European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Wednesday 31st January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, that was quite a contribution from the noble Lord. I must say, when I hear Singapore promoted as the vision that we should aim for, I think it gives the lie to where we are going if this Government continue: a country where deregulation abounds and protections are limited. That is where some noble Lords in your Lordships’ Chamber wish to take us.

I will make three points but, first, I must comment on the remarkable speech by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leeds. He challenged us to show good ways of disagreeing well. I think, on the whole, we have met that challenge.

My first point concerns the appropriateness of this House’s making changes to the Bill before us. The noble Baroness the Leader of the House described it as a technical measure, but, of course, it is much more than that. Why else would she implicitly warn the House not to thwart the will of the people expressed through the referendum? Why else would the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, suggest we are on the brink of disaster, repeating the error made by your Lordships’ House more than 100 years ago in rejecting Lloyd George’s budget? Even the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, felt the need to warn us off using our extensive powers.

I am mindful of convention. I know of no threat to the progress of this Bill. Of course it will pass but, equally, we have every right to make substantive changes to the Bill and to send it back to the Commons to allow them to think again. I hope we do. I hope we will ensure a meaningful role for Parliament at the end of the negotiations; that we will make sure that delegated powers cannot weaken environmental, consumer, health and work protections; that the devolution settlement will be respected and the charter of fundamental human rights retained as part of UK law; and that membership of the single market and customs union will continue.

I come now to the negotiations, because we cannot look at the Bill without looking at the negotiations. The Minister ducked this at Oral Questions today. He has another chance. Whatever else he does in responding to this debate, I hope he will spell out what the Government are seeking in negotiations with the EU. What a sorry state those negotiations are in. The noble Lord, Lord Higgins, put his finger on it yesterday: how can you possibly negotiate effectively with the EU when you will not declare what you want? The noble Lord, Lord Baker, valiantly defended the Prime Minister this evening, but it was she who laid down the red lines right at the beginning that have so constrained the negotiation. Subsequently she has given us no vision and made no attempt to reach out to the 48% who did not vote to leave. Not one effort has she made to speak to the nation as a whole; she has given us no strategy and precious little hope. Whatever her virtues, she is simply not leading at a time when the country is crying out for leadership and to be brought together.

As the chairman of the Commons Brexit Select Committee put it this week, after 19 months no one is any the wiser as to what the Government want from the Brexit negotiations. The Cabinet has not reviewed, evaluated or decided on the desired outcome. The gap between Mr Hammond’s aim of a modest change in the UK’s relationship with the EU and Mr Rees-Mogg’s assertion that close association with the EU is unacceptable is utterly unbridgeable.

That of course brings me to the amendment of my noble friend Lord Adonis. I know some noble Lords feel it is premature. My noble friend Lady Smith, the Leader of the Opposition, was clear on that point, and we heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, about some practical issues concerned with the second referendum. If, however, the terms of the deal in the end are seen by many as unacceptable, surely we should not close the prospect of the public’s having a final say.

If the rush to trade agreements with third countries is detrimental to our environmental health and food protection, if we cannot achieve a frictionless border for Northern Ireland satisfactorily outside the customs union or the single market, if the economy looks very risky in terms of our trade with the EU in the future, or the dawning reality finally breaks that there is no middle way—or, as the noble Lord, Lord Hill, said yesterday, that you cannot have your cake and eat it—it seems to me, though I am no expert, that it is becoming clearer and clearer that there we face only two options. One is a hard Brexit, on WTO rules, with high tariffs, huge economic risks and a desperate attempt to agree free trade agreements with the US and other powerful countries, where, as a middle-ranking economic power, in the words of the noble Lord, Lord Tugendhat, we will be subject to their extraterritorial reach. Alternatively, we could have some kind of close alignment with the EU, but on EU terms and rules, with little or no influence on those rules, which may well change over time to the UK’s detriment. Neither of those options appears very palatable to me. I certainly say to the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra: none of that was available at the time of the referendum. The noble Lord, Lord Armstrong, said that the referendum was full of half-truths, or at least, as he might have said, the protagonists were economical with the truth. But at some point, the consequences will become very clear. Surely we as a country deserve some say in the outcome.

The noble Lord, Lord Hague, attempted to frighten us this afternoon with the nightmare of a referendum merry-go-round. But what if the voting had gone the other way in the referendum? Does anyone think that passionate Brexiteers would have shut up shop and walked away quietly into the night? As Vernon Bogdanor argued this week:

“If the country is willing to pay the price, a referendum would legitimise Brexit in the only way possible. If it is not, the people have a perfect right to change their mind”.


The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde—I will finish here—said that the Lords is at its best when opposing the Government but on the side of the people. I thought we were doing that when we challenged Mr Osborne’s working family tax credit cuts, but the noble Lord did not quite take that view then. In the end, surely we have to do what is right. To give the public a chance to decide on the terms of the deal is not anti-democratic. They should be given that right.