Brexit

Motion to Take Note

Moved by

That this House, in accordance with the provisions of section 13(6)(b) of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018, takes note of the Written Statement titled “Statement under Section 13(4) of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018”, made on 15 March 2019.

My Lords, in repeating my right honourable friend the Prime Minister’s Statement, I have already given the Government’s position on next steps. Therefore, to avoid repetition and detaining the House further, I propose that we move straight on to the speakers’ list for the Motion standing in my name. I beg to move.

I thank the Leader for repeating the Statement. My guess is that it was through gritted teeth, given that we are not leaving this Friday. However, that Statement leaves us no wiser, no more confident and no less ashamed to be led by a Government and a Cabinet unable to lead, to unite, to listen or to put the national interest first.

But first, a confession: 10 days ago, when we were debating the Private Member’s Bill of my noble friend Lord Grocott to end by-elections for hereditary Peers, I noted that I was not here by virtue of the achievements or wisdom of my father. Perhaps I misled the House, because I learned from my much-loved father—and maybe it was his wisdom that, in one way or another, got me here—a tale he told me when I was eight or nine, which has stayed with me. It was about a passing-out parade—he was in the military—where one proud mother, viewing the march, sighed, “What a shame that my son is the only one in step, and all the others have got it wrong”. It does not take much imagination to hear the remaining supporters of our Prime Minister echoing the same: “What a shame that only she is right and all the others have got it wrong”.

Who are the others? They are the Church, business, the CBI, the TUC, the Government of Wales, the people of Northern Ireland, your Lordships’ House and, significantly, the EU, its Commission and 27 leaders of member states. That is quite a roll call to dismiss. The 27 Prime Ministers or Presidents from across the continent are experienced in governing, politics, negotiating and consensus-building. The Archbishop of Canterbury—whose task of uniting 85 million Christians worldwide the Prime Minister has made look like a walk in the park—has launched five days of prayer as we approach Brexit. Business—the people importing and exporting—knows the cold reality of tariffs, non-tariff barriers, checks, delays, transport and handling costs, and also the need for legal, banking and contract certainty. The TUC and the CBI, which we normally call two sides of industry, have quite exceptionally joined together in the light of the “national emergency”, in their words, to warn that a no-deal,

I am very grateful to the Front Bench, particularly as the noble Baroness forwent her speech in the earlier business. Does she not also very strongly commend the extremely important utterance, promise and suggestion by the Labour deputy leader, Tom Watson, at Saturday’s huge march, that no deal, or Mrs May’s deal, should be linked to a people’s vote later on, which would meet the wishes of the noble Lord, Lord Tugendhat, and other noble Lords who want that to happen?

The noble Lord used the words “later on”, so perhaps he could wait until I am later on in what I am going to say.

It is extraordinary that a former Minister could use the words “national humiliation” about listening to elected politicians, and Mr Fox said today that the Government could ignore MPs’ indicative votes if Parliament’s stated choice went against the Conservative manifesto. So there we have it: the Conservative manifesto—that of a Government who failed to win an outright majority—is more important than anything else. Furthermore, the Statement that has just been repeated uses the excuse that, “Well, perhaps the EU will not accept it”, to fail to promise to heed the decisions and the views of MPs. Of course, the Prime Minister may not be able to deliver on what is asked, but surely she should have committed to making that her new objective—either her negotiating aim, or, if it was something else, to do that. It is shameful that the Government refuse to heed the elected House.

We know the dangers of no deal, and so do the Government: that is why that nuclear bunker under the MoD has been reopened, so that the Armed Forces are prepared, while the Cabinet Office is readying itself by working with local authorities, airports and businesses for what will be a calamity, and briefing privy counsellors accordingly. The Government know the risk of that.

I had been about to say that today’s political chaos is completely unprecedented. However, as I see that the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy—our national treasure of a historian—is here and about to speak, I will leave it to him to judge whether this is really the worst political mess that this country has found itself in.

We hear about this best from the people—up to 1 million of them on Saturday’s magnificent march. When I last looked, there were 5.5 million signatures to a petition to revoke, and dissatisfaction with the Government is at an all-time high: just 11% “satisfied”, and 86% “dissatisfied”, a net minus 75% dissatisfaction with this rudderless Government, headed by a Prime Minister with no authority.

My Lords, this is now the 13th opportunity that we have had to debate the Government’s withdrawal agreement. I am sure that all Members of your Lordships’ House hope, like me, that it will be the last.

