European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-04-23
Topic: International Affairs
Dianne Hayter (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, there is always something very special about hearing history from those who are not reading it from books but were there. Given the overriding importance of the security of the nation and remembering, even further back, that the EU was born out of the desire to end war, bring peace and establish co-operation across Europe—that was not simply the reason for us being there but, even before that, the reason for its creation—we simply cannot risk just slipping out of the EU’s foreign and security policy, which we helped not to fashion at the beginning but to fashion in its development, without a serious debate in Parliament In Committee, regrettably, the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, who I think will also respond this evening, claimed that she was "a very lowly mortal"—I doubt that in any circumstances—and was, "not privy to the detail of the negotiations", so she could not report on the progress of talks on this vital issue. I have to say I do not think that is good enough, either for this House or for the Bill. I said at the time that Clause 9 refers to the withdrawal deal. It is our fervent hope that before we sign off on that deal—for me, this should be included in that deal—there will be a satisfactory outcome regarding our future co-ordination with the EU on foreign policy and defence. It is still possible that the Government will try to remove Clause 9 but, until they do, the deal is pertinent. It is not good enough for the Minister this evening to repeat her earlier reliance on the so-called meaningful vote on the final deal, which has been promised by the Government. That was her excuse for saying that the Bill was, "not the appropriate forum to raise these concerns".—[Official Report, 26/2/18; cols. 502-03.] There are two reasons why that argument is at fault. The first is because, at the moment, there is no such thing as a meaningful vote; to the contrary, there is only a meaningless vote, as it will be on a Motion with no legislative consequence. It will be a bit like the Motion that will be in the House of Commons on Thursday on the customs union, which the Government are so afraid of losing that they will not even vote on it. They are going to abstain and when that vote is won, they will ignore it. At the moment, that is the only vote that we have been promised on the deal. Secondly and, I guess, more importantly, I do not think we should be sending the Bill back to the Commons unless we are sure, in the way in which the amendment provides, that the Government are already working on and will take the necessary action before exit date to secure an ongoing continuation of security and foreign policy with the EU. It is no good to say that we can wait until the withdrawal deal—our vote on that could be weeks before we leave—or that it is not for us to discuss it In the words of the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, we need a diagram or a plan. I have a better suggestion for the Minister: she should just get the noble Lord to write it for her, because we might then have something that would take us forward. We need to know what is being discussed and, assuming that there is a plan—I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, is wrong and that there is something on paper—we need to know what it is, so that we have confidence that this will be fully in hand and workable on the day that we leave.