornford’s Microcosmographia Academica? One or two—these are the educated people. It was an argument about what happens in academic circles, where there is always a body of people who are resistant to change. They resist change on the grounds that it may be the thin end of the wedge, or set things in concrete, and all the other things I have been hearing in these wretched debates. Please let us realise that the softer acknowledgements of relationships, as well as the hard ones, help the debate, and the relationships, forward.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I had not intended to speak, but over the last week I have listened to the various representatives of the devolved Administrations in this union of ours. Speaking as a totally English person, without any relationships in any of the three devolved areas—other than being married to an Ulsterman—I think that we English ought to be very careful and listen to what the devolved areas are saying to us. It was said earlier that the Government, and indeed many English people, might not really appreciate what devolution has meant. Perhaps it is time we did.