Since we had our previous debate on the subject, some things at least have changed. The first is that the EU has agreed to an extension of Article 50, which will be widely supported across the House. The way in which this happened, though, is a telling foretaste of how life would be were we to leave the EU. The Prime Minister was allowed into the Council to petition other member states and was subject to lengthy and sceptical questioning. Then, like a prisoner in the dock, she was led from the room to a windowless cell, where she was kept until the verdict on her proposals had been reached. A modest meal was brought in. After a number of hours, the verdict was read out to her and she was allowed to leave. This is the reality of “taking back control”; this is what it would be like, week in, week out, were we ever to leave the EU.

Before leaving for Brussels, the Prime Minister had made her petulant and ill-judged address to the nation. Many in the Commons were angered by her attack on them. What really rankled with me was the statement:

“I am on your side”—

by which she meant the side of the people. But this weekend has demonstrated that she is not on the side of the people.

Noble Lords on the Government Front Bench will no doubt argue that a million people from across the UK on the streets of London, and 5.5 million people signing a petition, are only a fraction of the people. They are technically right. But how many people could the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, summon on to streets in support of the Government’s deal? How many people could the extreme Brexiteers summon up in support of crashing out? We know that Nigel Farage can summon up 200 in a pub car park—hardly the will of the people. We also know that every poll shows a large majority in favour of a people’s vote, and a large majority of them now want to remain rather than supporting either the Government’s deal or leaving without a deal. So when the Prime Minister says that she is on the people’s side, she is, as with so many other things, completely at odds with reality.

I thank the noble Lord for giving way. Perhaps he also heard the phrase in the Statement:

“Unless this House agrees to it, no deal will not happen”.

Does he share my view that that means the Prime Minister is saying that, in the absence of an affirmative decision by the Commons, no deal is now impossible?

That appears to be what the Prime Minister is saying, but it is quite difficult to be certain on that because she does not always—as in this case—speak with absolute clarity, assurance and consistency.

To revert to my previous point, could the Minister in his winding-up statement commit the Government to aim in good faith to implement any decision taken by the Commons? I accept that the Government cannot guarantee the success of every proposal, because some at least would involve negotiations with the EU—but the House would be very grateful to get that assurance.

Your Lordships’ House knows that we on these Benches believe that the only way forward is for a referendum to give the people the chance to decide their future. This is not the cry of a metropolitan elite. It is now the cry of the country. The teenager who got up at 2 am on Saturday morning to travel to London by car and bus from Berwick on the Scottish Borders was marching next to me to protect his life chances from the consequences of a squabble in the Tory party. He spoke for his generation and we must not let him down.

My Lords, I have tried in previous debates to introduce some element of light-heartedness at this stage of proceedings, but it has not been easy, and I am afraid I have rather given up on Aylesbury. I feel rather like the unfortunate passengers who, on a flight today from London Heathrow to Dusseldorf, found themselves in Edinburgh instead. The lack of direction and uncertainty with which we are proceeding makes it extremely difficult for me to feel light-hearted—or, indeed, to say anything useful in this speech.

I am at least in the happy position of speaking in this debate only for myself. I represent no party; I do not speak on behalf of the members of the Cross-Bench group; and to preserve my independence, I do not discuss my views with any of them, and do not try to form any alliances. I am of course aware from previous debates that the views I shall express are not shared across the group. That will certainly become clear as others, much more qualified than I am to speak on this subject, follow me from these Benches. But I know that I am not entirely alone in the view that I have expressed several times in this prolonged series of debates. That is, that the least unsatisfactory way out of the predicament in which we find ourselves is—however hopeless it may seem now—to approve the deal. I believe that the benefits that it offers, in security and so many other fields, far outweigh the disadvantages of that agreement, which are mainly the inevitable consequences of leaving the EU. The political declaration is a different matter. But, unlike the withdrawal agreement, it is a declaration only. It is not intended to be binding, as an agreement is. It is there for discussion, and—with some change of mind, some greater flexibility—perhaps for manipulation, as we move forward.

As of this moment, awaiting what happens in the other place, the position, as I see it, is—looking at the alternatives—quite simple. With the greatest respect to all those many people to whom the noble Lord, Lord Newby, referred, who came to London and marched through the city last Saturday—some of them came from as far away as the Western Isles, I believe—I really do not want us to have to undergo another referendum, whatever the question might be, thinking of the delay and the ill feeling that would inevitably be generated. Any meaningful renegotiation of the withdrawal agreement could not be achieved without a long delay. The EU has made it quite clear that it is not open for quick negotiation any more. The alternative would be to have what I think the Prime Minister referred to today as a slow Brexit, which would result in our having to hold elections for the European Parliament. I think the public would find that very difficult to accept, in view of the result of the referendum.

