Civil Procedure (Amendment) (EU Exit) Rules 2019 — House of Lords, 2019-02-25
Topic: International Affairs
George Foulkes (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I hesitated to rise because I was sure that a number of other people would raise issues. A number of distinguished lawyers, people who understand the constitution better than I do and people who understand, even more than I do, the implications of what we are doing are present. We are dealing with something of monumental importance. Those of us who are astonished at the way that the Prime Minister is acting at the moment—as though she were a dictator in a banana republic—are amazed at the way that some Members of Parliament of both Houses seem to be sitting back and letting it happen The implications are astonishing. We have already looked at them in relation to visas. We are now told that if we come out of the European Union at the end of March we will have to have visas, and it will cost €60 to go to countries which we can now go to freely and as many times as we like. We will have lorry parks all over Kent because of the arrangements for customs clearance. There are questions over medicines and food supplies, which people are really worried about. The president of the CBI is warning us on behalf of all industries of the Armageddon that we face. On aviation, we have already discussed how we are still concerned that flights might not be guaranteed to all destinations after the end of March We now come to a life or death matter which is of great importance to everyone. We are talking about sanctions against Daesh or ISIS, action against Russian oligarchs and dealing with terrorists. These are major issues. All it needs is for some mistakes to creep into the statutory instrument that we are considering for something dreadful to happen and for us to fail to be able to deal with terrorists in the future or impose sanctions when we wish to. There are likely to be unintended consequences if we get this wrong Normally, if we were starting from scratch, we would go through primary legislation line by line. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, with his huge knowledge, would alert us to some of the imperfections contained in it and my good friend, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope—again, from his great experience—would point out some of the difficulties. We would go through it line by line and be able to consider and vote on amendments. However, because this is being dealt with through a statutory instrument it is, again, a take-it-or-leave-it situation It is absolutely unacceptable for a Parliament to be treated in this way. I find it astonishing that people whom I know to be manifestly concerned are willing to sit quietly and let this get through. This is not acting as a Parliament and scrutinising something in the way that we should; it is a meek acceptance of something being pushed through, having been started to patch up differences in the Conservative Party for party-political reasons by David Cameron, who has now fled the scene. He is no longer with us or taking any responsibility for the mess that he has got us into. Other people spread lies during the leave campaign about what was to happen and some of them, for a while, took the Queen’s shilling, but they are no longer with us or taking responsibility for what is happening. It is outrageous that this is being undertaken. I hope that at some point before the end of March, more and more people will get up and call the situation unacceptable, which it is. If we allow all these statutory instruments to go through again and again—day after day, without question or challenge—then we are not fulfilling our function as a legislative Chamber of the Houses of Parliament of the United Kingdom, and we should be ashamed.