My Lords, following the Prime Minister’s Statement in the other place this afternoon, it is clear that we remain in a place of deep uncertainty. We are still asked to note the two dates of 12 April and 22 May, signifying that there are at least two, probably more, very different directions we might still take as a country.

I shall not focus on the choices before us, but I note that, whether by intention or default, we will make a choice—a choice will be made—and, beyond that choice, we have to live together. We are experiencing a time of extraordinary turbulence and toxicity in our political life, and it is how we navigate and respond to that turbulence and toxicity now and in future that I shall address in the remainder of the time available to me this afternoon.

Since taking up the office of the Bishop of Newcastle, I have had many conversations with MPs from the diocese, who range right across the political spectrum. Without exception, I have been encouraged and moved by their sense of public service and their compassion for those whom they serve. They work extraordinarily hard, and they care.

It is deeply disturbing, then, to see that a routine part of the daily working life of an MP is that they and their staff endure verbal assaults, attacks and threats. It cannot be right that carrying a panic alarm is now a necessity for some MPs and that constituency offices and homes are considered as places of risk for them.

It is just under three years since June 2016, when Jo Cox was murdered. As a nation, we were horrified and united in believing that this must never happen again. Yet over the past few months, intimidation and death threats against Members of Parliament, including MPs from my diocese, have become so commonplace that they struggle to secure space in newspapers and on news websites. MPs on both sides of the conversation have been labelled as traitors, as being engaged in acts of betrayal. Anyone coming in or out of this building will have seen the placards and heard the shouting, and often it is women parliamentarians who receive the worst of it.

Whatever the outcome of this week’s events, and whatever choice we make about our future relationship with the European Union, the even more important question is: what kind of democracy and society will we be left with? The former Archbishop of Canterbury —my right reverend friend Lord Williams of Oystermouth —reflected on this with characteristic thoughtfulness in a recent article in the New Statesman. He wrote that,

“two salient aspects of a consistent democracy are that we go on arguing, and that our freedom to do so is protected. The law defends us from coercion and forcible silencing. Without these, we have naked populism, a reversion to the situation where the powerful (in numbers, wealth or status) determine what is ‘right’. Genuine politics gives way to suppressed or threatened violence”.

My Lords, here we go again, debating the same arguments for the umpteenth time—I think the noble Lord, Lord Newby, said the thirteenth—for some very simple reasons, which we may be able to all agree on. But they may be worth repeating, simply because they may shed some light on where we go from here.

Brexit, as we now know all too well, is the biggest political and social challenge that this country has faced since the Second World War. The complexity of the issues and the enormity of what leaving the EU entails means that Brexit is a process that will take much longer than many envisaged and some promised. It has divided our nation from top to toe: the Cabinet, the two main political parties, communities, families. To leave the EU smoothly, we needed to be honest about the scale of that challenge from day one and build a consensus as to the way ahead. The Government needed to negotiate knowing they had the support of Parliament and that they could deliver on what is agreed in the negotiations. Obviously, since the referendum none of this has happened. In part, that is because the UK’s relationship with the European Union has been poisoning the well of Conservative Party politics for decades, and it has fallen to this Prime Minister to make that fateful choice: what matters more to the United Kingdom—trade and access to EU markets, or control and parliamentary sovereignty? Fear of splitting the Conservative Party totally asunder has meant that, years after the referendum, we still do not know the answer to that basic question.

On Brexit, the biggest issue of the day, we do not have a Government to speak of. Instead, we have a collection of individuals grouped into factions; there is no collective responsibility. To say that we have a Prime Minister would, sadly, bestow on Mrs May a level of authority she clearly does not have. I have been saying for months that the Prime Minister is in office, not in power—the last week has proven that beyond doubt—so once again I wearily ask: where do we go from here? Sadly, the options are exactly the same as those we faced 1,006 days ago: we leave with a deal, we leave without a deal or we do not leave. The final option, revoking Article 50, is what the noble Lord, Lord Adonis—I am sorry he is not in his place—is calling for in his Motion. Although I totally disagree with him on this point, I respect and pay tribute to his tenacity and principled stand. Parliament voted to hold the referendum; the public voted to leave; Parliament voted to trigger Article 50; the public voted for Labour and Conservative MPs who promised to honour the result of the referendum. We need to fulfil that pledge.